Mercator…

Back to normal (and moderate) life again now after the Expo has finished. It's time now to shuffle my cards again and try to do some stuff that I've been postponing for a while. However, this is not the end of the story with Expos, as we are planning to get enrolled again in another Expo hopefully in March. I do have my own plans for this "show" with the group, but of course I have to discuss matters with them.

Failure No. 1

For some time I had this idea of doing some "portrait" shot with infrared. Yes, portrait. Not my cuppa tea I know, but this time it is combined with infrared, which means long exposure. I've seen some artist which use property for creating a soft touch for portraits, and I thought of experimenting with that as well, even though I don't remember if they did use infrared filters or just a regular long exposure. Anyway, since I have no model to bear with me, I had to do it all on my own.
I made up a simple setting for experimenting with this concept and I made sure that I can rest my head somewhere so it won't move much, but only little shakes (normal body movement). The idea was a table with stack of books (just an addition) and resting my chin on the table (while sitting on the ground). Focusing and directing the camera wasn't a problem, but the problem was majorly the VERY long exposure with ISO100. It required about 65 minutes! I wasn't sure I could rest my head that long! Thus, I tried to use ISO400 instead for a total exposure of about 16 minutes. Boy, did I not sleep while waiting for the exposure to finish!
Unfortunately for me, the final image was pretty much noisy and almost impossible to clean, as well as not being soft much. For this trial, I used the B+W 092 infrared circular filter with my Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens. However, I've began to understand IR filters further and one factor that this circular filter does not yield more interesting results is the fact that its cut-off wavelength point (the point after which waves are allowed to pass) is somewhere around 650nm. On the other hand, the KODAK IR gel filter which I use with my Canon EF 15mm fisheye lens usually, has a cut-off point of something around 900nm. This means that the circular filter from B+W does allow more amount of "visible" light to pass and hence the results aren't interesting as much as those results obtained by the gel filter from KODAK, which filters off more visible light. Of course, in the case of the gel filter, the exposure will be even longer!
The next step now is to try regular long exposures with the help of ND filters only, and probably using IR filters later, but with the help of some extra light source to light the scene (my face) further and help on shortening the exposure as well as "producing" more IR in the scene; I heard tungsten bulbs do produce a fair amount of IR.

Twisted and Vertical

My work is continuing with panoramas taken from Ireland, and this time adding to it some of the old panoramas from other places as well since the occasion of the Annual Book Fair last week. My attitude was a mixture of presenting panoramas and single shots when any process of sorting is scheduled by the group as I don't want to confine myself to a specific category. However, it turned out that panoramas from my side can play the "winning" card in many aspects - and for this reason I've developed some ideas for the next group's activity but they need to be discussed first. Anyway, this is not the matter to discuss here for now!

Talamh na Neamh
(Heaven's ground)

I've been working on doing more vertical panoramas lately, as I've figured that it was the lesser projection in my collection of panoramas, probably because of the lack of straight or longitudinal features in many of the scenes that I usually shoot for panoramas. Anyway, I thought maybe I should try to discover the possibilities in variety of places even those with no distinctive straight features (roads, corridors, ..etc).
However, one of the major problems in such projection is the quite stretched sides of such vertical panoramas which require a crop most of the time because they bear no distinctive or legible features. This is somewhat a minus point for this projection because the cropping limit can be hard to find, and the vertical panorama can be way too thin. But seems there is a promising solution to this in the atmosphere. Mercator.

Táim Suas ag Dul
(I'm going up)

Dhá-Taoibh
(double surface)

It never occurred to me to use Mercator projection, needless to say in a vertical format! I have to say here things came in as a coincidence. The Mercator projection is usually looked up as, simply, an elongated form of the cylindrical projection. However, when it comes to vertical panoramas, the difference is clear. With Mercator, the vertical panorama appears wide in the middle area (like a bulge outwards) and this gives for nicer views and more details. Cylindrical on the other hand, renders this area small and far. Probably vertical panoramas like Talamh na Neamh and Táim Suas ag Dul are more elongated (they are vertical panoramas from regular spherical flat panoramas), and the geometry of the place did help here as well in achieving quite the view without such a bulge. However, panoramas like Dhá-Taoibh had not many interesting features in the regular spherical panorama in vertical format. Mercator was more interesting here, despite the problem in the middle area of the panorama because of the distribution of the grass in the scene, which is a problem already in the spherical vertical panorama; because it renders the place unbalanced in this dimension. With this notice, I'm adding one more creative brush to my palette for the future rendering of more panoramas, and probably solve problems with some panoramas!

