Racing Time…

Here we go, with a new year, and... some new load of problems I guess? Anyway, life a problem in its core I presume, right?
Well, in my previous post I was talking about doing a self-challenge as I used to do before and head to work with one camera and one lens (did that already with 50mm lens) and this time to be using 20mm lens. Anyway, for some technical reasons, I had to delay this for a while until I finish some experiments at home. Why? Because I'm using the intervalometer in shooting some time-lapse at home, and I do need the intervalometer to shoot long exposures as I'm planning, at work, if possible. So, I'm waiting!
Mentioning time-lapse, there is one big deal which occupied me for a while and I was not able to post about it in the previous post because I was simply busy processing the images and the video. Let's see…

Frozen

Refreshen
Source
In this shot I've used a continuous
light source focused on the glass
and the ice cubes in a dark
room and with a considerably long exposure.

I was encouraged to do this experiment after my work with the incense sticks and capturing smoke as well as doing a short time-lapse. Thus, I thought, why not work with a melting ice block? I did somewhat similar experiments before, doing long exposure for melting ice and the results were so-so I'd say. This time, as with the case with the incense sticks, I've planned to work with speedlites and take several shots. Originally, though, I was planning to do a real long exposure actually, and triggering the speedlites by sound every 1 minute or some other specific time period, but re-thinking the procedures and the capabilities, I changed my mind and decided to shoot normally with the intervalometer and capturing many photos and by this I would be a winner on both sides: Merging images as in double exposure or more than that, as well as forming a time-lapse for the whole process.

The set where the shooting took place, with 3 speedlites at work.

The main problem though was to make the ice block and how to make it interesting! After thinking thoroughly, and after noticing some candy tins which were prepared specially for some occasion I'm not aware of. Anyway, my brother helped me remove the golden paint on the tin, but still some work was left since the tin had some design. Not willing to paint it all over again, I've used balloons to cover the tin and make it all red (after felling it with marbles). Then, I've prepared a cylindrical canister open from two sides and filled it with water with the tin inside (hence the marbles to sink it down). I did face some problems here but let's not delve into these details, as they were about to drive me nuts!

The shoot in action.

Before the actual shooting takes place, I did practice on a glass in the same position where the ice block would be. I got the 3 speedlites to work perfectly as I need, despite the cumbersome settings or light modifiers I'm using here. I used 2 speedlites on the side, and one speedlite with a snoot to cast some light in the background even though, initially, I didn't want to do that in the first place, but then I thought it would be a good idea to separate the ice block from the pitched darkness of the background; However, in all 3 speedlites, I tried to use the minimum power to give just a hint about the boundaries and not illuminate everything (and this is also useful to save power more because I was not sure how long this process will be), and thus all speedlites were on powers less than 1/8 of the maximum.

Frosted Love
Time-lapse

It took me around 5 hours (or maybe a bit more) for the ice to melt down to considerable and acceptable amount (but not completely!). The hardest part was to remove that ice spot on the surface of the heart which seems to be there for hours and I was afraid that it won't melt down at all. I did melt it down a little but not completely (using a kitchen torch).

I had my lesson now for working with ice. It is probably the most unstable thing on planet Earth! You will notice how the ice block in the time-lapse moves around; Unfortunately, something I couldn't prevent or avoid. The white powder scattered around the block is actually salt which I used to stabilize the block in one place, but even with that, the block would rotate around itself as it was melting. You might have also noticed some purple spot in the lower right corner (and there are two of them if you checked the photo of the set above). These were clay (play-doh) pieces which I used to raise the acrylic board just a little to balance the block, but even with that, the block kept on moving left and right and I realized I would need salt here. For this reason, it was such an exhaustive work for 5 hours or so, even though I thought I would rest a bit while the process takes its own pace; I was completely wrong! I had to run often to the set to check its process and to adjust the block manually in between the shots. I'm happy though that the lighting from the speedlites kept consistency and there is almost no change in the light level in the video.

