Frame My Brain...

Well well! What do you know! I'm typing this and amazed to see that Amazon Gadget is back beside the typing space here in this blog! (of course you won't see it). But something is weird about it still!
Anyway, I'm not in need for it right now. I've been busy working on my own projects, and I don't even read much. Even the previously-available time for reading (bed time) is taken with my exhaustion by the end of the day.
Right now, I've taken pictures for some frames' samples taken from the frames shop. They are, however, totally different than the ones I've used already for framing my prints for the expo, but some of them were really nice. They are 27 sample in total, but some of them seem to be repeated or so. For sure I won't include all of them in the catalog or the website, so I will try to make a choice later on.

One of my favorite frames

Taking the shots for the frames was another story. It was a time to recall the flash unit (580EX II). My setup was simple generally, specially that I've abandoned the hand-made softbox and also I didn't feel like using those desk lamps. My room is in such a mess that I don't feel like moving anything.
After testing some shots, and saving some images with various settings for the on-camera flash and the dedicated flash (580EX II mounted on a bracket above the camera level), seems that the best way was to bounce the flash from the ceiling. However, as I was trying somehow a high-key feel to the images, I had to increase the exposure to one stop, and sometimes two, and there is a sign of some green cast on the images (because of the side walls).

Shooting Configuration

This is the round disk I've used before for making object-panorama some time ago, and using the translucent paper (maps paper, tracing paper) to cover for the hard edge of the disk at the back. Same configuration used in my hand-made softbox, but this time without any side constraints and things are hanging freely. Of course, everything was settled on the rotating base of the VR-head which was dispatched solely to fit the white disk on. By the way, that's the shadow of the tripod on the background and not a camera shake or a ghost!
Now, I'm trying to sort out the frames and maybe give them a code of some sort (probably I won't use this code after all), but the dimensions of each frame (the depth or thickness and the height) must be included, so the customers can make a picture of their final framed picture. I had to borrow a vernier scale from work to do this task as a ruler proved hard to be used with such measurements (because of the curves in the frames). However, I will try to pick some of them for the catalog and the website and not all of them will be included. I'm thinking of a number of 10 or lesser. I wonder now if this is like opening a gate for me to try my hands on products photography (commercial photography). Who knows!

I'm not doing much of photography now, but lot of ideas occupying this skull. There is a panorama that I didn't work with before, and now a new idea for another panorama came along as well, but I don't like to tell much of the details of my future plans. However, the first panorama which I was trying to do requires some physical effort and help, and that's why I couldn't do it yet, while the second panorama which I'm thinking of now, involves the flash, and a proper place to depict the idea and the look I'm trying to achieve. Above all of that, there is also the trial to go to Failaka and spend one night there. I've tried to go during the long holiday (for the national day) but I've failed (and good thing I didn't go because there were news about some entrapment for the visitors). No time now to think of Geltani, or Ayvarith.

Back to Work...

First day of work, after somehow a long vacation. No news yet of any crisis coming this way yet, but I'm sure so much had been happening during my absence! I feel like I'm missing something, but what, that's what I don't know. For a beginning, I've missed bringing my headphone with me to work, so no music for today.

Recently, I've changed the folders of my images in Photobucket, those that I've processed recently, and hence there must be some change in the previous posts, i.e. broken links. I will try to fix it later and put the right link again. I thought maybe I should put sub-folders inside the main folder of the processed images and make each one bear around 30 images in total.
I'm still processing and although I didn't post much here, but there had been around 17 processed images, and some of them were panoramas. Some panoramas really got me into a headache mood with the errors that I couldn't fix. One of these panoramas is the lounge, which previous, I was planning to make into a spherical panorama with a QTVR. Unfortunately, many errors existed that I just couldn't fix them with PTGui, and after stitching they were even harder to fix using Photoshop. Beside the usual broken lines in this panorama, there were areas of haze or blur. You'd see such areas usually when a bright slide is blended with a darker slide (yes, even in HDR mode), and this causes abnormalities in color blending and sudden change in sharpness from one slide to another (specially if you have one continuous line running from one slide to another). The nadir (or bottom slide) is another problem as well; well, it always is a problem, but here it was extra. The ground was a carpet with a design and it is hard to clone the tripod and the VR-head out of the picture. Right now, I'm thinking of limiting this room to a 360 panorama instead of a spherical one. Notice that some people use the term 360 panorama interchangeably with a spherical panorama, but here I mean by 360 panorama as a horizontal sequence, only.

