Kika VII…

This is somewhat a sad post. As I'm typing these words, our canary (which I've posted about in the previous post) had died after some weird illness or condition. It's a perplexing feeling really; Part of me is sad and part of me is happy. I'm sad because he is dead, and happy because he finally left the damn cage which I wanted to take him off from but couldn't; Because no one cared, and no one liked the idea. I didn't give him a name (and I don't even know if it is a male indeed), but all I can say is, RIP Canary, I'll miss you…

 On a side note, I've also been under some allergy attack, which is gone by now but a slight cough remains. The cough, though, leaves such an awful taste sometimes; Something metallic or like breathing through some plastic pipe! I just hope I won't be needing Seretide for this. I think I had just about enough for 2 weeks of time of my life!

Little Announcement

Just before proceeding with the main post, I wanted to state that I've finally uploaded ALL the batches of images that were on the queue! And now, it is time for me to work with some NEW images that I've shot recently and prepare some of them to be uploaded the stocks. 

The new uploaded batches

 

Typically, and as usual, the selfies were uploaded to Mostphotos exclusively. The rest are spread across Canstockphoto, Dreamstime and 123RF. However, at the moment of typing this, 123RF uploads are still under review (typical) while the rest had been accepted in the same day (with few rejects). Not only that, but also one of the images (1^st in 4^th row) had been sold already via Dreamstime! I remember in the old days when Dreamstime's reviewing process used to take a considerable time but things had been faster now and even more promising!
There is still one image that I didn't upload and it is ought to be exclusively on Dreamstime and that is Killing Evil (1^st in 2^nd row) which is actually a PNG with a transparent background, and thus considered a vector. I've uploaded it several times but it is not getting through and I need to check back on that later. 

Kika VII

So, we arrive at Kika's photo-challenge for Week 7, which had somewhat a weird title for it, and in fact it was not possible to put it all in a single hashtag. The challenge was about combining unexpected items or objects. I have to admit I got my head spinning around and I didn't know what to shoot here, thus I referred back to my arsenal of shots and started playing around. I didn't want to skip a single challenge at this point!

Red Escape II

The shot was taken back in March 2020, where I was working with some random ideas of mixing feathers and water, so I thought it is the right mix for this photo challenge. I've shot many in this series of feathers and water, using both high-speed and stroboscopic flash (Red Escape is apparently shot with stroboscopic flash). The problem (kind of) was that, that I did post this photo back then when I've created it. So, just to make things a bit different I've decided to make a little edit and change the jar color to blue, which I thinks adds even more contrast better than the original (where the water was reddish). All these shots in the series are uploaded to my various stock accounts (you can check one of them by clicking the frame at the end of this post).
Things though did not stop at this photo for this challenge, just yet.

Through H-Alpha

Funny thing is that before the announcement of this photo-challenge by Kika, I did some photo-shoot in the yard at home as I was experimenting with some concepts, as well as trying to practice some editing techniques (those related to creating pastel-like images). Along the way and since I was carrying my two cameras (regular and modified) with some filters, I've shot Through H-Alpha using my H-Alpha filter holding it in front of my (beloved) Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens; By hand of course! I think this raises this image of combining unexpected items (a filter and a fisheye lens!) but also combines 2 scenes into one; A normal one and a filtered one. It did require a considerable work with layer masks and levels to correct the colors outside the circle and enhancing those within the circle as an infrared shot should be, somehow. The shot was, of course, taken with my modified camera, thus even the area outside the filter was tinted because of the infrared coming from the sun. The image originally was all shades of red!

Pastel-ization

As I've mentioned already (in this post and probably previous ones), I'm trying to work on some new technique in editing, but so far, I didn't practice much of it. Most probably I would need to work on old shots from my arsenal instead of working on new ones. However, here are some shots that were relatively new in fact and shot specifically for this edit.

عَـطْـفْ (Bending)

The work here is actually inspired by a Portuguese lady artist and photographer which I, unfortunately, can't recall her name; I've seen an article (interview) with her in one of those Google suggested pages on my phone. Anyway, looking at her images and reading swiftly through the interview, I kind of managed to take the main points of such a style:

1. Saturated colors.
2. Somewhat happy colors.
3. Bright colors.

Thus, I was working on these key features. Of course, the heavy work relies on editing rather than in-camera work. However, I guess not all subjects are suitable for this type of style. Nevertheless, one wouldn't know unless one tries!

