Sonnenaktivität

Here we are; a new year. I won't be talking about resolutions here as, in fact, the new year thing is not widely separated and the concept of New Year's resolutions is just something weird for most of the people here - needless to say that we grow up without really considering it something special that a solar year passed and a new one began.
I can't say my beginnings of this year were good, but I really couldn't care lesser about my bad luck, or the troublesome conflicts with other people around me, specifically at work. This, by now, became like a daily dish for me.
One of my great sorrows for the past week is that I wasn't able to go out at night during the long "weekend" which consisted of 4 days and shoot at night. Mainly because not much scenes were available, and some of the locations that I've used to visit for some solitude and silences, were bugged by annoying people and their trash. Luckily, I did some of my homework the week before and did shoot something at night.

Blaue Nacht

From the early beginning of that night, it was a helpless endeavor trying to find out something to do and not to sleep that early in a such winter night. My first pick was a location that I used to visit years back, and specifically at such time of the year (and even did a panorama there deep in low tide time). This time, however, the situation had changed. People (specifically the annoying type) were still roaming the place. I tried my best to stay away from the rest and do my own business.

Ausstrahl
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/11, HDR.

I have to say that the main reason for visiting old location is some inspiring kick that got to me when I viewed some old images (specially those I've made into 3D anaglyph images) of a broken shade on the beach. Back then, I didn't have the fisheye lenses that I do have now, specially the Rokinon 8mm. Thus, I've decided to re-discover the area and this shade specifically with my Rokinon because, simply, the geometrical patterns were inspiring as they are.
As I settled down in the place, over the soft sand, I was faced with two main problems: a) setting up the tripod on a soft ground, and b) the flare from the harsh lights of the restaurant at my back. In the final image, Ausstrahl you can still see some traces of the flare even after the crop. One of the problems with fisheye lenses like Rokinon, with a large field of view, it is the hardship to use a flag to block other light sources that cause the flare; simply because there is a big chance that the flag would get into the frame, and when moved out of the frame it does not technically block anything!
On the soft sands it took me some time to settle and to take some test shots with ISO12800 to judge my composition. I've decided then to go with long exposure brackets; something that became a favorite activity at night exposures. Can't remember the exact timing but it ranged from about 8 minutes down to around 30 seconds. Almost at the end of the exposures, some guy was peeking from the top of the concrete wall behind me and started to make comments. His comments weren't bad or vulgar, but they were simply nosy. Thus, when I felt the situation being like that, I didn't stay longer and picked my stuff and left the place.

Altar
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/8, 4m, ISO100.

Leaving the first location, I still had the urge to work a bit more, thus I've visited Soog Sharg dock place where I made some shots several times previously. This time, it was relatively quite (as the time was nearing dawn by then). Even though I did take several shots with different times thinking of bracketing and merging into HDR when I finish, but at the end I only picked the first shot that took me 4 minutes. The rest was a play in the RAW editor (DxO in this case) to fix the shadows and highlights as much as possible, along with the distortion but not to the extreme flattened look. That night, however, wasn't the last activity for me in 2013!

Pajero

As I've mentioned before, I've got a new car just before the end of 2013. A Pajero. I really like driving it and it was a great help with the rains that hammered over Kuwait this week. I'm grateful.

Pajero 2014

The day I picked to shoot my new car was cloudy and prior to some light rains back then, but with HDR rendering I was able to show details in the clouds above. For such an elevated car, it was hard to pick up a proper angle to shoot form a lower level, unlike my previous car, Seat.
I've taken several shots as well from various angles. However, no need to put them here as they are just regular ones. The main interest for me now is to do a panorama from inside like I did with Seat. I've managed to check the rear and I've almost settled with my mental process on how to setup the gear inside - but I do need a proper place to work (for some long time) and it should have proper light level. Let's not forget that I must wash the car prior to my work!
There is one old panorama taken from inside of Seat, which I've done in the parking lot of my work place, but now with my sickness of this place, I've neglected the idea of heading there and shoot a panorama.

Sonne

In the past 2 weeks I've picked up a new hobby. Shooting at the sun. Well, it can be classified as astrophotography, but the case with me is that I'm not completely within the reach of astrophotography; but my main interest is the sun, and the moon of course.
This main interest was sparked (again) in fact when I was surfing B&H website to find what was new for me back then, the mirror lenses. With some little research and study, it seems that those lenses are in fact just small telescopes to be attached to the camera (with the help of some adapters too). This even sparked in me the desire to, maybe one day, get my own telescope and try some astrophotography - but we would need REAL good locations for such hobby, and the urban areas where I live and roam are, of course, not suitable for such task.

Sonne I
Red arrows point to noise bits from the system itself.
Blue arrows point to features on the sun itself.

My first trial to shoot at the sun was with my relatively-new Sigma 70-300mm. As I used to do with the moon, with my Tamron back then, I've attached two x2 teleconverters to raise the focal length to 1200mm. Using the two teleconverters can be awkward in normal conditions because the light quality becomes lower, but with the sun, we would still need some filters to block the harsh light, and here comes the welding glass (green) to do the role.
The welding glass provides around 11.7 stops which was enough to look at the sun thru the LiveView LCD at the back. They say, usually, if it is safe for your eyes, then it is safe for your camera when it comes to shooting at the sun, and this is what I've done in fact. Focusing, however, was a bit troublesome; typical for such a long focal length and a shaky system. I think I do need a collar to hold the lenses to the tripod like how it is done with typical large telephoto lenses.

Sonne II

I did another trial few days later but this time the harsh spots from the system itself did vanish, and I'm not sure why! Maybe it has something to do with the focus itself. When focusing at a subject like this I usually zoom the LiveView to the edge of the sun disk and try to make it out as sharp as possible visually (which is not always a good solution). With two teleconverters (and f-number exceeding f/2.8 in multitudes!), the AF function is simply idle. Just to note here that the image were corrected for colors later of course. In Sonne II, the spots (or flare?) are more obvious than in Sonne I. The best has yet to come though...

Sonne III

My third trial with the sun was done differently. I've used the IR filter instead of the welding glass. The thing about the IR filter is that I can't technically measure the number of stops it reduces, because mainly it is intended to block visible spectrum and pass the IR band of the spectrum - this is the main goal for producing it, and using it! Thus, with this uncertainty in my mind, I kept some ND filters at hand just in case I do need to reduce the light even further. Just to notice, my IR filter thread is 58mm and my Sigma's thread is 62mm, thus I had to use a step-down adapter between the two which causes a bit of vignetting at the edges, but here it's not really important.

Sonne III
Original IR shot.