The lounge of Thornbrook House. A single image, not part of the panorama.

The image above is one side of the lounge and where the heavy load of errors occur. As a single image like this one above, there is no problem at all; simple tone-mapping, manual of by Photomatix and you can get the required results, but in a panorama where other slides come on the sides of this single image, you can get into troubles because of the harsh contrast between each slide and the other.

However, beside working with panoramas there were some other single images on the go as well. At this moment in fact, I've been saving some of them after tone-mapping in TIFF16 format but I did not clean the noise and did not work on other things until now, because I had to stop to stitch one of the panoramas, for a section of Hore Abbey.

The Scriber.

One of the images that really puzzled me is what I called "The Scriber." Speaking linguistically, the term is not accurate, I know. I think there is nothing in English as "Scriber." However, let's say I'm the one who coined it for the time being and get on with it, for the sake of simplicity.

Why this image puzzled me? Well, in the beginning, I took this image and I've seen a man in it when I was there in real location; in the graveyard of Cashel Rock just at the back of the chapel (ardeaglais). The engraving appears on a pillar on a shrine or mausoleum, and I was not sure what this man was doing. Later on however, and while working on the photo, I realized the man was maybe a monk or friary of some sort, who copies manuscripts or writing something and kneeling in front of a desk. On the left (in front of the kneeling man) you can see shelves of books as well. There is also some writing above this engraving but I couldn't read it. Makes me wonder now who is this man buried in this mausoleum? A monk for real?

Not all my work so far had been in HDR Tone-mapping category, but there had been some other ventures. Well, only one image in fact, which I needed to use the Exposure Fusion method.

The image above is for one of the glassware that I've been mangling with in the lounge of the Thornbrook House. This image was mainly composed of 8 slides combined together by Exposure Fusion. The reason for this is that each image was actually a single one, and not bracketed (with another 2). The setting was made on the octagonal table in the lounge, and I had to change the flash head direction manually in each shot and put it on one corner of the table. This way, I was able to get sparks from every possible direction. The flash head was controlled by the wireless function of course. I had to eliminate the background and keep the table since it was so disturbing for the composition and the flash body was obvious in view even though the EF function did some job on erasing the moving body a bit. Regular work then followed; contrast and saturation increments. I realized that taking pictures of glassware is one of the hardest tasks and you really need to control your background the very first thing. I believe the darker (and plain), the better.

Well, there are other options of course to deal with my images, like the black and white and processing single RAW files, but so far, I will work on HDR images and in fact I can produce many versions of a single scene by manipulating the HDR image in different ways. One idea is to transform a panorama already stitched for the St Dominic Abbey, into something a bit abnormal...

St Dominic Abbey. Flat Panorama. There is also a Little Planet (LP) for this one was nice and weird looking indeed, 

to see it you can click here. Some people said it looks just like some biological organism!

Now I'm back to work, everything is fine so far, with my co-worker being absent today for some reason. I need some time to grease up and go ahead with the pace as I used to, supposedly I was! I already got a list of tasks that are waiting for me but no pressure so far on doing them. The main pressure now is on keeping with my own projects. Currently, I'm reading my manuscripts book that my friend gracefully got for me for my birthday. I'm planning to finish as much as possible of it here at work.

Beside that, I have to think about my Ayvarith plans and writing some poems. These two alone bring me stress more than my work itself; well, beside driving in the streets of Kuwait of course.

I type down these words now and still thinking of my next year. Can I make out a vacation, again? I will be having some expenditures the coming year because I'm planning to get a new car, and this time no leasing. But one car that I own. Not sure what will I get, as it all depends on prices, and the shapes of course. After all, there must be some bump down on my budget the next year, and a vacation out of Kuwait might not be an option.

Alexander 6, V98, V99.

Here we are, a Monday after a three-day weekend. I'm posting 2 verses for now as I didn't post anything yesterday (despite my plans). The work place seems quiet today after my colleague left in his vacation. YES! I wanna spend the whole time listening to music and reading. Ah well, it's not all like problems-less. Just one hour ago we (the secretary and I) had to sort out some dilemma concerning orders that been made by colleague. Not important, so far.