Bougainvillian Curve

One of the key points in "shooting" the images, as the Portuguese photographer stated, is shooting when the sun is high up (noon time). However, I did shoot when the sun was just rising on the yard at home, and I think I do now understand why did she mention this point specifically; Shadows and dark tones are not good candidates for such a technique! Not only shadows in fact but darker tones in general so it is better to avoid them as much as possible I guess. As can be seen above in Bending and Bougainvillian Curve, the dark black pots of the bougainvilleas are hard to render in such technique and they feel much like being obtrusive. Just to aid the image a bit here I've added a tone or two to the black or the shadows in these images. It's clear  now why the midday sun is the best for such a technique of "editing".
As I've stated, I didn't work with this editing technique much still and maybe I did some photo here and there (one of them was posted for Kika's photo-challenge). I've been swept away with other photo-shooting and, as usual, domestic issues. Hopefully I will attend to this technique further in the future and try to have a grasp on it.

Finale

I consider myself lucky to finish this blog post actually. With all the tired body and the stack of "work" to do (not related to my actual job nor to photography) and I managed to finish this blog post - but I had to start earlier than usual! Ah well…
I'm having an idea of starting a blog post in Arabic for my Arabic blog, which I didn't post in for a long time now. The post would be about my experience in shooting bubbles, which I will post here in time, as I'm trying to go chronologically here in this blog with all the images that I've taken in the past few weeks. The bubbles shoot was a big deal and I've come out with loads of images (some of them even uploaded to stocks already). However, the bulk of them are not yet prepared to be uploaded. I'll keep that talk for another time.
I've been also taken by astrology lately; An old passion and interest that got re-kindled for a while now (even before COVID time) and I've been reading texts here and there and watching videos about topics and all that. But this is a bad habit actually and I know, because there are priorities I need to tend to. This also brings to my mind the passion for Conlangs which I didn't attend to, and specially after the lock-down of my other Instagram account, @Ayvarith. Funny how this blog was first started to talk about the Conlang of Ayvarith but then changed to other topics completely. Despite being taken over by photography, Ayvarith still has a place in my heart, and it might get re-kindled after some time, along with other Conlangs and Conscripts. Who knows?
On a domestic level, my isolation is getting tighter and tighter and I barely leave my room for few minutes (mainly to make me coffee). The mental disconnect is getting quite hard to fix in this house and nothing seems to make sense to me, neither I make sense to anyone else. On a mental level, ghosts from the past keep visit me unexpectedly with the thoughts "Why did it happen that way?" or "How did it happen that way?". Quite useless thoughts and there is nothing I can do about them, but the stress that loads on my mind because of the house keeps recalling these memories. How I wish I could just afford my own place and stay alone… At least if such memories come, they would visit without a stress…

Collective…

As a starter, I'm really not sure how am I typing this blog post with my continuous sleeping problems which are adorned with marvelous migraines from time to time during this week. Anyway, since I don't have much material for this post, I think it will be somewhat a quickie one.
In a continuation for my previous post, I'm still working on my project of shooting profiles (side shot) in infrared using only a candle. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this in my previous post, but I've decided to call this project The Candle People. Things are now out of the profiles section as well, and I've started to shoot some face-front shots as well, upon request.

Abdullah A. (profile)

Abdullah A. (halfie)

So far, there had been only two requests to re-do the candle shots and change the profile look to the face-front look. Both from nephews. My first nephew did not like the look of his nose in such profile. Well, I guess many people are displeased with their noses nowadays (me included but I don't tend to hide it). However, I'm not expecting from people to understand the artistic values the way I see it through. In profile shots, I do appreciate the contour and the dramatic light and look of the face rather than the "beauty" of the person. Personally, beauty has nothing to do with this little project of mine. It is about evoking emotions via light and contour with no or little facial expressions. However, I've complied to the request and I still like the results. My first trial with him was to shoot a "halfie", but this halfie is not exactly done by cropping the face (even though it is a little) but by implying heavy shadows to half of the face (mainly by editing). This halfie might have a strange effect on the size of the eye here; I didn't change the size of the eye while editing, but it seems to me that is kind of large. Might be my imagination?

