The Twins…

The weather is getting colder and colder (and makes me happy that way despite other things in my personal life)! It is time to prepare for some morning walks if possible, so we'll see to that.
In this quick post, I'm keeping up with the trend of macro shots, but this time, I'm going "extreme" macro, as at this point, I've tried to shoot at 5X, but this time, indoors. I hope the bougainvillea in the yard forgives me picking up one of her blooms!

Twins

Well, for this post, I will start with the "second" experiment and then go to the "first" because the second experiment gives a general outlook at what has been shot in the first experiment; Does that make sense? Hope so.
The story here began with picking another flower from one of the bougainvillea we have in the yard (hope they forgive me for that!) and started to shoot it indoors. This time, though, and unlike the flower in the previous post, the little white blooms of the bougainvillea were wide open, so I thought it is a good target. Since I need stability, I had to pick it and do my work inside.

雙胞胎
(the twins)

As I said, I will show those shot in the second trial before the first. Here, The Twins was shot using extension tubes (36mm) along with 50mm lens (typical). The image here was made soft on purpose (using the Clarity in ACR) and more softness was added later in the post-processing phase in Photoshop. Shooting at slightly different displacements made it also possible to create a 3D anaglyph!

The Twins (3D)

You might notice a horizontal flipping here between the normal and the 3D versions. Well, the 3D version is the original orientation. For some reason, I've felt that flipping the normal one was proper and going smoothly from right-to-left (maybe because this is how I read even though I'm reading English text more than I do with Arabic actually). Anyway, it just felt more normal that way for some reason!

So, at this point, this little experiment finished, but as i said, this is the second one and I will go through the first experiment now. I've actually made some artistic version(s) of this shot but I don't think I'll bother much about them for now.

Extreme

The first experiment, and the one for which I've actually picked this (poor) flower, is to do an extreme macro shoot, using focus stacking methods, to go deep into the flowers. Anyway, I have to say this now, I'm quite disappointed for the final results after all, but since it is a work that I've done and spent quite some time with, I guess it is worth of posting here. 

BouganBloom

Artistically, I don't think it is much to consider. Challenge-wise? Too much to bear with! Despite my initial plans to go at 5X, but I've pulled it back (for details sake and to have it slow this time) and shot the whole thing at 3.2X, and stacking about 211 shots (yes, two hundred and eleven). Despite this, there was still some gaps or artifacts when the stack was merged. I've actually tried many methods for stacking using other programs (e.g. EnfuseGUI) but all my trials failed in having a proper stacking blend. Maybe the best I could do in some of these programs is to align the images. The problem with Photoshop here is the consumption of memory in the process (same thing with panorama stitching). It made me doubt the process of shooting the stack and actually I've decided to get a new rail, which turned out later it's not the best option, but this is a story for another time for now (and I might do a review post and a comparison to my old rail), as I got that rail after all of the fuss done here. So, in a nutshell, I had to go back to the ol' Photoshop to do the stacking and the blending for this stack and you might notice that BouganBloom is cropped out of the 3:2 ratio, as I had to do it that way to keep artifacts or points that didn't blend properly out of the image but the blend is still not quite that good in general. Many of the details in BouganBloom were kind of "extracted" by excessive sharpening. Maybe new editions of Photoshop did fix all of these issues? Maybe it consumes lesser memory than my older version here? I'm really not sure about it, since I've never used one. 

Anyway, at this level, my work was done with this poor bloom, which actually had to be done quickly since the whole bloom withered and "melted" down few hours later and wasn't suitable to be shot further. I'm still planning to shoot some stacking in the future (specially at 5X which was supposed to be done here) but I'm still on the look for some good target to do so. The new rail kind of disappointed me but anyway it was comparatively cheaper and maybe it has other uses; Not all wasted I guess.