I've started reading my other book now and seems it is the variety of books I've been looking for. It discusses philosophical matters beside technicality of photography. I'm still in the beginning though and it's a long long read in front of me. Around 18 chapters in it, and I must try my best to digest whatever in it, either concepts, or technical procedures. It is a book about photography as an Art, rather than a camera.

 

In another venture, I've tried, finally, to capture a panorama with my new monopod, just to try out its capabilities, and seems it will be quite well although I'm still reluctant about taking it alone in my travel to Ireland. I think I will include my old tripod as well just in case. The panorama is not new to me, with only the time difference to the previous time, our own yard.

The circumstances in this panorama were challenging but still it went well I suppose. The time was early hour of the morning, and maybe you can see the sun is raising in the horizon still. The weather was awfully humid and I had to rub clean my fisheye lens while shooting. There was also this cat that kept on rubbing against me legs begging for food! However, despite all of that, it went sort of well except of some errors that I didn't care to fix here actually for a purpose.

While shooting, I had to keep my fingers gently on the monopod to keep the vibrations as low as possible. The shoot was conducted in Av mode (Aperture-Value priority) and not in M(anual) mode as I usually do. I realized that in fact what I usually do in Manual mode is the same as the Av mode; set the aperture and change the shutter speed to match the -2,0,+2 bracketing, and this is exactly the Av mode! It is also helpful to not touch the camera much in these conditions with a shaky monopod. Despite the tri-legs but it is not so stable to depend on my free movements away from it. I had to keep my hand all the time. One angle in particular was bad and maybe not so obvious in this small version of the panorama, and that was the angle of the left-side door (the door to the guest room); at this angle, the monopod was vibrating so much and made it worse with my hand grip over it. The image from that angle was typically shaky and blurred.

The zenith, was taken normally but for some reason it was darker than the rest of the image. I could've raised the exposure a bit before stitching it with the others, but I left it like that just to see the errors I have here. I don't think it is a mistake related to the monopod itself anyway. The zenith as well created a problem AFTER stitching, where the guest room door appeared with broken lines suddenly (and it was just fine before the stitch!). Now I'm trying to figure out a way to use the monopod in helping me to capture a more easy-going nadir (bottom) image. I didn't care much to stitch the nadir in the panorama above, because it's just an example so far. It would be important, however, if I was planning for a complete QTVR. I guess my experiment with the monopod turned out like 4 out of 5 stars.

 

Among all these experiments and reading that I have to do, I'm trying to sort out some tiny time for my webpage project. I've made some effects for today but I didn't put my mind really into it yet. I'm bad...

__________
2329. then Birbuár asked Alexander about his news
2330. and he went on telling him everything about the village
2331. until he arrived here in this place to help the farmers
2332. Birbuár then said: you are going for the Hermit?
2333. I heard he is a weird man indeed, but a wise one!
2334. I heard also that his age extends back in time,
2335. so ancient he is that you cannot tell,
2336. yet, his looks are young like time stopped
2337. and what are you going to do there O hero?
2338. Alexander replied: Aramramátáníth told me,
2339. that he might have the answers I need,
2340. he might know what I am doing here,
2341. and how to get back to my lands and the beloved
2342. then Birbuár said: I see you have conquered a Cadid!
2343. how brave are you to capture your own Cadid!
2344. then Alexander replied: believe me my friend,
2345. I did not know what is this until I met Biryári!
2346. fighting him was easy to me, and I wonder for the people!
2347. why they are so afraid of such creatures?
2348. why they cannot just defeat their Cadids by themselves?
2349. then Birbuár said in a calm voice: O good king of Caqobia,
2350. there is so much for you to learn about our world,
2351. your soul is everything for you in here,
2352. and if it is a dark one, then no hope with a Cadid