Defrosting Love

Finally, I didn't forget my major aim for this whole "little" project here, which is an image (and not a time-lapse video). With such a huge amount of images (more than 580 shots), I was a bit puzzled at what I'm aiming for, or more precisely, what images do I need to mimic the thawing of the ice (the time-lapse was in reverse so it was like if the heart is frosting not defrosting). Thus, I've set my mind to pick one image with 100 shots apart in between (approximately). The resulting image, Defrosting Love, was formed by blending the images using Lighten mode mostly but later needed some work with layer masks to hide some unneeded artifacts. The hurdle though was with the red tones as their saturation and lighting were a bit troublesome to tone down and keeping a natural level. Anyway, seems (just seems) I got it right.

Now, I still need to add some keywords to the image and get it ready to be uploaded to stock websites. Though I finished this little project a while ago, but I was really busy with other things around which kept me (or rather made me forget) about uploading this image. As for the time-lapse, I'm still reluctant to upload to stock websites (some of them accept footage) as it doesn't seem quite perfect, but I'm keeping my options open for the time being. I'm typing these words as I'm working on another project which hopefully I'll be posting about soon when it's over, and also I need to get ready for another idea which is cooking at the back of my head! I'm having a rain of ideas, and probably I should thank winter for it!

Finale

AC-E6N
AC Adapter for some Canon cameras,
including Canon EOS 7D.

This was a quick journey through a little project which I've done lately, and somehow it got me keen on trying more time-lapses, if possible. It also sparked my interest in getting one of those AC adapters for the camera and thus I wouldn't have to change the batteries often during the time-lapse shooting; It's quite critical to keep the camera untouched as much as possible. I asked about it around and the shop owner said it might be available in 3 weeks or so and I didn't really find it in listings of other shops around. I'm not going to order that with international shipping as well, as it's not really worth all that money for this item alone (I don't have anything else to order along with it). So, I guess all I can do for now is wait! 

Many ideas are running through my mind right now, and just to name few: Reviving the Scopa project which I've stopped months ago, and maybe, just maybe, I might try to go out at night like I used to do before and shoot something (crossing fingers to not encounter any annoyances). This is beside challenging myself with the one-camera one-lens challenge. 

Because of all of this "indulgence" with ideas, I really had little time to connect with myself and write a poem. I'm breaking my own promise to myself of writing at least one poem a month. I didn't compose any poem in December, and now January is on its beginnings, yet I'm not sure if I will write anything.

Despite this enthusiasm and this mind running with ideas, I'm on the contrary to all of that, tired. So tired. Of everything. Overthinking is taking its toll on me and I'm fighting back with whatever power left in me. This aside, I've noticed how much I'm getting frustrated and angry and simply irritated by simple things. They say this usually happens when a person keeps so much inside without venting or dealing with these feelings; All that would show later as a burst of anger against the silliest of things. This is what is happening to me really.

Deep inside me, there is a perplexing mix of feelings of love and hate, eagerness and despise, but the greatest of all of these feelings, is the fear from tomorrow...

Burning…

Things are becoming to overwhelming in this month. I was really going to postpone typing this blog post for another week, but here I am; Trying my best. Things are going slow to stand up again after the rain crisis and my room turning into a swimming pool. There remains some clutter to clear still though. With all of this and that, I'm trying to get my cameras going on again, as well as checking some of the photos in my arsenal to be uploaded to the stocks (and keeping some of them exclusive to some, as well). However, numerous things happening around me and inside me that all leave me just like paralyzed and unable to think clearly or even get the motive to work on anything I like at the current time.
Heavy-weight news are coming one by one, starting now with the change in policies for Flickr, after being acquired by SmugMug. The new change is to take effect in January, and in that time users with free accounts will be limited to 1000 images only (regardless of their sizes) - My account bears more than 2500+ images already. They are planning to delete old images till the limit is met, and thus more than half of my work will be deleted eventually. Registering as a pro-user is not an option as well. back when I used to pay for Flickr for a pro account, it was for $25/month, but now it is for $50/month (some even say it costs more than Photoshop does). For now, I've backed up all my albums on Flickr and compressed them and kept them safe in clouds, and I'm not sure where to go next to show my work. I've posted a Good-Bye note to my Flickr already and I've stopped posting anything new there already. And this happening only when I started to link my images from Flickr instead of posting them here directly, so I think I'm going back to my old methods of posting my photos here as I type my blog posts.