The light level, however, was easily controlled then by the shutter speed and the aperture (which was kept at maximum) and reducing the ISO too (back to 100!). All that was done as I was watching the LiveView. Not so surprising, focusing using the IR filter was much easier and I could achieve a relatively sharper edge focus. This is understandable since the welding glass is bulky and it technically hangs in front of the lens, while is IR filter is screwed in. What I'm not sure of though, does the IR radiation has any part in any of that? Meaning, does the IR radiation come into focus and NOT the harsh disk of the sun itself? Logic says that I've been focusing with the help of the IR band since I'm using an IR filter - but who knows! However, with Sonne III I was even luckier to find several spots at the center of the sun. Adding to that, the original IR shot did have some "halo" around the disk, unlike the dull image done with the welding glass. Seems to me that it is all a good practice for now before, one day, getting my hand on a mirror lens or even a telescope.

The f-Problem

One of the problems that accompany using a teleconverter is the fact that not all information might be recorded in the EXIF of the image file, or even communicated with the camera itself. In my case, my Bower x2 teleconverter would communicate such information, but the Vivitar x2 teleconverter does not communicate any of such information with the camera. Thus, the camera would show f/22 for example, but in reality the f-number is supposedly larger than f/22; after all, the f-number is a ratio.

When shooting at the sun with my two x2 teleconverters, the recorded f-number was f/64. I thought, if someone would try to track the information of the shot to try and do something similar, the consequences might be not "pleasant". Also, I have to think about the future use if I want to mention such information with my images, like in this blog for example, and definitely such information would be misleading. All in all, there must be some accuracy in the information represented with the images. Sigma's maximum f-number is f/22, and it is recorded as f/64 when using the two x2 teleconverter, and this value comes from the Bower teleconverter alone.

Hitting mathematics, let's see what does that mean. That is, having f/64 with two x2 teleconverters and the lens zoomed to 300mm. First of all, let's get the diameter of the aperture here without teleconverters:

N=f/D;

Where N is the f-number, f is the focal length, and D is the diameter. Simple algebra, and we get the equation of the diameter as:

D=f/N;

Thus, in normal conditions with 300mm focal length and maximum f-number of f/22 (as in the Sigma 70-300mm lens), the diameter should be: 300/22 = 13.636mm. 

Now, the teleconverters are just magnifiers and do not have any aperture control. In return, then, the diameter doesn't change with the addition of teleconverters, but the focal length does. With two x2 converters, the focal length is theoretically expanded to 1200mm! (300 x2 x2). Now, if we supposed that the f-number is indeed f/64, and the diameter of the aperture is not changed, what would the focal length be in that case? Again, simple algebra would give the equation as: f=ND. Meaning, the focal length is: 64x13.636 =872.727mm. A wrong answer of course.

Using the above equations again to find the correct f-number, it would be: 1200/13.636 = 88. It is worthy to note that in the specs of such teleconverters, it is mentioned already that they double the f-number, but the problem here lies a bit in the mathematics involved, because f-numbers are not based on the rule of stops of 2ⁿ, but rather on 2^n/2. I find the method of finding the diameter is more "direct" if I can call it so!

This item of info, though simple, I believe it would play some role in critical times when calculating the required exposure becomes essential and finding the correct f-number would be a must at such times, along with other uses.

Finale

Gaston Bachelard
The Aesthetics of The Image
Ghada Al-Imam, PhD.

Husain Ali, PhD.
The Philosophy of Art
A New Vision

My arsenal of books is about to finish, but that's going slowly for the time being. Two interesting books (somewhat) are on the list for now. The first is a discussion of Gaston Bachelard's (1884-1962) philosophy. In fact, despite the title of the book, I thought it would be a direct impact on the matter of the arts, but it turned out to be a highly deep and sophisticated discussion for various themes, and generally for the relation between science and art. I had to stop when I reached around quarter of the book or even lesser than that because, simply, I could not comprehend a single word from the text. Thus, I've just decided to put it aside for later and start reading the second book on the list. The second book, The Philosophy of Art, is more clear in its aspects about art and the philosophy related to it. I've just began reading it though and I need to see what comes next; at least the talk is clearer and I'm able to follow the ideas so far. I'm not expected though some tips about how to criticize a work of art or the likeness of that, but at least I might develop my own sense and evaluation of art in order to see future work with a philosophical eye, and not simply with the visual attraction.

Aside from the cultural venue, I've been suffering a lot of downs with no ups. Mom's condition is not getting any better (though stable), and in my work place things are getting on my nerves more and more. In fact, my work right now is the last thing I do care about. The mediocre, if not poor, treatment from the administrative people in my work place makes me question the value of my dignity and respect relative to those people. It's not the first time to think of seriously leaving that work place and be on my own doing my own job and the things I like - but it is better to be with moonlighting; that is working with a stable job and a side job until the situation becomes concrete on the side job. I didn't start this yet even and makes me wonder what to do next. What angers me the most is to realize that I've spent 6 years in this college to get a scientific degree, to be controlled then by a bunch of monkeys that barely know how to do algebra and simply got no considerations for our simplest rights.

The situation is vague. I'm simply living each day to its extent and trying hard not to think of tomorrow. It's hard to neglect that because of the hammered mind, an expectation for a new trouble arises with every morning I turn my opened for the daylight. My heart is tired.

Şaşırmış...

I can't help but say, it is one weird week that has just passed me by. Despite the fact that I've stopped my fasting, in hope to continue by the beginning of the month of Sha`ban, yet I did feel tired excessively with some weak body and dryness most of time - talk about acting as a sponge.
On the other hand I was able to work with my camera just a little bit. I've made up ideas already from brainstorming my mind with the help of some of the websites I've mentioned in the previous blog post, but not all of these ideas are technically available for the time being, or maybe too much time consuming with my hectic schedule in the meantime. Mom is still taking much of my week, and despite some previous talk from the doctors that the dialysis time might be reduced in the near future, I can't see any of that happening soon. With this load, some problems from home are added. They usually call them Domestic Problems but in my case I'd rather call them a Jungle Survival game by keeping my dignity in this house. I've already started picking Mom to and from the dialysis center (before that I used to pick her from there only) because Mom is not happy to go with my sister in the morning in the traffic jam rush. Thus, she decided to go with me from now on in very early hours in the morning to avoid the high blood pressure that my sister causes her on the way to there.