2353. the two talked for a while and forgot about time
2354. until it was just before the darkness to fall upon them
2355. Birbuár raised and said: it is getting darker O hero,
2356. it is time for me to dwell back to Khaznútím
2357. Alexander asked: where to O brave friend?
2358. Birbuár replied: I must go back before dark,
2359. I promised Khaznútím to get back to him,
2360. I must head to the Big Brother Mountain,
2361. and from there he shall take me to his place
2362. and Alexander asked: and where is his place?
2363. Birbuár answered in a low voice: Ah my friend,
2364. you do not really want to ask all these questions,
2365. I myself do not know where his place is in fact,
2366. it is like something not part of this world by any way,
2367. one time you are here, then suddenly you are in his,
2368. where everything is made of fire, but nothing hurts,
2369. unless you do a mistake or make him angry,
2370. then bear with him whatever it might have to take
2371. Alexander then had a farewell with his friend Birbuár
2372. and the two hugged each other like they will never meet
2373. then it was but a matter of eye blinks from Alexander
2374. and Birbuár was not standing in front of him anymore
2375. he flew away just like a Shágí would always do
2376. free of the physical world and free of bounds

Alexander 6, V85.

 It's here! I can't believe it! The lab(s) that intimidated me for very long time are finally here stitched like a piece of cake! HAHA!

Well, for the time being only one is ready and the work is still going on on the other. The one made ready for today is the Anti-Compton lab. This lab is a small narrow space with one big device occupying one of the walls and closets occupying the other walls. I tell you, while shooting this, I had a hard time rotating my body with the camera.

Now the main work was to clear the bottom edge of the panorama itself, or the nadir area. The Nadir was a hard task to do and finally I decided not to add it. I'm trying at the current time to learn now to add simply a white space with the title of the image and my name at the bottom. It sounds easy really but still, I can't figure it out. Rather, I've duplicated the panorama layer and simply flipped it vertically and pulled it down to be in the place of the current nadir. It gave out some wonderful shapes though!




Now it's the time to attack the 2 remaining panoramas; the gamma lab and the office. Anyway, the first one is finished with only some color adjusting is needed, almost, while the other one needs a heavy work which I just don't know how to start with, mainly because it contains a moving object, added for a purpose. Me.

Now with a VR head, I get even more possibilities to snap places that I thought would never be possible to catch at all! Specially those nasty narrow places and/or those with checkered pattern, like the anti-compton above or the gamma lab. I think I'm lucky that my fisheye lens doesn't require much adjustments for its rotation axis on the VR head, because the default, initial, conditions for setting up the VR head are valid from the beginning. Just make the front of your lens meet up the base of the VR head (above it) and here you go. I need to work more to get my hands used to it. Doing things fast is always something I seek. It's bad, but in a country like this, where everyone with a camera is considered a paparazzi and not allowed to go into many places, I have to learn how to snap quick and accurate as much as possible, even if it was a shoot for HDR. Things might not be different with panoramic shooting. I've already worked on fast-rhymed panoramas specially when I went to Ireland, when I snapped some places and I was afraid that I was bugging other tourists who were waiting for me to get the hell out of the place, or me being afraid that they would come in and ruin what I was doing! In a fast-rhymed panorama, I used to work with my simple tripod alone with no VR head and all the fuss, or in many times, simply using my head and rotating my body with the camera. Back in Ireland I had some control over my camera and I kind of gained some stability with my body, but coming back to Kuwait ruined all of that!
__________
2017. Alexander remained for three days in bed
2018. he could barely move inside the small house
2019. and he felt well after that and got out of the house
2020. then he paid a visit with Kaliván to the tree
2021. and he asked Kaliván: why this tree is so important?
2022. we could have cut her down from the beginning!
2023. and Kaliván answered: this tree bears the holy seeds,
2024. it is what keeps this valley alive as it is now,
2025. and if it dies out, then no green you shall see here
2026. then Alexander asked: but now it is without branches,
2027. how it will give the holy seeds without branches?
2028. then Kaliván answered: here comes your part O hero,
2029. Aramramátáníth said you will heal the Jawsamályá again,
2030. and it will give fruit just like before and be always green
2031. then Alexander wondered: why me? Aram... couldn't heal it?
2032. Kaliván answered with eyes to the sky: you cannot say it yet?
2033. she ordered me to tell you that, but I do not know why,
2034. although I am sure she has the power to heal the tree,
2035. but yet she told me to ask you to try your luck with it!
2036. Alexander wondered about this argument
2037. and then started to think how to balance Jawsamályá
2038. the tree looked poor and pale without any branches
2039. thus Alexander thought of restoring its branches back
2040. so he ordered Kaliván and his Cadid to collect branches

Alexander 6, V40.