Abdullah A. (front)

Anyway, the other frontal shot here for Abdullah A was not exactly a halfie. Too bad though I had to crop a little too much here to balance the image because while shooting (using burst mode) the head was moving and one of the ears did not show completely in the image, which in turn forced me to crop a little from the other (and that meant cropping from the whole image and just from the side because I tend to keep the aspect ratio). On purpose here, I told my nephew to look up which I think gives a better emotional expression (at work with the forehead lines). To have some dramatic look (or to increase it so to say) I've resorted to an old technique which involves the usage of the High Pass filter in Photoshop. This of course exaggerated the noise level as well but I didn't bother to clean much of it here because the image in the first place is not intended to be "soft" in looks. This look, upward, seems to be a "hack" on its own to have a dramatic look. I've applied already with my other nephew who requested a re-shoot and seems to be OK. As I'm typing this there are still some from this series that needs to be processed yet.

Collective Ideas

Meanwhile, as I'm trying to work on the Candle People project, a flow of ideas somehow ticked my mind lately. At some level, I think the Candle People is one of these projects that just doesn't have a dead line. But it is ongoing whenever the chance shows up. Anyway, meanwhile, I think I will be back to one of my old passions, and it is a tiresome one actually, and that is: High Speed photography.
I didn't formulate a concrete idea about the subject but I'm intending to use the full set of speedlites in my arsenal (7 at the moment). I didn't make up my mind yet about how to set them up, but I think there would be two main methods or sets: a) Manual, and b) With an external trigger.

General scheme for the setup

First of all, sorry for the bad sketch here (and the bad scanning, done with my mobile in bad lighting conditions). As you can see here, this is the intended general setup that I'm thinking of for method A; the manual shooting. What I mean by manual shooting here is that I would control the camera manually with a master speedlite light on it to control other speedlites on the set. Meanwhile, the master will not shoot, but only responsible to give out the command to shoot to the slave speedlites. What I'm intending to do here is (and let's hope it works out well), is to use a very low flash power (if I can, lower than 1/32) and try to shoot using burst mood in hope that the low power consumption at this level of power would help on quick recycling and re-shooting quickly. I wouldn't know if this will work until I try! It would be a shame if it doesn't work that way though because with such number of speedlites, things could be balanced out somehow. Of course the position of the speedlites and direction is subject to change accordingly when the practical work is ongoing.
As for method B, the same schematic above applies, but the master speedlite is placed on the set as well and would be connected to a trigger. A laser trigger (which I failed using before). In previous times, I've used this trigger in connection to the camera itself but researching a bit and asking some professionals, I figured that the lag time (the time for the signal to travel from the trigger to the camera) is considerably long, making capturing the exact moment quite hard. Most professionals, as it seems, connect the trigger to the speedlite and not the camera and thus reducing the lag time considerably. I can connect one master to be triggered in that way and set others to slaves and all should (theoretically) shoot about the same moment. However, in this method, I'm supposed to leave the shutter open and work on the subject and speedlites with the trigger. For this, such method must be done in a dark environment, or maybe some ND filter on the lens would do? Not sure. We'll see about that. And like the situation in method A, the power is supposed to be set low for a quick recycling time and low power consumption.
Thinking about it, just theoretically, it seems that method A is favorable, despite my wish to get my old trigger working again since I failed using it many times. But if the burst mode works well in such setup, then things are set and I don't think I will try method B. The hardest part though remain: To setup my gear to work!

Finale

Beside the idea mentioned above, I'm thinking of other things as well but no need to put all the eggs in one basket. There had been also some simple shootings with my mobile for some geological stuff around my workplace and I've even uploaded one of the images to the stocks. I didn't upload to them in a long time.
With me now putting the contest on Duolingo behind my back, after some incidence of cheating as I've discovered, I've realized now the big mistake I've done in using this platform. I'm now trying to be more at ease and back to learn the language on my own pace instead of trying to gain more points and be leading the "score board" (or whatever they call it). In fact, I've had more time to post some articles in the Arabic forum after deserting the forum for quite a while. I've realized now how people do appreciate these posts which have some delicate matters and tips about Arabic that Duolingo is not providing for those who really want to learn the language. This made me think: What is really made for me? What I'm really supposed to do? I think this appreciation and this enthusiasm is the answer. Thinking about it, what did I really gain from being #1 on these leaderboard contests or whatever? Nothing but stress. While the solution was quite easy but I didn't see it back then; To leave these contests and focus on education and learning, and teaching those who need to. After turning off the "public" settings on Duolingo (which removes the leading board and all these scores stuff), I do feel such a relief. I have no more time and more organization capability for my time. I won't regret this.
Now, it's time to post this and go and figure my next move. A poem, or a new photo, or maybe a new article for the Arabic Duolingo forum. I can't believe it is weekend already. I'm perplexed as to whether I should sleep more, or work more on the things I like to do. or maybe play more. Two days for a weekend are just not enough… Not enough to forget what I need to forget out of my life…