Die geltanische Sprache

I hope you don't mind the German subtitle for this topic here. I'm not a German speaker myself but probably this is how I would write the adjective geltanische if I was German!
However, during this week I didn't put much thoughts on paper with Geltani, but mostly it was some work of thoughts in the mind and having mental notes about some drawings of the characters. In the meantime I'm having problems assigning phonic values for some of the characters. I didn't go through the syllabary system all over again as I've promised myself I would do this week. The major change in the syllabary system is about some characters' drawings and not the phonic values given already.
The language do sound, at the current time, a mix of an Arabic base with an English flavor in terms of general aspects; mainly when it comes to the feminine and masculine cases. However, I do have to work on the phonic values for lot of the combination of characters together and the situation is even more critical when it comes to diphthongs, that is the combinations of 2 vowels, or we might even face cases of more than two!
I'm trying to systemize the combinations of phonetics but I'm not sure yet that this would work. The only thing that would prove the usefulness of such approach is the excessive trial and error, with a pen and paper!

Silhouette

In the past few weeks I was trying hard to take a silhouette shot of my brothers depicting the evening life in a typical weekend here. Yet, despite its simplicity, I had to abandon the idea mainly for the cooperative attitude from the family members (and please note the sarcasm here) and then the unavailability of some suitable background or backdrop to represent the idea of an evening gathering. Majorly, I was trying to use some features in the guests room but this was a bad idea because it did cast a shadow and that complicates the matter further raising the necessity of using two speedlites (or even more) rather than one as I was planning. With more speedlites, then you'd need more light modifiers, and in my case, I don't have plenty of those.

Silhouetted Mother I
Canon EF 50mm, f/11, 250^-1sec, ISO200.

Thus, just to keep up with the idea, I've decided to use Mom as a model! Yes, she's more flexible and the idea is simple enough and doesn't need much acting like I had in my mind when I was planning the silhouette shots with my brothers. It is just a profile or an outline of the head. To do this, I've simply placed Mom in front of a green curtain that's already there, and of course I had to use a green gel on my 580EX II speedlite, otherwise the color would get messed up; adding to that a reflector on the speedlite to spread the light to a larger area with a soft approach.

Silhouetted Mother II
Canon EF 50mm, f/18, 250^-1sec, ISO200.

I've taken here two shots (close up and further away) just in case (and I was thinking somehow in a marketing venue as such images can fit into the stock sites for specific topics). Communicating with my speedlite, however, had to be done remotely without a cable, which means I'm stuck with the sync speed (250^-1

sec). The speed was fine however as the lights in the room were not too strong and not so demanding to be killed out. The only change between the several shots was the aperture and this is how I controlled the intensity of the speedlite reflecting off the curtain. I don't quite remember why I've fixed the ISO to 200, but probably I've forgot it like that from the previous session! The noise level after all is not quite dramatic and was easy to smooth out, specially with such style of images not having so many colors.

Freeze Me!

Few days later after doing the silhouette shots of Mom, I headed to do another shot that I've been thinking of for some time and trust me if I say, I had to force myself and my mood to do so! The sole subject of this experiment was a glass vase brought to me as part of a bouquet by the group when Mom was still in the hospital back in March.

Pouring Down
Tamron 70-300mm @92mm,
f/16, 5000^-1sec,
ISO1000.

I have to say that the vase is really seductive for many experiment, but the preparations to do such experiments is really exhaustive to myself, specially when preparing the props. The fact that my older sister wanted this vase too, made me do something, anything, just before the vase is taken away!
I've placed the vase on a table which has a glass surface in the center and placed my 430EXII speedlite below the glass. In typical situation I would actually place the speedlite light on the sides but I just wanted to do this experiment here, specially with the hardships involved because light is refracted through the glass table before reaching the subject. I've placed a white screen as a backdrop and in the beginning I've placed 2 black boards on the side (to emphasize the edges of the glass in a bright scene), but then however I've realized they are not necessary.
If you see the info in Pouring Down, you can see that I've used a telephoto lens (Tamron) while the shutter speed is 5000^-1sec; quite faster than the sync speed. Thus, a cable is required to control the speedlite but with a telephoto lens, I need some distance away from the vase. In this case, I've used the Vello cable I have (which extends only 2 meters, hardly) and connected it to the 580EXII to control the 430EXII and enable me to use high shutter speeds above the sync speed. This is in case you were wondering why I did use 430EXII under the table in the first place and not the 580EXII. In the beginning, the master speedlite (580EXII) was turned off and it was set to control the 430EXII only, but then I've decided to turn it out and help me with the front little bit. It did make a little enhancement though and probably not a big deal, but I've kept it on.

There were many shots to test the light first and settle down with a certain type of lighting. I've made some light patterns because of the refraction that would look nice otherwise, except that I needed a plain background in this situation. After all is set, I added some dishes soap inside (you would think it's beer!) and set up the motion trigger. This is my first time to use the motion trigger. I have to say here that it is bulky and not quite the easy-to-handle thing. The motion sensor (with a long cable from the trigger body to the vase) was not easy to be placed to track the motion of water that I was going to pour down. How ironic it was when it triggers my body movement when I was going to the vase, but as I move my hand to pour down the water into the vase the trigger, sometimes, wouldn't respond. After some trial and error, I've finally made something right.

One of the failed trials at 1000^-1sec.
Notice the movement blur.
Click to enlarge.

You might think about the high ISO here? Well, as I was trying to pour water down I did capture some amazing water texture and movement, but unfortunately, most of them were blurry. I've realized then that 1000^-1sec shutter speed was not enough, and/or the depth of field is not deep enough. For this reason, I've poured down the water out of the vase (which was full after some trials) and filled it again with soap, and then worked again on fixing the light and this time with 2500^-1sec shutter speed, but I've changed my mind quickly and made it 5000^-1sec to ensure the freeze in motion. If I have more speedlites, I might as well have gone further than that speed! However, because of this change in aperture and shutter speed, I've realized that I must raise the ISO as well. The subject is here is not complicated and I thought that cleaning the noise in post-processing won't be such a hard task to do (specially that the experiment took a place in a cold environment and excessive chromatic sensor noise is unlikely).

Thoughts

After my experiment with the glass vase in Pouring Down, I think I've realized why I used to run away from using flashes or studio equipments in general and loved the free life of an architecture photographer, along side with doing abstracts and landscapes. Setting up a specific set, be it a tabletop or some studio is really an exhaustive process for me and by the time I sit behind the camera I think most of my power is gone already. More over, the fact that in architecture or landscape I deal usually with a light that is already there and all I have to do is control how it looks to my camera - this is quite easily done compared to the completely controlled environments of tabletop photography or studios in general where you have to imagine everything almost and do a lot of test shots before doing the actual work.
There is probably another problem that I have to put up with, but this time it is all inside my mind. This problem revolves around the processes in my mind and how my mind works in general when it comes to space orientation and organization. I'm not sure if this is a serious problem or not, or if it is somehow linked to a psychological problems as well or not, but I do have hard time setting up some configuration from scratch without having any clue about where to begin. Suppose you provide me with an empty room and some pieces of furniture and just ask me to arrange it for you freely - this is something that would be so hard to do from my side because I, simply, can't recognize what freely means in this context. I have to start up with something to build on my hypothesis of the space and how it should be arranged; say for example, how the sun rays get into the room from the window, if there is any, and how I would imagine some furniture pieces against such rays and then try to imagine a specific purpose or relation between the sun rays and the furniture pieces, and then and only then, my mind would start to arrange the objects.
Now, I reflect on such thoughts and how my processing goes with my photography projects and workflow. It seems it is pretty much the same, specially when it comes to tabletop and studio environments. I just can't make up my mind out of a free point in the space. Working with architecture is much easier when all I have to do is frame a previously configured set rather than do the whole thing by myself!