Well, here I am. The first day of work after the accident (and not the vacation). Yesterday was sort of an idle day. After the accident I called my work place to send a letter requesting an extension for my leave for 2 more days. By luck, Monday was the day of some seminar about nuclear power and I was almost sure that I would be invited to it and pushed to attend, but I was not there luckily! Somehow, my mood is not for socializing at the moment.
Too much work awaits me here. The spare car I have (my sister's old one) needs some work. Oil change, balance for the tires and other stuff. I'm planning to do this today. Add to that, I have to ask and investigate about some weird amount of money that got into my bank account. It's not a salary, but entitled as some "Student Allowance", and yet, I'm not a student at all! The amount was almost 75% of my own salary. Spending such money can be troublesome indeed if it is not mine and got into my account by mistake. The money was added to my bank account on 14th of April, the day I went to Failaka last week, and hence I didn't pay much attention to my mobile and the messages in it. There was a message already about putting that up in my account!

Now, let's talk a bit about the procedures for logging into my bank account:
1. Go to website (Not mentioning it here).
2. Click Login.
3. A new window opens and you put the ATM card number, and click Login.
4. A secret question is asked (???).
5. If the answer is right, a small thumbnail of some picture shows up with a button to proceed.
6. Now, put your password and log in (???????).

Can someone please explain to me what is going on here?

For the current time, I've been having troubles with one of the panoramas here. I must restart the PC just to do tone-mapping for this one, and I really got issues with restarting my PC. Ah! It's a case of honor! However, I did a tone-map for a smaller version:

The problem is, I wanted to make this out as a 360 spherical panorama and encode it with QuickTime for 3D viewing as in the place itself. The nadir (bottom point) was not a good shot so I canceled it out, and for this, I got a black space after the stitching process (and it was such a huge image, around ~14,000x7,000). I cropped the black space below and tone-mapped the rest. After encoding it for QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR), the image was bulged from the bottom like if the viewer was always looking into the sky with a fisheye lens! Hence I recognized that for a spherical panorama, you must have quite a constant proportions for width and height (and also when you tone-map with Photomatix, you must check the 360 image button to equalize the tone between the left and right side of the image). From this moment, my problems started and I couldn't tone-map the other (original) version and even after minimizing it down to 10,000 x 5,000. I don't want to minimize it more than this to keep it large somehow. As for the black space, I think it might be fixed somehow since it is all a texture of sand, hopefully. The first step is just to tone-map it!

I discovered some profiles of some people on Photobucket who had been to Failaka and I think they were mostly archaeologists. It was nice, but I didn't imagine some people do wear bikinis on the shores in this land. The law is applied only for us natives but not for foreigners? Other people have more freedom in our lands more than we do ourselves. Yet, no one respect us in the outside. Well, not all, but you can check the news and the procedures taken against muslim women for wearing simply a head cover as an example.

My transliteration process is still on hold. I need to figure out the car problems and finish them. My mind is so busy that I can't concentrate on the transliteration right now, but I'm hoping with me being back to the office, that I would do more since I stopped idle the passing week. Remembering that also reminds me of the book that I MUST read as well!
_________
937. then Alexander continued his speech to Birbuár
938. "all what I would ask from you is to answer a question,
939. and to guide me through these lands that I do not know"
940. and then Birbuár answered with no hesitation
941. "O good king yes I will with no doubt, just let me rest!"
942. then Alexander noticed something he never noticed before
943. and he asked Birbuár: how come you speak Caqobian?
944. did you not say that you never heard of such names before?
945. then Birbuár answered and was amazed like Alexander
946. "but O king, I am asking myself how you speak Ayvar?"
947. and the two of them were amazed for what is happening
948. verily both of them spoke different tongues
949. and yet both of them understood each other perfectly
950. and Alexander said to himself: what weird world is this?
951. then he dedicated the speech to Birbuár and said
952. "come and let us see how to bury your body,
953. guide me through these lands and tell me where to go"
954. and Birbuár got up from his rock and held the hand of Alexander
955. and it was two or three steps only on the ground
956. while Alexander saw everything passing so fast
957. so fast that he could not open his eyes at all
958. and when the hero felt the ground is not moving
959. he opened his eyes slowly to see what happened
960. so he found himself standing at the gates of the village

Alexander 6, V38.