Huaweific…

Coping with this weather, still. And yet, people don't call me a superman or anything. Ah well. On the other hand, I'm kind of running out of ideas with my camera; Well, I do have ideas, but no time or power to do them still. Specially after adding more languages to my Duolingo and taking my time in doing the exercises daily. I'm somewhat taking it seriously here, and if I have the power I would have added more languages as well. Well, who knows; I might, one day.
However, away from the bulky camera and such, I've found a vent (or maybe you want to call it a breach) in that photo-shooting activity by sorting things out with my phone. Don't get me wrong though, I still love my camera; Yes, the very bulky camera. However, there are times when we have to do things that we are usually not into just to get what we want to! (Did I say that right?)

Huaweifying

Well, away from all the fuss about Huawei and the crappy politics (and lies), I have to say that I do like my phone. I would also like to try their upcoming operating system but probably since I have a working phone here I would have to wait a bit to see how things develop in the near future.
Anyway, I'm here about art. I've discovered that Huawei do have a photography contest which is on the run for some years now. Luckily, the deadline for this one will be by the end of July (and I thought it was by the end of June actually) which gives me some time to try stuff. Of course, as you may have guessed already, the first and utmost important condition is that the photos must be taken with a Huawei phone. And that is part of the challenge for me, in fact.
I was reluctant to participate first, and with the nearing end of June, I thought "Ah well, I have no ideas to shoot anything and maybe I should pass this," but then Ta Da! I've realized it's the end of July not June! So, my engines got to work again and I'm really trying to shoot with my phone, even though I kind of never liked this process (used to the more versatile options of a DSLR) but it proved to be a fun-activity, and the main key-point that may push me to shoot further, or at least try to, is the light-weight and the easy movement with the phone. But there are limitations of course which I will try to brief out after a while below.

Macro Feather

Being creative and having a variety of options with phone-photography would somewhat require some special sets of lenses (to gain broader aspects and view, as well creativity potential). However, I've always believed in innovation. One of the most common tricks to do macro photography with your phone is to use a water drop on the lens (after covering the lens with some transparent protection like tape for example), and this is what I did here with Macro Feather shot. I've saved this feather to shoot with my DSLR in fact, but since we are at it, I've decided to work now with my Huawei. Of course it is a normal shot and not very special and I'm not expecting it to be that "attention seeker" in the contest, but after all it is a good engine grease; My engine greasing that is.

The first trial

In Macro Feather, I had a problem with my choice of crop because there was some black space all around the shot. In the beginning I've left the shot in its original orientation (portrait orientation), and cropped all black spaces leaving just vertical lines standing there, but then I thought maybe I should leave a cue or a hint about the object instead of being just completely abstract, so I re-edited the shot again and cropped some black space and left some, beside tilting the image 90^o to the right. This is just to give a hint of the edge here. However, seeing how (somewhat) the camera app on my phone is limited and looking for some more editing capabilities, specially with RAW images which my Huawei can shoot, I've looked for some alternatives and so I've found and picked Pixlr, which can get some work done, and in fact, Macro Feather also underwent Pixlr for some sharpening and contrast (and I think some Hue and Saturation fixes). But there are other options in this app that got me interested a bit further, like the "double exposure" option.

Eye On Coffee

To be honest, I didn't think of using the "Double Exposure" option in Pixlr until my attempts to shoot reflections off a mirror covered in coffee did fail drastically (and I don't have cooperative family members to help out with the work). Thus, I thought "why not shoot separate images and combine them and see what we can do then?" And do I did! It took me a bit to figure out how to use this option in the app, but the delicacy of the work is not a match for the typical mouse and Photoshop work with layers on PC or laptop. But I think it is somewhat an acceptable degree here. There were some filters (outside the app if I remember) that I did use to enhance the looks as well, and of course there was the cropping all things related to that. The thing is, I'm not sure if this is considered legal for Huawei's contest or not! They did mention that the image MUST be taken with a Huawei phone, and it is fine to use a third party app on the phone to edit the photo, but no mention about merging photos and montage or collage! There is only one way to know, and that's to upload it!
This is it for now with my Huawei photo-shoots, and I'm still trying to do more ideas in that venture as I'm typing these words, but I got swept away with many things so I didn't have enough time to try many things yet.