Finale

Source: Amazon

I'm still on reading my Lens Design book which far way too complicated than I thought and it is probably not so practical if I keep reading this without a practical trials or at least some visual aids to help me understand the mathematical formulations inside the book which describe many aspects about the lens (mainly the errors and aberrations aspects).
In the meantime, I've been active for a while on Instagram with all its hassle, but I'm lurking trying to catch photos of people (ahem, females) to edit. I didn't do such activities in a really long time now. Some people might thing that photoshopping or editing the photos is some kind of cheating, specially when it involves fixes. Well, I deal with art. Not all my edits are fixes in fact. Lot of them are simply artistic retouch and somehow a sway from reality at times. I feel the need to do such edits just because it endows my eyes with some beauty that I've been missing for a long time around me. One of the problems though in editing such images is that most of them are taken with phone camera (naturally) and the nature of the color space and the noise level is very questionable and vary significantly. I've seen great faces and great poses, with great facial features (mainly the eyes, I'm fond of those) but unfortunately, the low quality disturbs most of those, second comes the background or the nature of the light in the scene.
There are some ideas of ordering some new toys, but not sure what they will be exactly, but I'm still consulting my budget about this matter. Probably more details in next week's post, hopefully!

Strangely, I've been lately moved around following some foreign music, from Greek, to Uyghur, to Turkish and it keeps on rolling! I think I'm compensating for my inability to have a vacation and travel by listening to foreign music and dream; daydream, that is. Just like how it was in the old days when I was a kid, when my family used to visit only specific places, while I kept dreaming of the big world and couldn't see some of it until I reached 29 years old.
I'm living day to day, without really knowing what will happen the next day or what are my plans. Pressing hard to work my mind on photography projects yet the efforts are humble so far. Makes me ask myself more often, do people still got portions of their feelings, and does anyone out there who would really feel what burden I carry on my shoulders. Most likely, the answer is well-known and no need to state it. Einsamkeit ist ein Killer. Aber mit jemandem nicht versteht zu sein, das ist ein ewiger Folter.

Tatiana

 

The Dewing Dew...

Ideas, Ideas, Ideas. I'm running out of ideas I guess. However, my time is consumed gluttonously. All what I'm waiting for is to have to a break from my workshop to be able to organize my thoughts.
We had been working on some homework in this workshop and there had been some trips that I've felt obliged to go along with. Lately, we've been to the Scientific Center, again, and it wasn't my first time either to take photos from inside. Despite the chances of doing some photography in low light conditions, yet I've lost my appetite for it - needless to say that it was a busy time and visitors kept rushing in, and when we talk about visitors, we should mention as well, kids. They are blessed; because I didn't carry a machine gun back then. Anyway, I'll be back to this later.

One of the things that I'm suffering from is amnesia as it seems. As I've been preparing for one homework about long exposures to be done on the beach, I've forgot to wear my vest, in which I kept the remote and the calculator. Anyway, wasn't a big problem after all - the problem was to slide down the rocks and slipping down!

Canon EF-S 18-55mm @24mm, f/22, 30sec, ISO 100.

In the beginning, I was afraid that the waters won't splash against the rocks as it should be because the high tide time already passed 2 hours before the shoot. However, that wasn't a problem. Another problem occurred when a man and his kids settled down beside the rocks to take a dip into the sea; I was planning to take a long exposure with my Tamron 70-300mm as it gives larger f-number and it will help me for sure to increase the shutter time significantly - but now with this man in the path, I have to go closer to the rocks as I didn't want to give an impression that I'm snapping pictures of him! Isn't that annoying?

Canon EF-S 18-55mm @53mm
f/36, 30sec,
ISO 100

As I settled near the rocks and closer the water's transgression line (and after slipping off the rocks), I didn't know how to really begin doing the exposure. At night, you settle, fix a composition, check the histogram for a good distribution and from there you start the calculations and how much needed time.
Here the situation is supposedly easier but with the lack of a remote and a calculator, all what I did is try different compositions first - I tried to take a shot from above the rocks but the tripod could not be stabilized there. On the ground though, I've put on 2 3-stop ND filters and the time was significantly raised to 30 seconds, and I was able to focus (with the help of the live-view). I didn't think about it then but all what I needed was one more stop and make it one minute! Is it that important? I don't think so. The nature of the water movement is vivid and active, and probably even 10 seconds would do the job perfectly.
All shots were tinted (typical for Cokin ND filters) and I had to adjust the WB and Tint while RAW editing. The image above was sort of overexposed, while the one on the left was my teacher's favorite. There is a tiny problem with these two shots; a plastic bag was roaming the beach and I didn't notice till later.

Cotton Waves
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @38mm
f/22, 15sec, ISO 100.

As for the last shot, which took only 15 seconds, I didn't eliminate the tint completely and kept some purplish hue in the scene giving it some dreamy effect. Even though I like this one because it is clear and no plastic bag roaming! Yet, my teacher prefers the one above. I have to agree though that the previous shot was more vivid and active because I've zoomed in more and the action is visible clearly. I think also, that the elevation of the camera played a role here, where in the previous shot the camera were lower and closer to the ground, while in Cotton Waves shot it was higher, probably to my chest level.
Up to this level, I'm preparing to do some new experiment with long exposures which involves doing some sort of "double" exposures in one scene by applying ND filters to part of the image. This move, I presume, would divide the scene into 2 or more divisions and hence it would require an exposure calculation for each division and, at the end, the exposure value for each division must match as closely s possible. This is only my theory for now, but all should be clear in reality when I work it out on location. The location itself is another story that I have to think about.

Now back to the Scientific Center. As I've said before, It was hard to find out something new to my eye or to spark my imagination. Anyway, if we say that I was being paid for such a job of course I won't mind doing all of the cliché again and again!