Another busy day and here I am posting this in the evening instead of the midday as usual! Well, I think I've solved my plants problems completely now by stuffing the holes with wood glue. So far so good. I'm waiting for the glue to dry out compeltely and then I'm going to water them and see!

Spent the other portion of the day working on some of the images I got from Failaka so far. Planning to send them over to stock sites, but frankly speaking, I'm not so optimistic they will get accepted anyway, since some of them are blurry and I had to spend some hard time with sharpening them.

On the queue still some of the other panoramas that would need some work. A fast inspection revelaed that some control points problem (the usual) are there. Anyway, here you go with some of the images taken yesterday. All tone-mapped with Photomatix and some of them (well only one) were fixed with PTLens to remove the fisheye distortion from them. I wonder how much is it to get a fullframe camera?

The image befor the last is actually taken again. It is the path leading into and out of the old chalette complex in Failaka. Imagine now if I was to take a picture of that if this island was inhabited like before? Phew!

This time, however, the image is taken for HDR panorama (mainly 4 shots with my fisheye lens). The projection here is called "vedutismo". A quick glance at the help file in PTGui, it says that such projection type is mainly to be used with panoramas that got straight lines (I think vertical lines mainly), and hence I used it here and helped a bit on stretching the clouds making some moving effect (up right) and stretching the panorama a little bit in the middle point making a narrow horizon point. Mercator projection also had almost the same look, but the trees were so much tilted.

The old picture. Made into HDR in a dusty weather, and with manual tone-mapping back then.

I shall leave you now to get some work done before I go out having some chinese food! Yummy Yummy!

__________
889. Alexander looked down with a sad face
890. because the memories of his father raced in his mind
891. then he raised his head and asked Birbuár
892. "so Birbuár, I told you my story, it is your turn"
893. and Birbuár started his talk with a long sigh
894. "O king, my story is a long one with pains and agony"
895. then Alexander said: and I am here to listen,
896. for I am lost in this land and know nothing
897. thus Birbuár started to tell his story
898. "O good king, I was once a human like any other,
899. oh how wicked I was and how devilish I was,
900. no parents did I respect not a relative as well,
901. no one would feel calm in my presence,
902. I was the mighty one in all of my village,
903. until one time a wise man said to me,
904. do not walk with pride on the lands,
905. verily this body will vanish to the grave,
906. and your name shall be accompanied with shame,
907. and amid my arrogance I taught him a hard lesson,
908. until the poor man died between my hands,
909. thus when he was dead I still could hear his voice,
910. it was ringing in my ears like he did not die,
911. and this he said to me and made me quiver,
912. a Shágí you will become and forever"

Alexander 6, V27.

Trying to keep my camera busy (as well as my computer) but unfortunately that did not work for today's post. Anyway, I've made an experiment and waiting to get out of my workplace just to continue working on it back home. This time, I made a 360 panorama of the guest room at home. Relatively the take was easy, but stitching so far had proved to be harder than I thought, and with using a fisheye lens!

The last time I made a panorama of the yard in my house, I was actually using the fisheye lens in a landscape (normal) position,

but this time and in order to take a wide range vertically, I went on catching the whole thing in portrait position in a circle of 360 degrees. I know that I don't have a VR head, but I think in other situations this would be much easier than what it looks now. I made a template from the original RAW files (2 of them from each group of bracketed exposures), and yet none of them sounds that good for the stitch. For this matter now, I've posponed my idea of buying Panorado for the time being, and I really want to get this right. The general view sounds fine, but it will require some load of work with the cloning tool in Photoshop to fix some stitching errors in some corners. Could it be that the Spherical projection is not a good one for this image? Or the whole thing is really related to the parallax error? Although, from what I see on location, the parallax should not be a problem... not a heavy one at least. Been in worse conditions before, like taking a panorama of that small chamber back in Ireland:

The chamber of the small tower in Aughnanure Castle field.