Finale

I'm here. Sweeping through life like a pinball game right now from side to side wondering what I really want. I'm planning to increase my activity within the group, thinking that it might give my life a further meaning with all the collapsible dreams that I've been watching fall down so far. I've been told once that things would look and turn for the better after 30; I wonder where from did they get this?.
In the meantime I'm giving work and home my back (almost) and all what I'm going to do is just work on my own projects, my own photos, and on my reputation as a panorama-maker. Say, what do they call a person who makes panoramas? Panoramer?
I leave you know with this musical which I fell in love with. Gentle as it may be, violent on my heart it is. Simply the work of a band of geniuses: The Chieftains...

Ar An mBóthar…

This post contains QTVR environment and needs QuickTime to be installed. Please give some time to load.

I'm not sure if this is the idea I had in my mind for the term "vacation". Not that I'm bored, but quite the opposite; I'm overwhelmed. I technically can't have a rest and my sleeping pattern is not helping as well. At least I got to play some of the games I wanted to play.
Processing the images is still going on even though in a slower pace, specially that I wanted to play these games which made me stop the process for a while. But more to come about that later. Most important thing right now is, almost all panoramas were stitched, in flat format. Which means I, now, have to work further with other projections! and I've made some QTVRs indeed, so hope you have installed QuickTime already!

Pano

In the field of panoramas, there were some panoramas that I'm reluctant to work with further for various reasons; colors, mood, and even the structure. However, in the next round of panoramas (in other projections other than flat ones), I guess I will re-checking those. Particularly here, the panorama taken from the lounge of the Waterfront B&B. I'm sort of glad though that one of the panoramas, for which I've expected lot of hurdles, turned out to be finely stitched!

An Seomra Folchta
The Bathroom

I was expecting such panorama, An Seomra Folchta, to have problems because of the very narrow space I've taken it in. But it was finely stitched in HDR with the help of a model made out from JPG slides. The detection of the white balance on location with the help of the WB disk paid well here, as the atmosphere inside this small space was mixed, between a bluish tint (hence yellowish WB would be needed) and some hot colors on the ground from the carpets (hence bluish WB would be needed); but all was set just by using the WB disk. The main difficulty in this panorama specifically would be aligning the panorama and making sure that some lines are truly vertical. OK, now to the QTVRs.

QTVRs

Concerning QTVRs, I've been thinking lately if there is another way to represent them instead of the current methodology I'm following. I've had a peek into the matter and seems there are other methods indeed, but probably more rigorous in terms of application; yet they can be useful for viewers of this blog as some of them don't require installing QuickTime. I'm not sure how this would work actually since converting the panorama into a QTVR is already done through PTGui here and the file type would already be a MOV. Need some time for this!



In this QTVR you might notice a mistake. Well, more than one in fact. Anyway, it seems that when I tone-mapped this HDR panorama with Photomatix, I've forgot to tick the "360" option, which ensures that the left and right edges of the panorama are seamless and flow together without a cut. This is one of the problems with tone-mapping in Photoshop; there is no option to make the panorama seamless - not that I'm aware of any anyway! Despite this fact, sometimes I'm forced to use it for tone-mapping specifically as it comes...



This QTVR was made from a panorama which was originally tone-mapped in Photoshop. Fixing the seam here was relatively easy; just some cloning work and I guess it is not easy to notice the seam line when rotating the QTVR. The reason I tone-map with Photoshop sometimes is the fact that I can use curves to establish the tonal values for various luminance levels all around the image, and this is how I worked out the disk of the sun here and made it sparkling instead of having just white bright spot in the sky. Such specific control can't be done in Photomatix, unfortunately. Imagine the power if the two are merged: one application to control the light by curves (beside other methods) AND making sure the panorama is seamless. Awesome!
Left to say I'm kind of surprised for Aughnanure castle's QTVR, because here, I didn't add a nadir point as I was experimenting only about the seam line. However, it was seamless AND PTGui seems to have identified the vertical limitations of the panorama; in old QTVRs, these vertical limits would be black zones if the panorama is not in the format of 2:1 ratio. But here, the viewer would automatically stop before reaching the cut of the nadir point. It was experimental after all thus I left the watermark as is on the image.