Thoughts and Finale

I've mentioned earlier that I had my own thoughts about this trend of phone photography. There are definitely advantages and disadvantages here, but probably the cons overwhelm the pros for my case here. Nevertheless, it is a source of juicing ideas out of my brain somehow. Probably the biggest and sole advantage of phone photography is the mobility and the relative ease in which one can handle it. Probably, to me, this is the sole and the only advantage that I can see in using the smartphone to take photos (on an artistic level and not merely documenting).
Now, to the disadvantages, there are a number of them on my list, and probably I've always argued about the size of the sensor relative to the number of pixels and how that affects the clarity of the image and the print size in production later on (if there is need to be for printing), but I won't go to that right now as I'm speaking here solely about the "operation" of photo shooting by the phone.
Probably the prime disadvantage for me here, is the cumbersome controls and options. Like, the resolution would change by changing the mode of shooting in the camera (Max is 20MP, but it comes down to 12MP for maximum in some modes). Shooting in RAW is, also, a matter of mode changing (only allowed in the PRO mode). Ironically as well, the PRO mode does have a shutter speed control, ISO control, EV control... etc, but NOT aperture control. To control the aperture alone, one must use the Aperture mode which controls only the aperture without any other controls. It's a mess of options and I'm not sure if this is only in my Huawei phone or in other phones and models as well.
Another thing that makes it such a cumbersome operation is the flash control. One might be able to control the flash in the phone itself but usually in a "higher" level of photography we tend to move the light source away from the camera to add depth to the image. I know that there are probably some innovative lighting solutions that can be controlled with smartphones but of course I won't be venturing into that yet. Not now, not in the near future. For this reason, I've been using some external light sources (LED torches) when shooting, as in the case of Macro Feather and Eye On Coffee.
There are a number of stuff that I still didn't get a hang of them yet, like how long exposure works (there is a special mode for Light Painting) and a number of other options (and panoramas as well) but I'm sure they are not as "trendy" as a real DSLR or camera in general would be. There is also no remote control, so the timer is my only choice to take selfies if need raises. There is no "time fixing" to do long exposures, but probably there are other apps that are specialized in this process, and I do believe that most options are controlled via AI and simulations rather than real "light painting" or "long exposure" effects and looks.
Still though, I'm still trying to have fun and try as much as I can with this phone. Currently, I've been working on a pinhole made out of cardboard fixed on the lens. I didn't take any serious shot yet (otherwise I would have posted it here already), and still, I'm trying to watch videos and surfing Pinterest to get inspired, if possible!
All in all, I won''t be optimistic here at all of course. It is my first try to enter a contest based solely on phone photography (a.k.a. Phonography) and I'm trying to have fun as much as possible. There are of course those add-ons that can be added to the lens to extend its capabilities but I'll keep my approach simple and more into DIY. I would be wasting money on that ONLY if I'm taking it seriously, and that won't happen in the near future. Let's see what to shoot next now…

Diaspora…

Saying "Exhausted" is not enough to fulfill the description of the current situation. At some point, I thought I would need some dose of adrenaline, and some Prozac at other times, just to get me through the past 2 weeks.
Rolling over many ideas, I kept my gear and camera scattered around the place, and that would require one day indeed to be collected back again. Some ideas were simple, but I was hoping to get through the project with something acceptable.

Spotting Red

Many props and items have been purchased or improvised trying to establish some ideas for some photos. I have to say that this project, The Color Red, was beneficial at some point for making my mind run wild and made me connect to my world; trying to express feelings by using the power of still life and setups. Something I rarely do in fact.

Broken Love (I)

The first thing to do was to repeat the rose and ice heart experiment according to recommendations given by the leader of the group. The new instructions involve removing the random petals and including the rose into the ice mold. That proved to be challenging somewhat, since the rose went afloat and froze just like that. Breaking the ice mold (resembling a broken heart) caused the rose itself to "break!" You can see that clearly in Broken Love (I). The rose being afloat was not a good "view," so to say. Thus, there was a third (and a final) trial.

