Hibiscus Addiction...

However I try to take it slowly seems my life pace just doesn't want me to. Having hard time cutting out my coffee habits and drinking hibiscus instead to lower down the blood pressure as much as possible whenever possible. I'm sick of the traffic jams everyday, so I'm having a little vacation for myself. Just one week off work trying to have fun (sleeping) as I like and going out as I like (whatever!). I might even try to go to Failaka and check for other locations here and there in this deserted island. On the other hand, I'm trying to enjoy my time in weekends, pulling myself back to the seaside and the photography there. Now with my Tamron 70-300mm I can sort of aim at birds from, somewhat, conventional distances, like I did some weeks ago with that lovely heron...

The Observer

I was lucky that he (or she!) didn't move and fly away directly. I took tens of images for it while it was moving and this is just one of them. The dusty weather here made me add lot of enhancements in the image (and nope, it's not in HDR technique). Herons are said to keep a constant distance from people, thus every time you get closer they would step further away to keep the distance for their own safety sake. However, seems the rule is not included in the situation here! I was stepping on the rocks and algae in a fast pace with my camera attached to the monopod with its 3 mini-legs spread trying to take some nice position. Another target for my Tamron was the morning sun with its sweet reddish hue in the horizon and the not-so-harsh beam of light. In fact, it was bright, but with minimizing the aperture (high f-number) and speeding up the shutter speed, I was able to catch a simple, yet interesting, image...

Sunspots

If you see the image in a larger view, you will notice some small black dots in the direction of 7 o'clock. I've read once that such black dots, in early morning, can be in fact for Mercury and/or Venus passing over the disk of the sun, but it can be also sunspots probably! However, I have to say that taking pictures for the sun with a normal DSLR is a dangerous trial, because it can harm the sensor severely. Just be careful in case you want to try something like that.
But not only suns, herons and Tamrons would go together, as I was chasing a pigeon with my Canon 18-55mm all the way to the moment of its flight above the ground. The reason I was chasing it actually was not for mere fun nor that I did indeed want to, but it was something completely different...

Acrobat

The story behind this shot was: I was in the Marina Crescent, the opposing side of the Marina Mall here in Salmiyah (area or city, whatever). I was in the exact position that you may check in the link above after taking pictures from the beach, not far from this location. After working on taking pictures for the yachts in the marina some sucker called a SECURITY came to me saying gibberish with "forbidden" at the end (in Arabic of course). I said sure, and walked away with my tools. I knew he was following me with his eyes so I walked to my car not far from the location and put my stuff there except of the camera and my 18-55mm lens, with a fisheye lens in my pocket. In fact, I was almost finished from the location but I just wanted to take a picture of the palm trees reflection on water when this sucker came in! I took a walk trying to get back to my previous position or to the opposite side of the marina to get a better view for the reflection, but there was another sucker roaming around and looking at me as well, hence I knew there was no way around it. On the other side of the dock, on the beach, there was this lonely pigeon walking around so I decided to play with it a bit hoping that this sucker will move away and leave me alone, but after taking all these images for the pigeon, he was still there, so I had to get back home.

However, after this little drama, I did have the chance to use my fisheye once and my 18-55mm another time to take pictures for the yachts and try even a 3D shoot. I'm going to share them here despite all the suckers in security suits who suck and make me sick of this suckering sickening world! (yeah, try to say that again fast enough...)