On the other hand, events are taking place in my workplace and some time by the next year, my workplace would be moved to another place. Other people (most of those I know) are excited about it because, as they see it, it is better; Yet, this is not the case with me, as the place is further away from home than the current location, and with me feeling my eyes' weaknesses taking the toll on me, the idea of moving further away to that area makes me gloomy a bit, specially if I would be needing to drive in the dark (winter mornings or rainy days like we are having right now mostly). Needless to say, I'm trying to cope with exhaustion (and failed already) as it is with my workplace now, what would be the situation with a location almost double the distance? And the traffic jams? All that lead me to think seriously of submitting a request for a "medical resignation" for my eyes problem with Retinits Pigmentosa. But then what? I just don't know…
Things are not any better on the personal and home fronts. Even though I didn't do any official diagnosis, but it seems I do have a touch (or maybe more than that) of depression. Mood swings, family affairs, flashbacks... all of that is just not doing any good and I'm really tired.
Usually I keep ranting till the end of the blog post but I couldn't keep it this time as it is at the core of being able to post this in the first place.

Burning

As I was idle with my camera for 2 weeks or more, with all the struggle with my mood, and the rain interference, I've finally managed to raise up and shake my head a bit to do something. Initially, the idea came about first time when I was burning some incense stick in my room (beside burning aromatic oils) to banish away the bad smell after being soaked with rain water in my room. In the mess, I just got perplexed with the view of these smoke lines going out of the incense. This is not the first time I work with smoke in fact, I've played before (burning some tissue paper though to get the smoke heavy and clear) but this time I had different ideas I wanted to implement.

Censer XXI
An old work with smoke photography.

The main idea this time with these burning incense sticks "was" to do a long exposure in combination with flash strokes; It does sound like the stroboscopic functionality, but I'm talking here about a really long exposure, in minutes, for the duration of the burning incense completely. In rough estimation, one of these sticks would need about 30 minutes to burn completely. This essentially was the first impression or idea that occurred to me (and it took me days to get myself to move and do something about it). However, things had to change drastically as I started the practical side of the idea here. Mainly, the idea swept from being a long exposure with stroboscopic effect, to a regular time-lapse-like shooting (frames at specific assigned time) and trying to combine all these, as much as possible, to get an overall effect.

Sample shot from the series

At time of typing this blog post, I didn't proceed with the merging process for all these shots (more than 80 number), but I'm offering here a sample shot.  To get some inspiration, I've checked Pinterest to get some ideas further and I've seen some photographers who did digitally colored their smoke shots, and I think this is what I will be doing even though it is a bit further away from the "authenticity" measure. The Censer series which was done long time ago had been colored using gels and it is definitely to work with. However, I need to think about my choice of colors to overlay over the final image(s), as most of the images of smokes I've seen been colored as a rainbow. You can see from the sample shot as well that I do need to work on my background as well and this black cloth is not suitable here (actually it got brighter as I processed the images to lighten the smoke). I just hope darkening the background would be easier later in the process.

The set used to shoot the incense sticks.

The shooting and its set is a story on its own, starting with my everlasting nightmare: Tables. Even though I got this table from my sister which is higher and with larger area (far better than tea tables I used to work with mostly), I did have this problem in setting everything in proper level, specifically the speedlites with the incense sticks which were pinned to this Styrofoam box. The camera level was also low and I had to bend my back for long times (by the end of the shoot I got a chair though). To add to my hurdles, my 50mm lens is malfunctioning now and I'm not sure what to do about it next. Probably I'll try to fix it if it possible at some workshop if any exists here! For now, I've combined my 20mm Voigtländer lens with a teleconverter which doubles the focal length to 40mm. This did it for now, but the downside is that the aperture cannot go wider than f/7.1 (i.e. the f-number cannot be less than f/7.1) and of course this is not quite useful if I'm planning to do any bokeh effect in the background. I'm checking my options now but I'm so overwhelmed that I think I will keep this for later to see.
Now, to business for those who would like to read what this set above is all about (I'm sure professionals don't need to know what I'm doing here):