The New Past
Rokinon 8mm fisheye
f/8, HDR [5], ISO 100

However, the imagination sparked as the sun was setting outside. This is the main difference between being inside in the aquarium, and outside in the hot weather while the sun is going down!
In The New Past shot, I've used the magical recipe for dawn or dusk: switching to Fluorescent WB. Despite the nice light but it was still so bright and the luminance range was extremely varied; a call for HDR. I've taken this shot in different angles and in different lenses and the only barrier for me to change my point of view was the fence circulating the old ship. However, it didn't matter to me as I'm pleased with the result after all, but the problem of the noise remains. I had to do some Photoshop magic to get rid of those hard crisp noise pixels that no plugin can remove.
Usually when we talk about sensor noise and how it does escalate under the effect of the heat, this noise is recognizable by its chromatic appearance or simply red hot dot in the image. This is not the case here and frequently, it is only a product of HDR merging, which makes me ask myself if there are ways to enhance my workflow with HDR rendering - More experimentation needed!

Historical Transition
Canon EF 15mm fisheye, f/8, HDR [5], ISO 100

Historical Transition was even more disastrous than The New Past. If you enlarge the image you can notice the blue line roaming the edges of the ship. I'm not sure why does that happen but most probably the culprit would be the chromatic aberration which gets exaggerated by the HDR rendering. I tried to reduce the effects by some effects yet it didn't work perfectly after all. The idea behind Historical Transition (and it was shot first), is to combine the modern buildings with an element from the past making a contrast between the old and new. Surprisingly though, some people didn't get the idea directly, not even from the title itself!

وطن النهار
or
Hiding Sun
Tamron 70-300mm @259mm, f/8, 125^-1sec, ISO 400

The Hiding Sun was one of the earliest shots done outside in fact, but I don't put much weight on it, and as you can see I didn't even watermark it. Taken with Tamron without a tripod and with manual focusing, it was indeed a struggle. Even though I did plan for HDR merging here yet a single RAW edit was enough to pin point my view, and I do predict a disaster if done in HDR. It was really hard to be convinced about this image, but I've taken it merely for the composition itself. Was I to take it again, I would definitely use another lens (probably Canon 100mm) and a tripod!
One last funny shot (taken before I get outside) that I have to mention here I guess...

Infinitarium II
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/8, 13^-1sec, ISO 800.

As you can see, Infinitarium II is a shot taken at ground level after a long journey inside the aquarium. In the beginning I've taken 2 shots standing up in portrait position by the same lens, but I've figured such angle of view is not interesting much. Luckily, I was carrying my calculator in my pocket just in case, so I've laid it flat on the ground and rested the lens on it. With the help of the timer (2 sec) I've managed to balance the camera gently with both hands and shoot.
What I like about this shot is the little sparkle in the lights caused by f/8 aperture. If I was to use a smaller aperture like f/16 or f/22, then the sparkle around the light sources would have been severer and probably, as in most cases, would cause a flare and ugly sparkles covering large portions of the image causing distractions.

Mortuus
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @44mm
f/5, 13^-1sec
ISO 500

Now Monday was the last day in Techniques (2) workshop, and I'm sort of relieved so I can have the afternoon time for myself and my preparations for the travel. However, there is one weird assignment left that to be submitted on Thursday, the day in which this post is to be posted! Our teacher asked us to take a photo of a glass (or a cup). As simple as that, and as weird as that! Up till this moment at which I'm typing this, the idea is roaming my mind still and I just don't know how to do it yet. In hope that I will find something soon. Beside this, we are waiting for some training on action shots and panning with, supposedly, the hockey team in here. Though I'm not much interested in action photography, however, it might be a chance to try out my speedlites IF I was allowed to.

If you are wondering about the image above, Mortuus, it is just a shot for a dead bush branches that caught my eyes before going out of home heading to my workshop. I liked how the light on the wall is reflected. Metering (in spot mode) was a bit hard but at a certain point I've started to reduce the shutter speed (faster) to avoid shake and give more saturated look. Unfortunately, I was in a hurry and I used my 18-55mm which doesn't give a shallower depth of field more than this. There is no philosophy behind it, but simply, a shot!

The Dewing Dew
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/2.8, 100^-1sec, ISO 800

Let's face it. I'm not a flower photography fan, and I don't have much of that romanticism in my life, nor do I feel it. Yet, this shot specifically taken from the Scientific Center was a bit inspiring. When I took it, I wasn't aiming at a specific idea - but simply to work out something because my mind was dull and no ideas were going through. At home, however, this image inspired me to write something after stopping for ages - The Dewing Dew.

Now, I'm going to post this (or schedule it to be posted) and turn around to work on some traveling issues and organize my life before traveling. The vibes are telling me that there are big changes ahead; good or bad, I don't know. I just know I have to do it. See you next Thursday...

Mente Turbata in Mosque Magnam...

What the hell was going on with me in the past two weeks is something I wouldn't understand, ever. Stress, fatigue, injuries and finally, personal issues; feels like being dead and alive in the same time. Ah well, what's the difference after all... wasn't it like that most of the time?
I feel like nothing is left for me now except of my camera. I guess I will put it beside me on bed and hug it instead of getting a teddy bear myself. I spent this week somehow trying to test and use my new toy, the 8mm Rokinon fisheye lens and trying to adapt it to my panorama workflow.
For the time being, I'm still not so sure that I will adapt this new lens for my workflow. It is a double-edged sword. In the same time that it lowers down the number of shots and effort (and time), but on the other hand, in the same time, it reduces the resolution drastically. Although my usual size for panoramas ranges between 8,000-10,000 pixels in width, but with Canon's 15mm fisheye lens you would have the choice to expand beyond up to 20,000 pixels in width, while with Rokinon's 8mm fisheye, you are limited to 13,000. The depth of field and the sharpness are still under the scope for more testing. Setting the VR-head with Rokinon's 8mm was also a struggle and it pronounced the tripod legs and the VR-head itself more often and makes it pronounced more; talk about hardships in removing them. I need to try more and see if I can get comfortable with this for real.

Test image with Rokinon's 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens. Mom didn't like to move so I blurred her!

I didn't care much about tone-mapping the HDR here. I just had the urge to play around. Not an image for the stocks after all. As you can see, such shot would require maybe 2 or 3 (and maybe more a bit) with Canon's 15mm fisheye lens, but here it's all taken with one shot. Well, 3 bracketed for HDR processing of course. The tripod was elevated to around 2 meters high.

My joy in the past week was with some shots taken here and there with my photography class. I had to work in a haste little bit to prepare the images for this post. It was so much of a headache to work on these photos specially now, on Wednesday, after a really sick long day.
Anyway, our class went first to Al-Babtain's Library for Arabic Poetry (Let's call it BLAP for now). On Tuesday however, and unexpectedly, I got a phone call almost one hour before I leave work saying that we have a session today with the class in The Grand Mosque; a great mosque in the capital and beside BLAP building. It was a real hassle, as my tools were at home because I thought we won't go to a second location after BLAP. It was an exhaustive day.