Finale

In the past few days I've spent a considerable time preparing for a special post about the Arabic Language day (December 18ᵗʰ), and actually ended up 9 of them so far, but I don't think I will be posting them here. They are, however, available on Instagram. The link leads to the English post, but it is available in other languages as well (Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Irish, Turkish, Farsi, and Greek), and I've tried my best to get over the randomness or faulty translations provided by Google Translate. Anyway, maybe I didn't succeed much with that, but I've tried!
The thing is that, in creating this post, I've thought quickly about doing light painting in some dark room (which I could barely make or use in the house). This actually made me think seriously about doing more light painting in the future. I had some humble trials in the past but never took it seriously. On another note, my phone does have a "light painting" mode which various options (using AI) which I've used before and it can create some interesting images indeed, but it lacks the flexibility in other things (mainly focusing and shooting in RAW for this purpose), yet it can come in handy at some point too, but my focus for now is using the DSLR to do the work. Not sure where I'm going with this though and I don't have quite have a specific target but we'll see if creativity kicks in (or something kicks me in).

On the mental plane, every day seems to be an occasion to hit a new low. In the past few days I've come into almost complete isolation (even online). I had the urge to talk, but there was none to talk to, literally. Gone are the days of those chatting programs that offer random people to chat with. I miss these old days, they definitely filled such a gap in my social life (which barely exists). Having a random chat like now on social media would sound more like stalking.  Nevertheless, I have to keep this isolation for the time being because I need to sustain some mental peace and health away from the family. They say to surround yourself with good vibes and positive people, and I just can't stop wondering how this is possible at all? I can't find it, I can't reach it, and I don't even know where it lies. All I know is that I just wish I had my own place, somewhere far, far away…

Go Mall…

Ramadhan is in and the usual sleeping problems are back as well. I can't wait to start my vacation starting from the 10^th day.  That's when the summer course would start around my workplace and things would get ugly as usual. I really don't understand how the mentalities around here work and what's their idea about "planning" but apparently they need a major brain surgery to fix that, and I'm almost hopeless about that too.

Thanks to Borderlinx and DHL, now the shipment that I was hoping to get before Ramadhan is definitely to be here after Ramadhan and who knows, I might not be able to get it even. Up till the time of typing this, no sign of my shipment which I'm supposed to get back into my Borderlinx box to be delivered in some other way other than DHL. Because of the dispute between the two, probably thousands of customers ran into havoc. I have to say, though, that prior to this order I was really thinking of shifting my interests into other stores around the globe rather than confine myself into US stores, for camera gear specifically. Anyway, I had to do this bit of shopping after some incident and a lengthy story; No need to bring it on here. However, let's see some of these delayed "joys."

Source: Amazon

I'm starting off here with 2 books, and the first one of them is not related to photography. Something related to two sectors I like: Archaeology and Linguistics. I'm not sure what will I find in this book (I didn't check the sample pages thoroughly), but despite my eagerness, I might have to put it aside for a while after its arrival because I do have some books on my stack of reading list, which were purchased 2 years ago from the Arabic Book Fair! *sigh* They are just some thick books…

Source: Amazon

The second one in this order is an interesting book (of course, otherwise I wouldn't order it, right?). It's about infrared portraiture, even though I'm not that interested in portraiture in the first place. However, since I'm inclined to the weird and strange or whatever is surreal in the world of photography, the topic of infrared portraiture seems plausible and I did it often (in the form of selfies, and a bit within my Scopa project which I've stopped). I'm guessing that the bulk of this book would be focusing on film, but we'll see when it comes (again, I didn't check the sample pages thoroughly).

Source:Amazon

The third item in the list was something that got me by surprise in fact. A set of 4 infrared filters (each with different threshold), just for $29.99? Too good to be true! I'm still not sure how to feel about this in fact; I do have a feeling that it is a low quality, but yet I'm willing to try them out when I get them. One of these filters is supposedly at a threshold of 920nm! Previously, I thought that my Kodak infrared gel filter has a threshold of 1000nm, but I was completely wrong (in fact 1000nm is the maximum a camera sensor can "see"). It is rather around 850nm, or what is usually dubbed as Wratten 87B. This threshold is suitable for what they call X-Ray Infrared (not a real x-ray but just a mocking term). Thus, I just can't imagine that I'm getting a 920nm threshold of a filter! How would the photos taken with this be like? Might be time to indulge my 20mm Voigtländer lens in some panorama work, in the future.
These are the main items which were ordered and which, unfortunately, cannot have them any time soon because of the postal problems. My hopes now are set to wish for the shipment not to be lost, as I didn't get any notifications till typing these words about the items being returned back to my box to be shipped to me by other means. Fingers crossed.