This chamber was so hard for many things; a) small space I could barely rotate around myself, b) working in AF mode (autofocus) was hard and even harder to switch to manual mode to sharpen the image, because I couldn't look at the viewfinder of the camera all the time, c) the curvatic ceiling caused many erratic results when stitched in PTGui.

In the guest room panorama, the shot was run on 3 rows on different angles running around in a circle. The first row, as usual, was the middle one, or the basic one if I should say. This time I couldn't really follow the dial on the tripod head so, I merely followed the overlapping rule of the focus points inside the viewfinder. Later on, however, I managed to rotate the camera in segments of 30 degrees.The light outdoors, which showed through the windows, was dark as the night was falling. I was hoping to make it brighter really, and hence I should have done it in daytime before the dusk, but my busy schedule and home improvments tasks around the house left me exhausted and could not do a thing until few minutes before dusk, and after that the night tends to fall quickly. I wouldn't be able to race the night fall with such sluggish movements like that ones I do behind the camera! I'm trying my best to work faster, and neater, if I ever could.

A piece of advice people. Go on and download the latest OpenOffice. It is free, and sometimes when Microsoft screws you up with Word or Excel applications, the OpenOffice can be the solution for you. I can't say it is the best, as there are some options in Word or Excelt for example that cannot be found in OpenOffice, but also vice versa is true. I had for days now tried to do a simple formula in Excel and I thought I was doing something wrong when suddenly I did the same thing in OpenOffice Calc (the equivalent for Excel) and ta-da! It's all done and with a blink of an eye! Get IT! I think there are also some add-ons provided by various users to do some jobs, but I didn't try any really.

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625. then one night came and the moon was full
626. and with harsh winds blowing the moon became red
627. and the dust was reddish and smelled like metal
628. thus Alexander knew he was in the spot indeed
629. but what more to do if he could not know a thing
630. then he remembered the gesture of Ázilis to Charnagút
631. thus Alexander raised the sword up high and looked
632. to understand the meaning of all what is happening
633. then he noticed a ray of red light striking down on the sword
634. like how a magnet stone attracts the iron pieces
635. then he moved the sword left and right, up and down
636. but the ray goes wherever the sword goes
637. and the hero remembered the words of Ázilis
638. thus he sat down and waited with a hard breath
639. and the dust almost went into his lungs and eyes
640. then he pointed the sword to the ground
641. and he rested his hands over its pommel
642. and the sword went easily into the ground
643. like how a sharp knife cuts into the meat
644. and the land started to shake violently
645. so violent that would crush houses to the depth of Earth
646. and the Earth cracked like a piece of wood under an ax
647. while Alexander jumped to one side in a fast move
648. while the Earth kept on tearing apart from North to South

Alexander 6, V13.

I woke up late, and that was not great. So, I felt tired already, and to work I was not ready.
Since I didn't go to work, there was no work in tranlisteration for today (plus, my papers are already in the office!). The weather is nice, and seems it is nice every time you skip work in a working day or something. Well, with the beginning of this new year I have 4 casual days in my account so I'm just going to use one. Nothing is like sleeping for extra 6 hours in the early morning! But wish if I know why did I wake up late like that... my sleeping time was the usual!

Anyway, started to work on the previously made panorama of our living room. There were many problems in the image that I tried to solve some of them by cloning out. Beside that, with some spots in the image, I really do need to hurry up and look for some cleaning kit even if I have to order it from the US or so. The problem is with liquids as usual and hence I have to look for what is usually called "the static brush" which grabs the dust by electrostatic force.
I think the main problem that caused all the fuss in the stitching process is mainly not being able to rotate the camera around its no-parallax point. Unofortunately, you'd a special head for the tripod to do so and they aren't any cheap stuff. Still, I did previously some nice panoramas with this simple tripod of mine which I inherited (sorta) from my father.
Another problem that I think it affected the process is that I probably was not rotating the camera in a fixed amount of degrees in a circle (because I was depending on my eye sight in the viewfinder of the camera and aligning the AF points in the viewfinder). I think next time I should consider using the scale engraved on the head of the tripod itself and rotate accordingly for a fixed amount of 30 or 60 degrees around the axis.
been thinking seriously of finding some shop to do me a favor and create my own lens ring or what is sometimes called a "Q-ring" (it looks like a Q). I was inspired for this by some German photographer (which unfortuantely I can't find his webpage again) who put a photo of his gear and below that he clearly stated "my self-made Q-ring". I think if you have some specifications for it you can go to any metal-works shop to do something similar. This ring is to be fixed on the top of the tripod and it holds the lens of the camera in a specific point, i.e. the no-parallax point. Sounds a simple solution instead of buying those complicated and expensive tools, but yet I'm thinking of the body weight after all and is it really safe to use it that way (even if the German photographer did so already with his Nikkor lens).