Well, there are plenty of other QTVRs but maybe I will keep them for some other time, like Kylemore Abbey's QTVR and the one for the interior of The Waterfront, beside the exterior panorama too. In all of these, and despite the fact that it was easy to clone the nadir image, I've decided to use the classic method of putting a label at the nadir point to identify the panorama and work as a "watermark" of some sort.

Singles

Meanwhile, along with the panoramas, I'm doing more single shots in between. Even though people now started to look at me for panoramas and related fields (here at least), single shots, nevertheless, are equally important. The problem, or should I say the dilemma, I'm in is: am I just good because I do panoramas? Things in the group somehow agree with this statement, specially with the upcoming events.

Uaigneas Lúcháireach
(joyous solitude)
Canon EF 50mm, f/16,
25^-1sec, ISO100.

I'm trying not to put all the egg in one basket as they say; whenever there is a sorting out for the group, I do pick up some old files along with the new ones from Ireland. However, chances are still low. I can't deny that there are some fatal mistakes in some images after all. Mistakes that just don't appear for the regular viewer (who enjoys colors and setting more than composition and clarity). However, there are images that did somewhat gain popularity (on the internet at least) but yet they were rejected, like Áilleacht Dhorcha which I've posted about last week.
 On the other hand there were images that I was glad to work with but then it turned out it's all a mistake. Well, I did like the color at least! Uaigneas Lúcháireach here is an example, but maybe I do have my excuse here at least. The boat was moving fast and I had to snap the picture fast before it's gone out of sight! The main problem here is the "guide line" which literally extends from the middle of the frame below to the extreme left side; such a wrong position. In addition to that, the leader said there are some distracting elements which makes it out-of-harmony. Well, my confidence is not shaken yet for this! At least I'm glad I didn't use polarizer here to clear the water which provided some reflection, and the whole atmosphere was mainly achieved by changing the White Balance without sorting to HDR technique. Maybe another version of the scene was better (despite the emptiness)...

Maidin Ghorma Aon (one blue morning)
Canon EF 50mm, f/16, 125^-1sec, ISO100

Probably not better here with Maidin Ghorma Aom, but the annoying "wrong" guide line here is removed (this shot is taken before they reach that point). Lot of work here was involved (mainly dodge and burn) to control light and shadows, and specifically approach the image to a silhouette style.

Amharc Éagsúil
(different view)
Canon EF 50mm, f/8,
20sec, ISO400.

On the other hand there were desperate trials to create something out of... desperate shots, to say the least. Images like Amharc Éagsúil for example, were simply test shots in the dark (dusk time), but since the quantity of shots taken this year (single shots that is) is at low, I had to gamble a bit with shots that were intended as tests, like this one. It would have been some nice shot if only there was a full or partial reflection on water, but all I got is clouds and the tip of the house. Thus, to make things interesting a bit, I flipped the image upside down just to make out some interest! Controlling the tones later was just as desperate trial of creating vividness without oversaturating the image. I'm really not against rejecting this image at all. But there was something strange too...

Roimh an Dorchadas (before the dark)
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/8, 12m, ISO100.

Roimh an Dorchadas, an image which was on the list for sorting out for future events. There were comments about over saturating the colors but I believe there had been a problem with color calibration in that laptop (wasn't color-calibrated). However, what I consider the strangest comment was "you have better than this already". I'm not sure what was meant by that or what picture in particular was meant here. Maybe Through My Window? But if this was the case, I do consider Roimh an Dorchadas better-looking...

Through My Window
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/8, 7m, ISO100.

Yes, the clouds line is apparently better in Through My Window, yet Roimh an Dorchadas has probably more interesting elements in the image itself. The problem with Roimh an Dorchadas is that the air was almost static and hence the clouds didn't move much.

Finale

The coffee table book cover

It is finally here! My own copy of Coffee Table book of the luxury edition (2014) of Trierenberg Circuit contest, which contains my own panorama, Ludendorffs Wirklichkeit. The process of retrieving this book was something out of one of those adventure games: tasks, questions, investigations. Still, the case is not over yet with the (bad) post services here, as there are copies of the catalogs that did not reach us yet (supposedly sent back in June). There is a probability that they were sent back to Austria, but no news from Austria still. Many issues were here as why this has happened, like not providing a track number for receivers to see where the parcel stopped, and no phone numbers provided on the parcel so at least we would expect a call from the post service, and yet the post service here, of course, wouldn't do a thing (probably even with a phone number provided).

Ludendorffs Wirklichkeit as
printed in the book,
in a small corner.