Frozen (I)

Frozen (II)

The last trial involved doing layers of ice to stabilize the rose inside the mold. This was done in two days of time by pouring a layer of water and wait for it to freeze, then pour another layer and wait for it to freeze and so on till the pan or cast is filled (almost). I had to compromise here with the idea of freezing a boiling water (to make a transparent ice) as I did in the previous 2 trials. However, the shape and the translucence of the mold was even better that way! I liked it shape so I snapped several shots as it is without breaking it first as can be seen in Frozen (I,II). I had to break the mold then to mimic the main idea in mind…

Murder

Breaking the mold was a challenge by itself. This is because the ice was formed into layers and not frozen all as once piece. This made cracking the ice out of uniformity and was hard to be done in a soft and easy way like the previous trials. Had to hammer so hard and then collect the scattered blocks into one position trying to make a heart shape (somewhat!). At this point I've removed the plastic piece underneath the block (which I used to give some reflections); this would help keep the blocks stable and not easy to slide off the table. I cropped the final image in somewhat panoramic format to give more direction for the water (blood) coming out of the heart.

Murder (II)

A friend of mine then suggested to change the colors (in fact he was pointing out to doing the experiment all over again), making the heart red if possible. Hence, I thought of using the typical channel swap method which is usually used in infrared photography, where the Red and Blue channels of the image are swapped. However, upon inspection by the leader of the group, Murder was favored more (probably for its calm atmosphere). According to him, this can go into contests as well. I'm happy that I've finally made something!

愛 (love)

The "Red" project didn't stop at that point still though. I kept on trying to do more ideas. Many ideas proved problematic, and more problematic even was to spend valuable time trying to achieve them instead of skipping to other ideas on the queue. Painting strawberries, for example, was one of those ideas which I've abandoned for good (but came back later in another form as will be shown). The next idea on the line was simple: a mother and daughter writing the word "love" in Chinese. I chose that word specifically for its duality: it is the word for "love" and it has a radical for "heart" used in it. You can see above that the word "heart" is painted in red. Well, my writing wasn't that good specially that the brush used is not calligraphic in nature (Chinese calligraphy uses special kind of brushes and special types of inks). Anyway, I used the help of my sister and her daughter to show their hands with the brushes as seen above. Setting the speedlites was a hurdle, as I was trying to depend on camera settings and light setting as much as possible to approximate the scene to a high-key. I've reflected 2 speedlites on the sides off large white surfaces (papers or so) while a third speedlite was held in one hand with a "bulb" diffuser. Lot of work had to be done in Photoshop though, to fix the colors and contrast and also flip my niece's hand to make it a left hand (but the edit was a fail and the I uploaded the original as it is to stock sites). The image anyway did not pass the sorting process, but it was accepted in a number of stock sites.

Artificial Nature

I stopped for a while from the project Red, and chose to work with something else. I thought I was over with it back then but I got struck with some idea, but it involved editing more than just mere photography. However, the concept is the same one I was thinking about with strawberries before, and in fact I was looking for strawberries first, but then I realized working with apples is more appealing because of the larger size. The idea about the food consumption in our modern world and how it is "edited" with genetics. Without going into the details of the make of such "design" but opinions were mixed between a pro and a con about this edit. Personally, I do feel there is something missing but I can't put my finger on it yet.
The funny thing about this shoot though is the improvised "cube" or "tent" for lighting. Three large white surfaces (or hard papers, or whatever) were placed as a background and on two sides, while placing 2 halves of a car shade on the top and at bottom. Using only two 580EX II speedlites and each one of them is pointing to the opposite side, the lighting was good enough and almost similar to that of a cube or a tent usually used for product photography. The idea is to bounce the light from one surface to another just like the beams inside the microwave would do. That way, the scene is supposed to be lighted from all directions.

Side Dishes

In between those "red" photos, there were some older ideas were put on queue to be done. Specifically, some ideas related to the marbles' images I've done before. As suggested by a friend, an image of an eye reflected into the glass marble would be a better idea. For this idea, I was going to use my brother to sit behind the marble, but a better idea and more stable one was to use my laptop as a background.

They Are Watching…

The drawback here was the inability to fit the eye image to be completely full screen, and because of that some white lines appear on its sides. I've simply loaded the image into Photoshop and put the window on full screen. I had to use some extra stack on the top of the keyboard and then put the marble on top of the that stack, upon an acrylic sheet I usually use for reflections. This was essential as the keyboard was getting into the final image and this was undesirable.
In the beginning I was trying to fit the marble or the whole scene into the frame but then I realized a crop is inevitable.In fact, adding more space to the image and cropping later would give more flexibility in terms of design and placement for the marble and its reflection. In the editing phase, despite cleaning that sheet, I had to work for long time on cleaning the area below the marble.