I. BLAP:

BLAP was an interesting place, not for its construction only, but also because it is the first time I hear of it. The interior design was nice but unfortunately I went there without my VR-head. The architecture in the place is generally modern-type, but maybe with bits (only tiny bits) of antique-like structures, like the pillars for example.

Columnae

The pillars here were outside and on the side of the main "yard" if I should say. It is a bit like an open corridor. This shot was my first in that session (and here you see the tone-mapped HDR, but the RAW is also good). To take this shot I've spent almost 5 to 10 minutes trying to adjust my tripod and the tripod head (Velbon panhead) to make the perfect center. However, seems after all it is still inclined a bit (or is it an illusion?). I've having some hard time with keeping things straight (specially when it comes to panorama making). At such moments it would be useful to have a tripod with central lock like I used to have before, but on the other hand you lose some flexibility after all. My current tripod is nice, but also can be light that you might knock it off and shake it before you put the camera. Talk about clumsy movements; welcome to the story of my life.
The occasion was also a good one to give my new Rokinon 8mm another trial. In fact, I'm less impressed for the time being in putting this lens into my panorama workflow, but nevertheless, it gives some really nice shots in singles. I have my own doubts about the claimed sharpness though; could it be I'm doing something wrong?

Reading Hall
Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens

One thing was for sure though; a simple tilt in the center means a severely tilted image as a whole. This is true with this fisheye lens. Although in this picture above, I've spent also around 5 minutes adjusting and leveling the tripod and the camera accordingly with the vertical straight line of the door, I've just found out when I got back home and after merging into HDR that the whole image was quite apparently tilted; it is mostly apparent in the sides, while the center was a little bit off. I'm not sure how to solve this problem further.
And there is that one shot that I "stole" from my teacher. He was taking it and I told him I can do the same, so he said go ahead! It's weird how I didn't remember such point: the most interesting views are those taken above or below us. It is a true statement, and was stated as well by George Barr in his book,Take Your Photography to The Next Level: From Inspiration to Image.

City of Mirrors II
or maybe I should call it Zenith.

It was taken in front of the entrance portal (or door, or whatever it is). This HDR version in fact doesn't differ much from the RAW version, except of maybe for adding more halos to the light bulbs. My teacher here fixed for me a problem with the tripod as well, which was not being able to point at 90 degrees up. The solution was simply to rotate the camera body itself (unscrewing the base little bit). Might be shaky situation, but it was the only solution I got. I tried hard to keep the space in the middle in the center of the shot.
In case you are wondering why it is City of Mirrors II, well, naturally there is a first one that I didn't mention here.

City of Mirror I

I won't go through all the details here with the tilt in the image as well; I guess you know it by now. However, I had to pick my location carefully in hope my reflection on the glass won't appear (and guess it didn't so far!). The glass translucent, making an interesting pattern from the inside and the outside mixing them together in a surreal look. Maybe this is one of the fewest things I like about the city life; architecture. There were some issues with the clarity of the image as well, but oh well, this is a typical problem with my 18-55mm EF-S lens. Now, thinking about it, could it be that I see things tilted because of some barrel effect? 18-55mm lens DO have a barrel distortion and I've tested it before.
There are other shots that I might keep for myself or add them here later on. But one day after this event, I got that surprising call for a session in the Grand Mosque; a perfect place for a panorama!

II. The Grand Mosque - Mosque Magnam:

Maybe I'm not that so-religious person, but surely the Grand Mosque here is a chance not to be missed. The whole thing was a hassle in the beginning, but rewarding later. Even my teacher was surprised when he got a phone call saying that we were granted a permission, as he said. It was a last moment phone call.
Anyway, because I went to work with no intention of photography work for the rest of the day, I had to sign for a short leave as soon as I got that phone call about the session, just to avoid the apex of the jam here. Went back home, prepared my tools, and then after a one-hour rest I headed to the capital with ALL my tools. What are all my tools?

• Backpack: containing my camera and all my lenses and filters (with the adapters of course), and also contains my little spiderpod.
• Tripod and panhead.
• Lateral extension arm.
• Manfrotto 303SPH VR-head.

For the time being, I don't want to talk about the weight of these things. It is not a pleasant memory! As I headed there, I was the first one to be there as usual, and remained there till others arrived and my teacher as well, and I, alone, waited for something around one hour in the outside.
As we went inside, the first thing to do was to do the hardest part: the panorama. There will be plenty of time for single shots later on.

Mosque Magnam

It is not the first time to work with people going around; I've already done that in Ireland, in the Ardeaglais Cormaic in Cashel Rock. However, here it was a bit harder with fellow photographers since some of them had to remain in one position for minutes and I have to give them their own time to take their shots.
This image you see above is done in a haste in fact because I wanted to put it here as soon as possible. There were lot of stitching errors (that might be related to the moving bodies in the scene rather than bad alignment), and I might give it one other try and try to fix these stitching errors by using Blending Priority if possible.
In this HDR panorama I preferred to use the (M)anual method and put the basic shutter speed at 2", while ISO was 400. As my teacher stated in earlier classes, and in a humorous tone "... using high ISO with a tripod is an infidelity!". This is true, but in HDR the situation is different a bit. I had to make sure that the +2EV bracket won't exceed 30", and the place was low in light (the workers in the mosque didn't turn the lights on until the dusk time after I finished the panorama). There are other projections on the way, like the vertical and the tunnel-view and the little planet. All will come in time hopefully, with a QTVR.

The dome of the place was a bit problematic. As you can see from the panorama above, there is a glass cabinet which contains a handwritten Quran with some writing tools. It is said that it is a Quran written by hand by the 3rd ruler of Muslims back then. Anyway, this cabinet was exactly in the middle of the hall (where I should place my tripod eventually), and it is exactly at the center of the dome. Although I finished my panorama placing my tripod as close as possible to the cabinet, but that didn't stop me from trying to take the center in exact position. It was the time for my lateral extension arm to be in work.
The bad thing is, I didn't bring my other camera to take a picture of the setting, but anyway, it was simply done by using the later arm to extend my camera with Rokinon's fisheye lens above the glass cabinet. Shaky, and dangerous and I could have been in trouble if the camera fell down on the glass and... break it. In the beginning, as a precaution, I was placing my hand under the camera body as it pointed upward, but Rokinon's fisheye has a really wide view and I have to give my trust to my tools and leave it hanging in the air like that and bow down to avoid capturing my head as well...