I didn't go through the book yet but I do believe there is a lot to learn from other contestants' photos in the field of architecture and landscape photography. Yet, I can't hold my disappointment here. Let aside the fact that my "large" panorama was printed in a small corner (and the colors aren't as vivid as on monitor), the book itself is a demonstration of clear bias for specific "items". I'm not saying photos aren't great, but a quick look through the book made it clear that if you are a portrait photographer, and specifically into nude photography, your chances are dim. Sorry, but it somewhat feels like, and sorry for the wording here - like checking a brothel's catalog. I know what I will get for such a comment (retard, old-fashioned, know-nothing-about-art, ...etc). But seriously, I can't help it. Doesn't seem that you make a woman just a toy of cosmetics in such field of photography? Well, to me it does. On the other hand, other fields deserve some attention more than it is already.

Anyway, far from the book, I'm trying to cope with the busy schedule I'm getting with my group, as we have some activities going on. Majorly Al-Thani contest is a major concern, and despite the ideas for sending prints, but seems it is not a plausible idea by now. The contest ends on November 17^th (my brother's birthday as well!), and we barely have time to submit the images online. On the other hand there is even a more urgent matter, concerning some expo here for which the group was personally asked to join in. I'm not sure what kind of expo is this, but the leader is also relying on my panoramas, and gave my number to one of the organizers to discuss the matter (still waiting for that call). Also, months from now, there will be some preparations for Mawahb expo (in which the group will be enrolled for a 4^th time). I might get into it if I don't get the burden of organizing the booth or the prints; my time right now doesn't really allow for that!

In the meantime, I'm keeping my thoughts busy as much as possible, but this is not a good thing either. When my thought is active, my consumption (specifically for coffee) is also active. Despite all this activity, there remains something empty deep within. I can't deny the fact that I do feel like being lost; someone who doesn't belong to where he was planted. But I'm keeping on going, in a tunnel that I just can't realize where does it lead, or ends...

Bóthar na Scáthanna
(road of the shadows)

i dTús (In the beginning)…

Well, I'll try to wrap up this quick. This is my first blog post after coming back from Ireland and so much to be done still to get back to my normal rhythm. I still have problems with sleeping pattern - well, I always do, but this time it is far more an upset pattern. I have some chores planned which must be done in the morning time, and because of that I'm kind of paralyzed and unable to do them; because I prefer to sleep.

In the meantime, I've been working with a slow pace through some of the images and panoramas. For the time being, I'm doing just flat versions of those panoramas, and later I will twist them around and make QTVRs out of them too. I'm now living a dilemma too, as I've downloaded some games that I need to play as soon as possible, before heading back to work in November! On the other hand, I do need to work on the photos I've taken in Ireland. Many things to do to spend the rest of the vacation with, but unfortunately my body is not helping.

Work Arbeit Obair

I'm preparing now to send a group of images from my trip already through email, as I usually do. However, these images were done during my stay in Ireland and most of them were posted here in this blog, in posts I've written during my stay. Most of them are in B&W as well. I do need some time now to organize the email and send it over.
Meanwhile, I've been working randomly somewhat with the new photos, and depending solely on strikes of inspiration. Taking a photo on location, even in a place like the Irish countryside, is not the epitome of inspiration still. For me at least. A lot of inspiration and work is to be done later in processing.

Áit an Leipreacháin (Place of the Leprechaun) - IR
Canon EF 15mm fisheye, f/8, 3.3min, ISO400.

Cosán na Síoga
(The Fairies' Path)
Canon EF 15mm, f/8,
6min, ISO500.

Here we have an example in the image above. Áit an Leipreacháin is an infrared shot taken in the gardens of Ashford castle in Cong, Co. Mayo. What was really inspirational to me is the composition and the geometry of the path, but it takes another dimension in processing, specially that it is an infrared shot, which makes the image float; i.e. no right or wrong about how colors are perceived. This fact, encouraged me to add my own touch further outside the environment of the RAW file, by adding some glamor and motion blur to have the image resemble what I presume as "mystical". With this, I can state that inspiration is not just one instance. One thing can attract you on location, but the completion of the story is when you edit it yourself (i.e. develop the negative). Yes, I know this approach might be quite a contradiction to the purists' views, but this is how my mind work; it is a split mind.

Sunken
Canon EF 50mm, f/9,
25^-1sec. ISO200.