Yachts Awaiting... (BW,3D)

Yahcts Awaiting... (Color,3D)

Vivid Yachts

Vivid Yachts (3D)

Taking a new venture now with my camera, trying to take 3D photos, but this time, real 3D photos. This is done usually by rotating the object in constant angles and taking a snap at every angle. Supposedly later on, you would need some program to make this "object QTVR" rotating. The more angles, the smoother transition you would get. However, my aim now is not to rotate the object, but to make it "flat".
Unfortunately for me, things doesn't work like it is in spherical panoramas in the big big world. PTGui does not realize surfaces that easily and was not able to connect them to make a flat "peeled" surface of the object, even after putting my own control points to guide it through like blind. Seems there is no escape from doing this manually with Photoshop as it was in the old days when I saw one tutorial about this for doing a profile for a man's face and making it flat like if it was peeled (like an orange). This way you can see all features of the object without the need to rotate it or anything! This, to me, is more beneficial than creating a rotating QTVR. So far, I've failed, but I'm planning to continue with this.
My tools here were simple (in my terms as I didn't have to buy anything). I already have the VR-head (yeah, bought that back in 2009 or 2010) which can be used as a turntable base when disassembled. I looked around and didn't find something better than a CD and some kids' clay. Fixed the CD on the top of the base of the detached turning node of my VR-head with the clay and used some clay on the top of the CD to stabilize my object: A Seashell.
Now, we got some problems here:

1. The CD's reflective backside might not be good impression in general for the high and wide spectra reflected from it. It's better to be a white or black background below the object.
2. Because of my laziness, I used my monopod on its 3 tiny legs, which was shaky of course, specially with my 70-300mm macro lens. The turntable itself was fitted on my old tripod. Maybe it's not an issue but I didn't feel like removing my tripod from my car. It is already there for video recording!
3. Unable to put proper lighting, thus I depended solely on the room's lights without playing around. I can't attach the lights to the tripod and I don't have carriers for them.

One product though is quite useful and it is a complete set (beside having a turntable, it is generally a softbox) can be found from EZcube products here. It's a nice set for serious people, but since I'm not giving much thought about it, I will continue working on what I have. After all, seems as I said before, Photoshop is the one to solve the problem for profiling the object in a flat shape...

The Seashell on the CD. The yellow spot under is the clay holding the CD to the rotating base, and also there is a piece of clay under the shell itself to stick it a bit to the CD. Rotating the base was not an easy task as I thought.

Although increasing the amount of angles taken into the camera for the object would make a better transition, but since I'm not apt to make a rotating object in 3D but a flat body of the object, I'm planning to study somehow the relation between the field of view, and the size of the object, and how many angles are needed in minimum to take all the details of the object. This is tricky. Because we are using here lenses of changing focal lengths and zooming plays a role, thus it's hard to tell what's exactly the field of view we got at hand. I know there must be some formulas for this, but for the time being, I will try to stay away from those and hypothesize that the object fills the field of view (FOV). I need a paper and pen now. Back to the old days of Physics. Just imagine how it is useful to see a jar, a can, or even a car, made into a flat image to study all the details and connections at once, like a plan for making a cube! Awesome isn't it?

On the other hand, there had been some work on the other 3D realm; The Anaglyphs. I try to make one every time I get the chance (and I think I will do one for the seashell above). However, last week I got the chance to stay awake all the way to the morning time and headed to the beach for snapping some shots with the sunrise. I was late abit but nevertheless, it did the job and I had the chance to make myself dirty a bit in the sand (or mud?). Yes! Walking on the sand is really awesome! I felt really refreshed, and my footprints proved for real that I do have FLAT feet...

Steps (HDR of course)

This image is taken with a fisheye lens and cropped from the top to make the destination somehow aimless. I was moving my lens here and there, left and right trying to figure out the best way of mimicking the left and right vision in order to combine it all in one anaglyph. It was hard I have to say, as it is normally with a fisheye lens, but at home and after viewing the slides, I made the central focusing point to be the heel print of the first step at the bottom as it was the most stable one with moving the camera few degrees to the right...

Steps (3D)

I don't think this is a really good one though. But a new experiment for me was to take pictures for the junk that was dumped in front of my work place (yeah, we have so much respect here), and believe if I say so, JUNK is not a junk to the camera. When you go for HDRs or even normal images, junk can be a good source for inspiration, really...