• Far left (the silver curtain): This is a car shade I've kept specifically to be used as a reflector. Frankly, probably didn't do much for the shoot here.
• The white box at the center is the Styrofoam which I used to pin the incense sticks.
• The speedlite on the table between the camera and the Styrofoam is connected to the camera by cable and worked as a master without triggering itself. I've used this first to be able to use the HSS (high speed) option and shoot beyond the sync speed because I've been told high speed shooting is required for capturing the smoke. Turned out to be not true and the HSS didn't help at all so I was back to normal sync speed (1/250s).
• The two speedlites (only one obvious in the image) are the main source of light here. I was planning to use one, but then as I wanted to empower the light in HSS mode I've brought in a second one. But then went back to normal sync speed and left the second addition as it is. Took me a while to figure out a suitable technique and finally I've placed a white cardboard behind them and reflected their light from that surface. Their power was reduced as much as possible with the most significant effect; This is mainly to save power as much as possible with long continuous shooting, and to keep the flash light duration as short as possible. Working in Manual mode, 1/8 of power was enough for both. 
• One cardboard was placed between the speedlites and the camera to block any stray light causing flare. Flare was a problem in the beginning and some annoying brightness was present when I started testing and this black "flag" solved the problem, initially.

It was a long shoot made on intervals of 30 seconds for 30 minutes (in addition to some manual shots done after the program on the intervalometer was fully executed). Processing the images in a haste collectively did make the background brighter than it originally was and the lines in the background showed clearly now, so I hope those can be eliminated later as I work on it. Initially and just for fun, I've created this short time-lapse in reverse.

Well, I didn't bother adding an audio. This said and done, I'm still looking for opportunities to do a long exposure using speedlites triggered at specific intervals of time, in stroboscopic manner, and thus creating a multi-exposure-like image in the same frame of these burning incense sticks. It needs a bit of research so let's hope I get the time to do this. I'm doubting that traditional methods would do here and probably controlling the speedlites with a third party device is required here.

Finale

Well, I guess after ranting in the intro of this blog post maybe I don't have much to state here, but I did in fact work on a short poem, which I've called Just Dance:

Just Dance

In whatever land there is to be
long forgone, or beyond many a sea
Dance!
In whatever Heaven there to be
or wherever gone that soul of me
Glance!

Pretty young to handle all the romance
sweet sixteen or eighteen set to dance
Be!
Sleepless nights all there is in the stance
That is the passion and its annoyance
See!

Praying though in distress or through the glee
however the soul of yours is free
Glance!
Solitude, watching is all to be
under the years and tears over me
Now, bye bye,
Just,

Dance

 

The rhyming scheme goes by A-A-B-A-A-B/B-A-A-B-A-A (which seems to be called, partially, Caudate) and with metering as (9,9,1,9,9,1) except for the last stanza, in which this order of meter was broken. I had a real struggle to complete this one though and I was somewhat lost in thought. To tell the truth, I'm not so convinced about it but I had to take it off my back and post it. So far, I got 2 positive feedback despite being clearly hard to understand as someone noted.

Now, it is clear from all these events and all that struggle (and some more to come concerning my cars), I do really need a vacation. A real one, with traveling. I know, I've kept saying this for almost a year now or more and still didn't do anything about it. I just keep asking myself, why can't I just have some rest on my own? 

I need to wind myself now and get ready to do some phone calls (I hate phone calls) to get some insurance work done (and paid) and finish with the annual check up for the cars, with one of them still in the garage for a month now... might be the time to get rid of it but I'm not sure yet. The idea of taking so many decisions all at once successively is just overwhelming that makes me want to go to bed and just sleep. A really long sleep, and giving the world my back with little care, if any…