However, I keep working on some versions of the living room. Until Now I made several versions and 3 of them are similar in projection type but different in the tone-mapping process:

1. Tone-mapped then stitched:

I did this version mainly when I was trying to find a way to stitch my panorama with a lesser memory requirement that it would take for an HDR panorama. The tone-mapping was done in a batch process in Photomatix over all the smaller HDR (smaller relatively not in size!) images. These images were stitched later. I didn't like this one really, because my aim was to produce an HDR panorama and being able to tone-map it manually in Photoshop, or even more, fixing it before tone-mapping it, and suck a task can only be done in Photoshop (to me, I know there are other softwares out there). However, I gained something after all in return. I saved the template (or the order of the control points and their settings) and I used it later on for the HDR panorama stitching. A process that I might be using it a lot in the future. The advantage of this, you can fix everything in a low resolution JPG panorama and save your work and then just apply it as a mold on the BIG work of HDR later on and directly. Without worrying to optimizing it in the PTGui itself (I did not run optimization for the panorama after applying the template taken from this one).

2. Manually Tone-mapped:

After taking the control points "mold" from the previous model, I applied it into the HDR panorama here. I made several adjustments on colors and saturations and saved it directly on top of the original HDR (unfortunately) but anyway, the greater deal was with the errors of stitching and the occurence of broken lines or features. After all these adjustments, I went on and manually tone-mapped it by using the usual "local adaptation" and the usual toning curve. This was my aim in the first place, because I can manually control the illumination of the light sources themselves here and drag it down to make the light bulbs just like a glowing stick by itself.
Notice however, that in all these versions of panoramas, there was a hole in the ceiling that I could not clone out perfectly nor I could use the healing tool in Photoshop in 32-bit mode, thus it was necessary to fix that only after tone-mapping. This is a result of removing 3 images from the sequence because of troubles in finding control points suitable for them.

3. Photomatix after stitching:

This is the reverse of method #1. But the main thing that affected it is that the original HDR file was actually saved from the previously non-tone-mapped version when I did some work in Photoshop with it before. Maybe it's not different much in general hue, but it is brighter and, well, might look a bit artificial. I based it on Grundge style and re-worked the values accordingly. This is how I mostly use the Photomatix; pick up a style and adjust it. I noticed however, later on, when I zoomed into the image, there was strong banding in colors around the light bulbs in the ceiling. I kept a larger version of this image for later work. I'm thinking of submitting this one to the stocks. I need to do some work with it after all to remove the portraits on the walls and see what else I can fix in it. I'm not so optimistic about accepting it though, since it has lot of erratic stuff going around with it. I will minimize it before submitting in hope some of such errors disappear or just go unnoticed when zoomed in. (Thinking) this is not cheating, is it?

Time to head now and do some work for "work"! I leave you now with Verse 13 of Alexander 6.
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289. and the swords met in a fierce battle
290. someone is seeking revenge
291. while the other is seeking joy and blood
292. you could hear the roars echo
293. in every valley and over the mountains
294. it was a day of terror over the lands
295. when you could see the rocks spark with fire
296. and with every hit from the Charnagút
297. and with every hit from the Balíkhah
298. the ground would shake with every sound
299. the sounds of the swords were like fierce thunders
300. made by the mad Heavens and Earth
301. one hit by the other with no rest
302. they exchanged the force mercilessly
303. and and the hero had many injuries
304. fighting was hard for him now
305. and the shepherds were watching and surprised
306. if Kadmún was a god how come he is weak
307. if he was god why he did not kill Alexander before
308. thus they started to rage like Fulkan Muttere itself
309. and starts throwing stones on Kadmún
310. amid the rage Kadmún shouted at them
311. "verily I shall kill you all with your sheep,
312. useless creatures deserve not the air they get!"