Junk

Now, as you can see, I don't know what the hell this pipe was used for, oil or gas or water, whatever. But this same pipe, gave me a valuable lesson here. The bad point though (and this was taken with my fisheye lens as well) is that I was focusing to infinity, making near by objects blurred a bit like this pipe here, but nevertheless, the effect is there! Just get your 3D glasses ready...

Junk (3D)

Concentrate on the pipe here. The circular head of the pipe is the center point of focusing (i.e. in layering the 2 images together, not the camera focusing itself). It seems, to me, that one of the good points to make a 3D image is to make the object in a non-dull position, and by non-dull position I mean simply, not into a straight line all the way, horizontally or vertically. Make some movement in your scene; foreground close object and far background or such is the case here with my image, a diagonal line (the pipe) with some perspective look as if it is popping out of the page.
One further point to mention here is that in processing the 3D images, you have to have in mind that after all you will crop the image to remove some excess parts that don't go along with your image, thus the resulting image could be smaller way too much sometimes (specially if it was taken in a fisheye lens).

Now to explain one funny coincidence before posting this. It's an image that I've called Departed. In this image I was aiming to the horizon and the sun with my fisheye lens, forgetting about the footprints that I've made myself on the sand and that a fisheye lens does have a wider FOV. After getting back home I've noticed that my footprints were in the view and cutting them out (keeping the ratio aspect 3:4) would actually minimize the scene so much. Finally, I decided to leave it like that and give the picture a theme... Departed!

Departed

My point here is: Whatever, however, your image was, you can always do something about it. That is, if you like to! The real thing now is whether this is applicable in real life or not, or is it possible or not.

3D Hunting...

Been a lazy week on one frontier and a busy one on the other. Lazy in the sense of my own projects, and sort of my photography, and busy with my work place somehow. I've been roaming around looking for chances to get a scholarship, again. I stopped looking for some time because many events took place and I was not in the mind for it but I'm in again and trying to find my way around. Still, there are many places to ask in. All of that gave me no time to write a poem, which is annoying really because I do have a sort of a wave of feelings, but yet, I can't write them down for the lack of words. A line or two and that's it. Also, been looking around for some other host to build my Ayvarith page, since the discovery I've made, which is: Fortunecity, sucks. I can barely upload some images there; no audio, no clips, no MOV files and probably no SWF (flash) files as well? The thing is that publishing the Ayvarith transliteration of Alexander's story online via WDC is on hold, because I need to add these vocal samples, which I need to dumb online first. I'm still looking and didn't make a decision yet. There are lot of webpage-building websites with ready-made templates, but those don't suit my needs.

Grabbing my backpack wherever I go, trying to get my eyes on anything I can catch, but with not much to be done. I'm trying to get back to the 3D realm, that time when I used to take pictures and convert them into 3D anaglyph (red-blue) images, but so far, I couldn't find good subjects. Only once though, with that scene from the beach...

3D Infinitum

I'm on the look for more appropriate subjects, and taking my backpack of cameras and lenses and the tripod wherever I go almost, even to work. At home too, trying to come up with something, but the trials aren't always successful. Not successful in the means of having my own satisfaction with it. You can tell I spend so much time alone and have nothing to do, yet my mind is in turmoil and barely able to do anything. It's like being paralyzed "ethically". However, doing more trials with my Tamron 70-300mm telephoto macro lens, I remembered that I do have an old collection of seashells that I've collected from the nearby shore, and it was a thought, long time ago, to take a close-up for some of them. I had to settle it down somehow (and it hard, because I didn't want to use glues) and went on shooting (with brackets of course)...

Seashell

I had to stay away from my self-made softbox for about one meter or so (~3 ft), and I think the zooming factor is good, having in mind that the shell is actually the size of my thumbnail (or less). One of the hardest things in the image above to settle down, was the White Balance (WB). With HDR tone-mapping you can change the WB as you wish but also the original WB used plays a role, and I think the original was Daylight WB. I figured that Daylight WB is more flexible to change when doing tone-mapping after doing HDR. Having Tungsten or Fluorescent WBs (i.e. cool temperatures for the images) makes the original images bluish and when tone-mapped and changing the WB to something close to "hot colors," usually the images end up with a violet or purple hue that, most of the time, won't be suitable for the general mood of the image. However, doing this, will still require some extra work for boosting the contrast and tweaking the general temperature or fixing the color balance, and all done after tone-mapping in Photoshop. I tried to do some 3D effects here but, unfortunately, the fact that the subject is in a softbox and not much of an interesting background makes it really dull and useless to do it in a 3D anaglyph image.