Working Re-Working

Meanwhile, as my plans are put to hold (at least till I start my vacation during Ramadhan) I spend my time checking my old photos and trying to come up with new solutions, specifically to those which I've forgotten or neglected for one reason or another. My main aid in this inspection is the LAB technique which I've been applying a lot lately (despite the troublesome aftermath to be cleared out later on). I have to say that I was surprised by some images like if they are new to me when cropped and edited all over again. I think that proves that the status of our mentality in time does affect our "vision" or how we see things and the world around us.

مدائن (towns)

One of these photos is [مدائن] (towns/cities); A photo I've shot back in 2013 when I first got my ever first infrared filter and I didn't know much about the technical aspects for this filter or this art in general. The dark and gloomy atmosphere was apparent at the moment I've fixed the colors (the typical blue tint was not quite visible after fixing the white balance). It really inspired me to write some poetry in Arabic but I didn't complete this task because of my, well, disturbed mind already.
I've intentionally sharpened a portion of the photo and keeping the rest soft to attract more attention and focus. With my calibrated monitor, the image should look dark with reasonable details (I edit while focusing on the histogram). However, as I noticed, on other devices the blacks can look brighter and even further noise artifacts would appear more prevalent (specifically at the bottom portions where rocks lie). This is why it's important to work with a calibrated monitor; Without any calibration, and with such levels of blacks, this photo would definitely be erratically printed! I can already see how it shows on my tablet and I'm not much impressed.

Sometimes digging out for old photos comes up with a bunch of ideas, creating anaglyphs is one of them, but what interests me more is the surreal chances, and that comes typically from trying to achieve the "mutli-exposure" look with some of my continuous/burst photos.

Surreale Tänzer

Doing those multi-exposures AFTER the shoot and even without a preparation beforehand makes it a difficult task somehow as to achieve the proper look which is typically assumed for multi-exposure images. Anyway, in Surreale Tänzer, I tried my best to merge a set of photos shot back in 2013 in more of a normal way (as I did once), keeping the colors as original as possible while showing a hint of movement. However, this didn't happen with Blending options. Thus, I tried another method, which was the focus stack blending in Photoshop. I tried this method before with some old images, and it did produce the same color spectrum as in Surreale Tänzer. There was some surplus of course which needed to be cropped out. I think I need to focus on this trend and look deeper into my old files, specially those from 2011 and 2012, which for me, were the very active years with my Canon EOS 7D.

Disturbed

Not only multi-exposure is part of my interests, but also some of those blurred images which, previously, proved useless somehow! As in Disturbed. I really don't know why I neglected this image from 2013, but the motion blur because of the wind during this relatively long exposure (13s) got my attention. I have to say that some of the images I've gone through this far did incite me to add some blur to them; Motion blur that is and not lens blur. Yet, I'm not sure it did look realistic for some of those images so I just ignored the idea for the time being. With Disturbed, the RAW was processed as any infrared shot would be processed (when the shot was taken I didn't know any of such processes). Generally speaking, I like it and it does give a sense of mystery to me but I'm not sure about the colors. Sometimes, I do wish I made it into B&W (which I might do after a while).

Finale

It is just the first week of Ramadhan and I'm really, really, wishing for my vacation to come by next week. I thought it would pass quickly but I was wrong. Chores, and bad time management and bad sleeping (more than before), all that combined made me wish if I just signed the whole month of Ramadhan as a leave! 
I'm living a somewhat strange transition, between hope and despair. Looking forward to life, and yet despising it. I'm not sure what is going on inside my head, but one thing for sure: I'm tired. Mentally, that is. I think lot of values need to be checked up and re-evaluated.

Ours,
till the end of time,
and beyond that.