In the case of infrared shots things might be afloat because of the nature of the shot itself, as infrared is no "real color" after all and sometimes you get the freedom of twisting the tones to your liking. In regular shots, on the other hand, the attack would be even fiercer and the opposition is stronger with any editing you might have to do (by purists that is). In images like Sunken, thanks to be given first to the polarizer here which made it possible to eliminate the top two tires (tyres). This image was shot in brackets to merge as HDR. However, one single exposure was enough to get most of the details out of it (remember to work in ProPhoto to get the maximal limits from the histogram). With this, there was something missing. Contrast. But I've increased contrast already, and nothing was interesting about the image still. What I admired on location was the composition (talk about abstract and contemplative approach), but this is not helping here with a dull image and apparently converting to B&W was not a choice. The way to do this was to increase the saturation instead and create a contrast of colors and not tones. The colors were there, they just needed a push in saturation. The result was a contrast between two complimentary colors: blue and yellow.
There are a lot of images done so far, and each one has a story of that sort. That's why my progress is slow for the time being; because I do talk to myself when processing each image.

As for panoramas, I've done a number of them and all in flat format so far. Later, I'd be doing the rest of the tricks on them and the QTVRs. The nadir point for some of these panoramas were easy to fix, but I did prefer cutting them out along with the tripod head in order to fix my own label later when I do the QTVRs. This would be better to show information about the scene for the viewer, I believe.

One of the best so far, in my opinion that is, is the panorama taken from the front of Kylemore Abbey (on October 8^th). It had some problems, but the centralization of the configuration on location paid well. And despite the fact that people were filling the place, I didn't have much problems in aligning the images, fixing vertical lines (by adjusting the pitch value in PTGui), and keeping the panorama tidy without any trace for any humanoids!

Mainistir na Coille Móire (Kylmore Abbey)

There was a minor fix to be done though, which is my shadow in the panorama. It was a simple cloning process and could have been done in the origin slide before stitching; but I was so much excited about this panorama specifically that I've decided to stitch first! I think a planet projection for this panorama specifically would be a great render!

The Waterfront (IR)

One of the painstaking processes with these panoramas is finding the control point specially in a panorama that combines outdoors, and infrared. Because infrared filters with uncoverted cameras (i.e. adjusted for IR reception) make the exposures pretty long even in a sunny day. The result is a blank sky almost even if it was a cloudy day. For this reason and after days of trying out my luck with The Waterfront (IR) I had to neglect the idea of adding the top and bottom rows of this panorama and get satisfaction with only the basic mid row. Story did not end at this actually, as some stitching errors remained and, later, much work was needed in Photoshop to add contrast with dodge and burn. It would be a shame to leave this panorama without any work; I've spent around one hour or more under the rain working on it on location! However, the weirdest of panoramas is still to come...

An Taobh Istigh an Waterfront
(Inside the Waterfront)

The weirdest of problems occurred with a panorama taken inside the Waterfront. It was apparent from the beginning that I surely need a model for control points (made from JPG files) in order to apply it to the HDR slides and make HDR panorama. However, to my surprise, the JPG panorama itself was a mess and the computer could not stitch it properly. It was one meatloaf of images! After some work on analyzing the mistakes (and using the "mask" option for the first time for me), it appears that the patterned carpet had a great say in this mess, where the computer merged 2 far and unrelated images on the basis of the pattern in the carpet!
Things began to become easier when I used the "crop" tool in PTGui itself to restrict the generation of control points on the mid zone of each image. In the final result there was still some work to be done to correct some broken lines, but this is a daily soup by now!

I'm now in a dilemma and thinking which of these panoramas I must print and send as a gift to my host, Mary Welsh. Probably I shouldn't decide by now until I work on all panoramas from the Waterfront.

Finale

Medieval Etiquette

Now, my sole burden and work in real life is to get back to the humdrum of the daily life in Kuwait, with all its nerves burning. When I go out in a vacation like this and come back, it usually feels lonelier deep inside, and estranged somewhat - like I see the things for the first time; needless to say the mood swings that hit with every encountered problem. Probably that's why I do feel Ireland to be a second home? One thing I do miss from here is the food actually! Not say the food is bad there, but I can't eat meat outside. Anyway for the reasons mentioned before, as soon as I arrived, I did deliberately drive into some jams trying to get my engine greased and ready to work. This is beside my chores.
Probably you've noticed that I'm using Irish to entitle my images this time (which is a practice I've been following for some time). This actually awakened in me the love for the Irish language (Gaeilge) again, after stopping teaching myself for years. Now, things are easier I presume; the language is wide spread and many people know about it and the resources are available. Probably I should give it a try once more.
Wish I can do the same with matters of the heart though…

The Ardeaglais...