How to do a 3D Anaglyph? 

Just some steps that you might want to try out to make these things, but remember it doesn't work all the time because it all depends on the composition of the image and also depends on the visual capabilities of the viewers themselves. Have in mind that you will need some editing software like Photoshop. I believe some other freeware stuff can do. So, here we go:

1. In this process you will need to take 2 images of the scene to mimic the human vision; one left-eye image and one right-eye image. You can do this by 2 cameras if you like, but for me I always go with one camera and after the first shot I would pan the camera (or rotate it around its body axis) for few (not much). This distance in few degrees is just to mimic the distance between the two eyes. You can as well simply, while standing in the same position and being stable, move the camera's viewfinder (if you are using it) from your left or right eye to the other eye and focus on the same subject. Remember, there should be one object at least that is the center of the focus in the image, because this point of focus is important for later process. Having this idea in mind, you can go around with your tripod if you like for more stability, if you like.
2. Now processing. You got your images correctly hopefully (and maybe you'd better be shooting in JPEG rather than RAW but the choice is yours). In Photoshop (or any other software) you should open your images and layer them one upon the other. You should mark carefully which one is for the right-eye and which one is for the left-eye. You can check for yourself easily as you notice the relation between the focus point and the background; things tend to shift to the right when viewing with the left-eye, and vice versa. Put the right image on top.
3. Reduce the transparency of the top (right-eye) layer to 50%, or to whatever suits your level of vision, and now drag your layer around to make the focus point coincide with the focus point in the lower layer. Remember, it is not necessary to make it 100% perfect, as there might be some difficulties coinciding the two foci. The major idea here is to make the distance between the two images as minimum in that particular area of the image (parallax error?), while neglecting (somehow) the rest of the image for the time being. Once this is done, get the transparency back to normal (100%).
4. Now, the setting is Right on top, and Left is below. Now take the Right image and suppress the RED component (I'm supposing you are working in RGB color system). This can be done in Photoshop by pressing Ctrl-L (or by using the menus to get to Levels command, or by adding an adjustment layer of Levels over the Right image). Once you get the dialogue box of "Levels", change the drop down menu from "RGB" to "Red". Now, move the White arrow at the bottom (not the one below the histogram which corresponds to highlights, but the lowest one) to the far left (or simply put "0" in the number box). Thus, you will have the black and white arrows all together in one place and your image will look bluish. Make a mind connection here: Right <=> Red channel. For me, I got the habit of using adjustment layers and I don't edit the images directly, thus whenever I use them in this case, I make sure I use the clipping (right click the adjustment layer itself and it's there). This will make sure that this effect will affect the layer just below the adjustment layer and nothing else. Just in case.
5. As you did with the Right image, you will do with the Left image below, but this time you have to suppress the Green and Blue channels, and your image will look reddish.
6. Change the blend mode of the topmost layer (Right image) to Screen. You image now should look something similar to what I've done above. Crop the excess on the sides as you wish, though I prefer you do it with respect to the aspect ratio between the height and width. To crop with respect to the aspect ratio of the image itself, pick up the crop tool and mark the whole area of the image. Then, move the corners as you wish but while pressing the SHIFT on your keyboard to ensure that the ratio is preserved.
7. After cropping and everything, your 3D image should be ready. Try it out and view it through the special glasses if you have any. Remember, you might want to try it more often to get some satisfaction and not every scene is capable of producing some astonishing results. To my experience, I think spherical objects have the potential of giving out great 3D view.