Tholus Magnus

Maybe a little bit off the center, but it was rewarding I believe. Would be off with a close up zoom, but the general geometry is fantastic as well.
There were many shots but I don't want to put everything here for the time being. I'm just glad this week is over and hope of a "brighter" week. I feel sick being myself now. Wish if I can sleep, and wake up when the world is over...

Gloriae Campus

Moody Philosophy

Been a really messed up week. Busy and time flying by without control. Ramadhan is going to be next week (not sure which day I need to check the calendar). It is not a big deal for me as I'm used to fasting now, but because of the time shift in general, and because of the traffic jams that are just unreasonable, I would be getting tired more often.
Today's post will be somehow a long one, generally because I had some mood to do the experiments and things I wanted to do for some time now. Yet, I didn't include everything of what I did this week (like pictures I took from my work place!). Hope you find this useful anyway.


I. Beacho-sophy:
Been to the beach in early hours of Friday after a sleepless night, despite the tired body I got then. I really was not in the mood to drive but I didn't have anything better to do, so  I went there one hour after the sunrise time, and it was annoying indeed. You would think people have been spending their time overnight on that beach, and needless to say how the many annoying barbarians do act when they see someone with a camera. My main fear was, though, that some of families there might cause me a headache thinking I'm taking pictures of their kids. Very annoying.
The sun already rose above the horizon with some angle at that time. The light is not as warm as I wanted it like when it is at sunrise time, but it did make enough elongated shadows for my use. The problem with summer, and I believe it is something general and not only in this region, is that the sun doesn't give that warm yet not so harsh light quality in the morning or by sunset, and this is related to the relative inclination of the sun's path from one point of the horizon to the other. In winter, the qualities of light of the early morning or at sunset times are the best for more interesting play of light and an interesting play of colors (think of mixing the white cover of the snow with the coming warm light rays of the sun at sunrise or sunset making a balance between warm and cold into some interesting composition; alas, we don't get snows in this part of the world!).

I think I've went into some state that opposes the general trend of thought, or maybe this is what I think. I roamed the beach after breakfast in BK aimlessly in fact. The high tide didn't make any good spots for me. A low tide timing is the best to discover the rocks beneath, and those are the ones that do give an interesting look, like the old shot called Silent Observer.

Silent Observer

However, under the light of the book that I've finished lately, Harald Mante's Serial Photography, I kept my eyes open for different and ordinary objects that can make up a theme after all. In fact, thinking about it now I do have a lot of photos that can be grouped into some unique themes of themselves. After all, however, I rated the book for 3 starts out of 5 on Amazon. I think it needs more order and organized writing, but nevertheless, it is a source of inspiration!


Having this book in my mind, you would see things in a different way somehow, or in fact you might just begin hunting for pictures of things that people usually don't care about: mob, rocks, chairs, doors, rags... etc. This is exactly what I noticed myself when I came across some large stones and rocks that lay on the beach, but I have to say that HDR helped me here to emphasize the idea that I wanted to deliver. The image was edited first in HDR mode in Photoshop just to change the saturation and add some adjustment layers to fix the exposure and other color casts. Gave it a try with the manual tone-mapping, but, as usual, I've failed with an honorary degree! Anyway, I realized that a sharper look can be achieved when tone-mapping this adjusted HDR in Photomatix after all.

Rock and Rocks

Despite the fact that this image is already rejected from some stock sites, but I'm satisfied about it because I have an idea behind it. It is maybe a matter of Philosophy, or simply Psychology. If you are sure of something and expressed something in a way you are satisfied with, it wouldn't matter, maybe, if others refuse it after all. Of course this can't be general, as we have matters in life that enroll under "etiquette"! 

My idea is uniqueness and being separate from the rest. Being with others and being alone in the same time. In fact, I did take images from Ireland and from here that can be put under such theme. I'm thinking seriously of making a "tableau" or a large image that contains smaller images or thumbnails of images that go under the theme of Uniqueness, Alone, or Different. Good thing though I didn't dip myself so much into the water while taking this shot, as my feet were going down into the mud and the sea water was tickling my feet as well!

But if the previous image was done in a thoughtful way, this was not in fact the whole story. There are times when the concept comes later after the visual aspect. I like to call it a Reverse Philosophy, as it is simply a reflection on what did you take a picture of, and trying to find a philosophical meaning for it AFTER taking the picture and not while or before taking the picture itself. I think it is simply put: being the photographer and the viewer in the same time.

This happened as I was walking on the beach and found out a grating of some sort that I just don't know what it is used for, and apparently it was a really old piece because of the corrosion. The idea in the beginning was purely systematic and abstractive. I planted the grating in the sand to try to make a shadow the curves with the sand ripples. I thought it is a good thing to have an image where straight lines, make curved shadows at the same time...

Grated Shadow

Tried hard to make some interesting geometry or illusion by moving around and pointing in several directions toward the grate, but I guess this one was the best. It seems that I'm in the process of making my own style in shots, where I tend, automatically, to play with the visual lines of the object and swallow up the object to make it simpler or illusional. My spell-checker doesn't approve "illusional" so I'm going to say: tricky!

Another shot was made from the back in portrait to give some depth to the essence of the image. The sea water was included in the scene but was cropped out later, leaving the grate and the sand.

Beach Remains

The picture above followed the rule of thirds originally until it was cropped. Both of the images of the grate were actually processed from RAW files, but when I shot them, I did take bracketed sequence to prepare the scene for HDR processing. However, I deemed that unnecessary to do as I liked the colors and the exposure in one of the slides for each scene, and started from there trying to adjust more of the colors. It is dramatic enough as it is. I didn't clean the above shots from the litter dropped on the beach intentionally, as I wanted to add some "motion", specially in Beach Remains, to simply show for real, Beach Remains! It is the message of what we do to nature. Everything on this planet is beautiful, until we arrive in it. However, Grated Shadow specifically was a point to stop in my thinking. The meaning that I give to this image was simply added AFTER the shot and the processing and on location I really didn't have such thoughts at all. I can see it now as a show of how straight people in the apparent, do have crooked personalities at the back. Are we what we say we are? Are we straight (in manners) indeed, or it's just a bubble we are living? When the sun shines over, our shadows will become clearer to the observer, but in the same time, we might be indeed straight and good, yet the background makes us look evil. In the second picture you can see that the bent grate is actually forming a full circle despite the bend in its structure from the top. Go on and think about it. How would you interpret that with yourself?

Walked off from that location to hear a rumble on the road in front of the beach, to see that an accident just happened before my eyes! Two buses crushing each other's sides. Anyway, while everyone was looking, I prepared my tripod to shoot one last image. The shed. It is a common target for my camera on the beach but this time my thought was aiming at making a play out of it. An illusion that I was not aware of before. You can visually make the shed stand on 3 legs instead of its regular 4 legs!