Been a day or two not being able to work properly on my photos because of some sickness. I shouldn't have eaten that fatty dish. I had a hard time breathing and had to take some laxatives just to get some relief to my stomach. Because of that, my plans for Failaka were delayed even more, and probably, I won't be able to go there now. I don't like to take off at 9:00 AM in the morning and get back by 4:00 PM or so, and this is how it is or even later than this time in the coming few days, until the end of October.
Been struck somehow with some mis-calculations that I've made previously for my vacation. Not that much of a difference but however, I'm losing one day here. Instead of going back to work by November 1st, I would have to be there on 31st of October. I'm still slow and need some grease to be in mood of my work place again, but looking on the bright side, I got some books that I can read. In fact, I must. It is the only time I can read freely in. The question remains then, when shall I work with my other projects? The Ayvarith webpage, and what about writing some new poems? Writing is now sort of an important part of my life and I don't want to neglect it out of sudden, even if there is no concrete inspiration leading to it.

Although I've been working partially on the panorama taken for the Lounge room, but I've stopped working on this one for some time and decided to move on to a different one completely, and in fact, one of the earliest panoramas taken when I visited Cashel; The Ardeaglais (Chapel) of Cashel Rock.

The main yard of the chapel.

Just a little explanation of the word Ardeaglais, which I use solely and specifically for this chapel. Ardeaglais is just the Gaelic for "Chapel" and it is made of mainly 2 words: ard (high, great) + eaglais (church). I learned this word when I visited Cashel Rock, and since then I've been calling this place Ardeaglais.

This panorama was taken with a wave of tourists roaming around the place. Fortunately, when combining the slides into HDR images, there is an option within Photomatix to compensate for movement in the background or foreground, and hence, lot of these movements were eliminated and only few artifacts remained, which were cleaned by simple cloning (beside the nadir of course). 

I believe the main beauty of the place is in the geometry, and that made me expand my view for such a location. I've always believed that the Little Planet projection (also called Stereo projection) is more suitable for outside panoramas rather than for panoramas taken in the inside. I did that though already for panoramas taken for the main hall at my home (and that was long time ago before I get my Manfrotto VR-head), and also once for one of our labs at work, but I can't really say I'm quite satisfied about those.

Little Planet projection for our main hall at home. The black hole is unfixed nadir point.

Gamma Spectrometry Lab in CRER, my work place.

But I have to say now, that the most amazing thing about such projection is to amaze people and keep them asking questions on how did I take such an angle. It was not until I made the Little Planet for Ardeaglais, that I've discovered that for a place with a unique geometry can produce such a beautiful pattern, pleasing for the eyes, that details are not even important anymore. At least to me I have to say.

Little Planet projection for the Ardeaglais.

Of course, beside every spherical (full) panoramas, there must be a QTVR to end my work with. The QTVR here is made on 3 versions of the original. One was done with a full size panorama (original size) which was 50MP in resolution. The file was around 23MB in size and good looking, but of course not practical when it comes to the web of course. The other 2 versions were 25% of the real size with around 2MB, and 12.5% which was around 300kb in size. Of course the latest was ideal for web purposes, which I'm putting here. I've been using lesser JPG quality to reduce the file size significantly.

I finished these over night, and literally speaking, the little planet panorama took more than 6 hours to be stitched. I noticed that Little Planet panoramas tend to take longer times than regular spherical-flat ones. I don't know what is my next stop now, but I think I will move on in order with respect to the dates of the shots. While working now and then, I think from time to time if there is a possibility to achieve some black and white images, but maybe I will use this option when I exhaust myself with colors. I didn't do much single images so far though, but that's fair enough, bearing in mind that I just got back from Ireland 6 days ago. I feel so damn dizzy right now that I'm just picturing my bed in front of me on the monitor!

On the other hand so far, I've been waiting for some delivery. I've ordered a colorimeter, which I can use to calibrate my monitor. I've read somewhere, or maybe just misread that, that I can upgrade this hardware piece into a spectrophotometer, or in other words, into something which I can use to make profiles for my own prints from my own printer. If this is true then I did get a good bargain here; Two actions into one purchase. Just waiting for the usual delay in DHL for now...