 On the beach still, trying to go out there specially in the times of low tide to fish for some chances. I was lucky one time which kind of sparked my mind on another purchase on the list of my endless dreams...

The Observing Heron

I was working on my monopod (because the tripod was fixed inside the car to take some videos while driving) and it was sort of flexible with me, with its 3 mini-legs expanded. The monopod was collapsed o its minimum height and using the full zoom of Tamron 70-300mm and switching to Macro focusing as well, I had some how a nice shot of this fella. I took so many images (of course not bracketed) trying to get everything i can from his own movement over the surface just before he flies away, and then I would sort them out back home. The weather was dusty and didn't help much in this, but at home I picked one image and did the "magic" to eliminate the yellowish hue and enlighten the body of the heron. Herons by the way are immigrants, but by time they somehow settled down in Kuwait. This is what I've been told by someone in the know. Despite the dust that day, HDR imaging somehow improved some images as well...

Infinitum II

Processing the previous image was not an easy task for the level of noise that was present with tone-mapping. This is one awkward point in doing HDRs. You have to develop some strategy to overcome this somehow and after all, several ways might not work at all. Been receiving some attacks on HDR images and that it is not a real photography, and I'm tired of explaining myself that my goal is doing something beautiful and HDR is merely a technique for me to extract as much details as possible out of the scene. Strangely, in the last image, I did things unconsciously. After I got back home I remembered the advice of Alain Briot in his book, when he talked about capturing interesting lines and shapes, and specially the S-curved lines.

Also, this short trip to the seashore in the last weekend made me find out a fact about the Tamron lens I have; it has a tendency to show some strong chromatic aberrations. Now, this is somehow contradicting my own belief that wide lenses are the ones that exhibits such phenomena the most. I've read somewhere that it's a common feature for wide lenses and fisheye lenses to have chromatic aberrations specially if the object is back-lit. You would find some thin lines of red (or magenta), blue, cyan and yellow around the edges of the object. This is exactly what showed up in some of the images I've taken with this lens. Fixing it should not be hard task but when HDR technique is involved, it is worse than solving an equation in physics. HDR, and because you are combining several exposures, tends to somehow intensify the effect of the aberration and adding some contrast. Hence, it's hard sometimes to remove it with the usual "lens correction" procedures provided in Photoshop or any other software. I did go around it sometimes, but still it is not a practical mean nor successful all the time. One of these procedures is using the Hue/Saturation adjustment layers to suppress the magenta or cyan channels and confine these changes to the edges of subjects in the image. Photomatix, my favorite so far, got an option to remove chromatic aberrations from the RAW files as it combines them into HDR, but this option seems not quite the useful one here. It doesn't work most of the times. Maybe the best thing is to give up the RAW (and the stored dynamic range in them) and fix these aberrations in RAW then convert the images to TIFF16 format, and start the HDR from that point. One of the ways to go around this, is what I did with this image. Simply, converted to Black and White:

Terra Algae

The sun reflection from the water surface was strong even in a dusty haze, making all kind of aberrations around the edges of the rocks on the ground. Final solution I had in my mind is to give up colors and go Black and White! So much green in the image anyway and it sort of lost its magic in my eyes.

Currently, I've been worried about my tendency to be an "addict" to chocolate. Now with my life style like a single guy trying to do his own food most of the time, I do tend to eat some snacks rather than "real" food, and most of the time, it is chocolate. Well, I do change to candies but that's seldom. It's chocolate all the way. To be more specific in fact, it's only one brand that brings me joy: Kinder Bueno! Can't have my enough of that!

I do cook sometimes, say thanks to the microwave. The guy who invented the microwave got to be

a single guy as well. Turkey sausage wrapped in egg (stuffed with cheese, tartar sauce and cucumber with some spices). 

All done in microwave.