Geometrical Play IV

This one too was processed from a single RAW even though I did take bracketed sequence, and guess what, I didn't notice the clouds in the horizon behind the shed. Things were like washed out in the location but the details started to show up when being processed. With adding some adjustment layers to fix colors and luminance, some banding in the sky appeared and I had to use some blurring techniques to render it smoothly with other areas of the sky.
I did try making a 3D image out of this scene but seems that I swung my tripod head so much, thus making the final 3D image containing a strong visual ghosting effect. However, my aim was to change my procedure somehow when I work on creating 3D images out of HDR slides. It is another story to tell, maybe on another day...

You might be reading the title Geometrical Play IV and wonder where was III? The fact is I didn't put Geometrical Play III in any posts on this blog. But just to make a good sequence (a new series?) I might as well list them here accordingly...

Geometrical Play I

Geometrical Play II

Geometrical Play III

As you can see, Geometrical Play III is only a merge between I and II. I had to overlap the two and manually blending the middle area to make it look like one pillar after all.

II. What Stop Are You?:

There was an experiment that I wanted to do some really long time ago, but since most of my work and inspiration comes essentially from a spark of a mood, I didn't really feel like doing it until this week arrived. This experiment is just to know how many stops does the welding glass (got it from ACE few months back) put down. The settings was not easy to work with and in fact I started in a wrong way in the beginning, because I was using a halogen light source.

I was thinking of a halogen source in the beginning because I thought having a strong light is essential, since I'm going to use a glass that is almost opaque. Yet, my measurements using the camera metering did not work quite well because of the hard light and the shutter speed went far beyond the speed of 8000 (max shutter speed for Canon EOS 7D), and that was with the highest f-number (smallest aperture) that my Tamron lens could give (f45).

I had to re-configure the set and use a less intense light source, so I chose a regular tungsten lamp of 60W. The camera was set on Av (Aperture priority) mode so that I would change the f-number and the shutter speed would be shown up by metering. The ISO was fixed at 1600, and this high value is just to make the sensor more sensitive after putting the glass in front of the lens, and of course this value must be constant before and after putting the glass.

The set after re-configuration

Of course the experiment was carried out in a dark room (almost dark as the time was day), and I used my Tamron here mainly for two reasons: A) it has a macro mode so I can fill the lamp within the viewfinder completely and put the filament of the tungsten lamp in the center (for spot metering), and B) this lens has the highest f-number among my other lenses (can reach f/49, but in the experiment that maximum was f/45). After obtaining the results and putting them into spreadsheets, I managed to get the Stops from the simple equation that I usually use to measure the time required to take long exposure shots: T = S * 2^x, where T is the time after applying the Stops, and S is the shutter speed at metering, and x is the number of Stops. Simple algebra turns the equation for number of Stops as: x = [log(T) - log(S)] / log2.

Results of the experiment

The time here (or shutter speed) is in seconds of course. F-numbers below f/14 were neglected because the shutter speed required was faster than 8000 (that is 1/8000) and such measurements can't be considered for comparison. The maximum shutter speed for Canon EOS 7D is 8000. The average Stop number from all these values yields: 11.6635808068826; Of course I'm not going to include this number in my future calculations!! Thus, I can say the Stop of this welding glass is 11.7 as an approximation.

Another problem arise with using this glass, which is the tint. Welding glasses are usually tinted with some color, but fixing the WB might fix the problem as I did in this little experiment with the halogen lamp before. I'm not sure though how it would when it comes to a real scene with various colors around...

Halogen lamp with tint from glass

Fixing the tint with WB in RAW editor (added a bit of yellowish hue myself)

Now with such experiment, I might be able to use various materials and not necessarily glass to make up for filters! However, I'm stuck now trying to cut the glass piece to the size of Cokin Z-Pro filters so I would be able to fit it in the adapter as a regular filter. I'm lucky too that the thickness of the glass is acceptable and fits in the adapter, so all what I need is to cut it. So far, I couldn't find a shop to cut this piece and one shop told me already that I need a special type of shops that make glasses for cars' windshields and the like because this glass (the welding glass) is a special variety and might not be cut properly with regular methods! I might end up having to make up the holder myself in some DIY-way! Even with that though, I'm waiting for the release of new quantities of ND100 filters from Cokin which put down 6.6 stops. I read on some websites that the product was called for from the manufacturer for some reason. However, I'm waiting for notifications to my email from B&H whenever this product is available.

Finishing off this camera-trend with long-awaited writing capabilities. I've been busy with work lately. I have to do an experiment with some apparatus and take some readings, and I prefer to do it by early hours of morning so I would be able to do other things the rest of the day (at work). I really need to work on hard brainstorming on both fields: photography, and writing. Not an easy task at all.
I'm spending my time reading the last of the three books, which talks about the basic of the digital camera and photography, even though it would feel like I'm coming late to the class, but I'm learning new things still even if I know how to use my camera. Well, I can use the basic functions in the camera but still there are lot of things that I need to work and sort out and read about.
However, I've been trying hard to put some lines that were roaming around in my mind into some verses, and I had to sacrifice my time at work that I would specify for reading this book, to write what I wanted to write. I think I suck at time-planning, as usual. I need to sacrifice more for my Ayvarith projects and the sound-recording that I'm still not able to do. Anyway, my new written piece (call it a poem or a lyrics, as you like) is called Of You, All I Need, and maybe I should say, it is a dedication...

Of You, All I Need

Thinking of you till it hurts,
six thousand miles to fray.
Mimicking actions of love,
passionate dreams as they may.
Wondering about,
Searching around,
All what I envisioned seems untrue.

Seven seas or lands,
staggering winds won't stand,
for a peek into these eyes.
A signal is all I wait,
a heck of improbable fate,
watchin' it goes on by, by my eyes.

Through the distance,
I've burned my fire,
in hope of a glancing heart.
Through the silence,
I sought the patience,
when my world was fallin' apart.
Just a glance, though,
just a glance, now,
of you, all I need...

In the matter of the fact,
whether dead or alive I stay.
My mind is a conquered,
and my soul went astray.
Wondering about,
Searching around,
for something without a clue.

A flame of desire,
driving me to the higher,
to something ever untouchable.
If only this hand,
expands to stand,
some of this worried collectable.
I'm into pieces...

Through the distance,
I've burned my fire,
in hope of a glancing heart.
Through the silence,
I sought the patience,
when my world was fallin' apart.
Just a glance, though,
just a glance, now,
of you, all I need...

O my saviour in the gloom of troubles,
my smiler when my frowning doubles,
how did you leave me,
at a broken heart?