They Are Watching (II)…

As I was working I had this idea of doing an inversion into an inversion. That is, inverting the eye image, and then inverting the image while processing it in Photoshop. When that was done, I've rotated the image for 180 degrees upside down. Why? Not sure. But it looked more pleasant that way. However, the overall look still not so appealing, probably because of the blue and black combination. The eye reflection here is also weak and somewhat lost despite the simplicity of the image. I'm eager to show the first to be sorted, but not the second! I'm sure the second would not have any chances.

Another side dish was served to me on Wednesday is when I got the news for the arrival of my second camera (finally!). It is another EOS 7D which I purchased from a friend and then sent it to LifePixel for conversion to a full-spectrum; That is, supposedly capturing infrared and ultraviolet spectra. Just as a simple test, I've tried this selfie while standing next to a glass door allowing the sun to come in, and also using the on-camera flash to quicken the shutter speed a bit (at ISO400). Interestingly, as I was working on LiveView (essential for focusing precisely), with the absence of clear IR sources (e.g. sun, flash), the scene would be as it is in normal images (i.e. the shot is not reddish). My initial position was in front of a mirror with CFL lamp on top, and since such lamps do not issue any significant IR radiation (and has a coating inside that blocks UV), the image in the LiveView was plain normal. The IR influence did not appear in a clear way until I moved near the glass door. More ventures need to be explored in that field, specifically when it comes to panoramas. The selfie you see here is plain and direct from camera RAW without any modification (except for resizing of course).

Finale

Many things are going and racing through my mind, which makes me more serious about having a vacation away from my camera a bit. However, having a vacation from my camera doesn't mean not, supposedly, stopping the experiments. I do have special concerns as I plan to jump further with my panorama processing, and I'm thinking seriously of putting my relatively-new Voigtländer 20mm f/3.5 lens into work with panoramas, and my initial checking tells that I wouldn't have to re-calibrate my VR-Head for this new combination of camera-lens. It needs time for further testing and inspecting and check that no parallax-error or minimal parallax-error is achieved with this lens without re-calibrating the whole set. If re-calibrating is required, I might give up the idea. The reason for going after this, is my belief that the optics quality is better with this lens more than my common and usual Canon EF 15mm lens. Another testing series should check for the amount of chromatic aberrations. In my previous shots like 愛 (love), which was shot with the 20mm Voigtländer at f/18, the aberrations were somewhat visible on close inspection. However, the final say is to be told only by direct comparison between the two lenses taking shots for the same scene under the same circumstances. On the other hand, I need to look after possibilities of doing HDR shots with my newly-converted camera, as well as shooting panoramas as I do with my normal camera.
I'm not sure when I would carry all these plans, because I'm thinking of resting for a while for real and try to organize my life all over again. Well, I think I'm failing at this already but I might do something at least. Heck, just thinking of my gear which I need to pack back into the proper places I get a shiver down my spine! It is not only the camera that is giving me some stressful times, but everything else around me seems to be doing so. I can almost swear that if I was a brick, I could have been cracked or smashed already for such amount of mental stress. Anyway, who cares… and I'm trying not to care, the best to my capability…

The Charnagút

The Charnagút

Here you find a scan for my own sketch of the Charnagut. I did not plan for this shape in the beginning but it was my hand that works separated from my imagination and mind. The scan looks weird with grey blocks as you can see, because the scan was done on 2 parts then combined together. The sketching book was so large for the scanner to take it all.
The sword looks small so I had to lengthen it a bit after the scan.
The work is going on now on vectorizing parts of the sword, and then each part of it shall be rasterized and be as an image by itself. I'm pushing far behind my abilities, this is what I think. I'm not an artist after all.

I can barely think clearly these days.... work... home..... everything is stressing me out. Sometimes I do think really of leaving work and do something else related to art... something that keeps me free instead of being like a slave or a prisoner to the stupid working conditions and laws in this state.

I got myself a little notebook lately, with a special green pen specifically for this note. It is to record any ideas I might encounter suddenly or any words of poetry that I might use later on. You don't know when are you going to use such things one day.

Today, Friday, I hope I would have a brainstorm to write something in Alexnader's story... I've passed the 2000 limit already (or to be so soon). I finished recording all the voice clips for all the previous parts (1-5), and now the part for the sound effects comes. After that I have to figure out a way to pin it down on the web.