Majorly now, all what I have in a day is one meal, and the rest is just bits of this and that and some snacks. In fact, once I get back home I don't feel like eating (probably because I've already filled myself with chocolate and candies in my work place). Most of the time this one meal is a dinner; be it a simple corn flakes dish, or some cooking I do when I have the mood for it, or simply and order or a take-away.

It's Thursday now, TGIT. Hopefully, I will try to take a second try on shooting the Chinese restaurant from the inside as I was planning. Few days ago I was there as early as 7 P.m. just to reserve that corner of the restaurant for my work but unfortunately, there were already some people there in that specific corner. Maybe I should work late, despite the fact that the owner wanted to show the dishes on the table to add "life" to the image. However, that night I got several shot from several angles for the restaurant from outside, but none was what I aimed for. The long exposure time and the large f-number (small aperture) made it hard all the way.

Golden Chopsticks

Although I used somehow a small aperture to make a star effect as you see, but seems my choice was wrong. I think the star shine effect is not good in such a scene, or maybe it was way too hard on the scene. As you can see, the cars didn't spare me here. Some of them even had the mind to come forth and then go on reverse in front of te camera (the big white beam on the left). Unintentionally, the speed-lights covered the number plates of the cars in some nice effect. I don't want to expose these numbers to the public!

I took images with my 15mm fisheye and 18-55mm, but this one was the most appealing to me so far despite all the wrong-doing in it. It's taken with the fisheye, as you can tell from the edges of the image. The WB here is set to Tungsten, but the scene didn't go bluish in an ugly way. I should memorize this lesson now as I might as well use it for shooting inside, which has a reddish atmosphere as well. The WB here emphasized the bluish trend for the spot lights at the top while keeping the main building within its hot colors atmosphere (reducing the red a bit of course). Next time, I will try using a larger aperture (small f-number) for fast shutter speed, and to avoid the star shine effect which is not appealing here. I hope I can do this tonight.

I leave you now, with two videos. First one is one of my trials with time-lapse photography, with me going back home from work. The camera was programmed to take a shot every 2 seconds, and to minimize sizes and make sure that the memory card will take it all, I've changed the settings to shooting in medium sized JPEGs only. In the traffic jam who knows when will you be reaching home!?

The FPS (frames per second) here is 10, and I made several versions to check for the speed, and probably this is the best one. At the end it gets fussy because of turning around like a bee trying to reach home from the other end of the street. However, the generally quality is reduced of course for web purposes.

Secondly, I leave you with something I got addicted to at the moment. Old stuff (relatively), but addiction-trigger, to me...

Hunting Day!

Hunt, hunt, hunt. This is all what I was doing today. Not necessarily for images, but for various stuff. In the beginning, it was the hunt of food. I woke up with a really squeaky tummy. On breakfast, I've pulled out my camera and made it settle on the chair next to mine. I had in mind that I must catch that magpie and eventually, and maybe because it was not a sunny morning (although the rest of the day was wonderful), the magpie didn't show up, just in the beginning.
While I was talking to my host about some stupidity with cars back there in Kuwait, the magpie cut off the conversation and landed on the grass and followed by another. My host told me that there is actually some old song about the magpie (with some variations and versions) that says:

One for a bad luck and two for a good luck...

I don't know the origin of the story, but seemingly this means I'm having a good luck. Anyway, I was not that lucky with catching him with my camera and my simple 55-200mm lens, but, I do have hopes for the future in the few days left for me here.

The magpie fleeding as it appeared from the dining room window.

My host went out in a hurry after that and went to the lounge where the window there overlooks the other side of the garden and called me to check. I went there and the magpie was jumping in a hurry and hid behind some bushes. After that, I really gave up looking after it. I was moving in between the windows in the lounge with the camera hanging around my neck and waiting for a suitable chance to snap that thief! Anyway, no luck at all so I decided to get ready for the cab to pick me up to Cahir.

In Cahir, I've paid a visit again to the castle, and I was surprised at the amount of things that I didn't see in the first time I was there some days ago, when I was about to visit the Swiss Cottage. Many things to be seen and many stands to take and just watch that beautiful part of nature. An, in case you are blind, it is enough for you to step there and listen to the running river, the river Súir, going on and on. In fact there, I decided to be a bad boy. Yes, a bad boy. How? Simply, by using a high ISO value with a fast shutter speed. High ISO is not something you want to use in your photos, unless you are really capable of eliminating the noise coming out of the sensor. Anyway it was a trial, and when I get back home, we'll see if I can do some decent job out of these photos. While I was walking on a path beside the castle walls, the path drove me to some source of "noise" if I should say. Some really loud sound coming from the river. Finally, I reached the point when the water was gushing from no where virtually and crashing on some rocks. On tht spot, I've worked on my camera with various settings really, but all I remember was putting the camera on Tv mode (time value priority) and sitting the speed something between 1000 and 2000 (that is 1/x) and the ISO on 1000 and higher (and even used the highest value available, the 12800, which by the way is denoted by "H").

Water crashing on the water.

I got many shots in these settings and the water was, for the naked eye, beautifully frozen! I tried this as well with other objects, specially birds, but it was harder to make something of them. Anyway, there was some nice chances out there. But maybe one of the weirdest thing in the catch today was, that "memorabilia"...

 Couldn't agree further!

Now, into the castle. In the beginning, I didn't know that that gate which was half closed with some construction sign falling on its side beside it was really the gate to get into the castle and see it from the inside, well, after getting the ticket of course! I thought the location was closed when I saw the castle the first time I came to Cahir and spent one night in it.

I got inside, got the ticket and got into different halls and different chambers and rooms, and the stairs were so so so small. It was so hard climbing up on those stairs with a backpack and my camera bag on the side. In some cases, I was literally going down the stairs backwards because the space was so small to turn around and get down the normal way. After jumping here and there from one corner of the castle to another, I noticed in the main yard of the castle, some stairway tht goes down into the ground. I went down to find myself in a place that I think it would be suitable for a garrison. Of course, everything was made by solid rocks. The stairs were going downstairs and ending to some black gate with bars, exactly like in jails, but in the middle of this stairway, there was a relatively new stair going up and connecting to another side which, as it seems, was connected to this stair I was standing upon but fell down by time.

I climbed up that stair. It was so so narrow even though it was relatively new and made of metal. After that "bridge" to the other side, the stairs became even harder to climb and literally, I had to bend my back in like 90 degrees to go through. Finally, at the end, I was up on one of the towers, as if by magic! You go down and you end up being up!

The view from the tower was simply amazing. With even little waterfalls viewable, some flock of birds were also there and made a nice chance for some hunting again!

General view for Cahir from the top of the tower.

The main thing that captured my eyes is a crane (or a heron). It was so big even though it was so far away from me, but I was greatly disappointed with me lens that I wished I had a larger one with a nicer zooming to make it even bigger in the viewfinder.

 The crane on the edge of the small waterfall.

My 55-200mm was on its max when I shot this but still the crane was not that clear, and with the high ISO and high shutter speed things aren't any better. Anyway, I'm still hoping that when I get back home I will do a better pic out of those.

Beside the crane there were other guests. Swans and ducks. While I was shooting them continuously, the camera needed some time to process the images and hence there were stops in the sequences of images, which made it look like 2 different groups of images. However, this is not a big deal to me. I'm not making a story here!

After finishing from the castle I got into a gift shop and tried my best to pick up something for the family. Most of my shopping was to bring gifts for females rather than males actually. I asked the shop owner about the antiques shop on the other side of the street and he confirmed what I doubted about, and the shop was closed. He said that they have some branch in Dublin, but it is less likely I'm going to check it when I get back there before my final leave. 

Well, I'm still thinking and planning for what to do tomorrow. I'm still not sure. I think I've seen the majority of scenes in Cashel and Cahir, and despite the fact that my fisheye betrayed me today and some images appeared out of focus a little, I don't think I will re-take these images anyway. I guess I will sit down and watch for the magpie!