Geltani Galore…

Well, this is a quick wrap, since I didn't post anything last week (and in fact I was not going to this week as well!).
Life is going slowly in this heat. Man, I wish I can sleep and wake up and it is winter again. Not much action with my camera lately but I do have some plans that are on my waiting list. Been trying to do some clumsy DIY stuff with a Kleenex box (yes, tissue paper box) and make it as a light modifier for my flashgun (Canon 580EXII), but it was a failure so far. Never mind anyway, it was not a big deal but something to get active a bit. I have other plans in my head now.

The poor box.
Let's not go about how I made it. Should be obvious.

Ramadhan is here already, so blessed and happy Ramadhan. I can't deny my fear about it though; there shall be a lot of exhaustion more than it is there already, specially with students in college (where I work) are still on their summer classes. It surely means traffic jams galore, and with Mom's dialysis schedule, the situation is not pleasant at all this year. I don't think I would have much time for my own projects till the month passes.

Meanwhile anyway I've been keeping myself a bit busy with my Geltani project and I'm already starting to write a brief about it in order to send to Omniglot. I've sent an example already to the author just to see how it looks (because the look of the script is important if it is to be added to the website). In addition, I'm still fine-tuning some aspects about Geltani, and changing some previous rules.

Transliteration: jewno uwibañwoš', wá núc zing reñy'ču vá zing ča-xungči
Meaning: men are like bagpipes, no sound they give until they are filled.

No need to go on and explain the transliteration and the sounds of these characters. I'll keep it for another time hopefully. As I was rummaging back through my notes about Geltani, I've decided to re-adjust the Genitive case and make it closer in concept to Japanese. I had to look into this matter specifically because I'm planning to name Geltani in its own speakers' tongue as "people of rock." Modeling that on the Japanese (の) [no], the order should be then as "rock-of people." The character which will act as the  Japanese (の) [no] will sound as /xə/ (with IPA "x" sound as Scottish or German "ch").

Genitive character
/xə/

There are other things to refine as well, like the syllabary system that comes with Geltani (something close to Katakana in Japanese). However, I'm trying to keep the language agglutinating (like Turkish) as much as possible. Geltani is not supposed to be a tonal language like Chinese, but it seems I would have to refine the values for some syllabic combinations further in order to make them distinguishable in sound. If that does not work as such, I would probably have to go ahead and hit the tonal approach just a bit.

Goals

Now with Ramadhan being here already, I do have a list of goals, but of course without a specific time table to do them. I'm thinking of seriously stopping the blog during this time until the month is over. But I'm not sure about this decision yet. Some of these goals include:

1. Doing a B&W panorama out of JPG images instead of RAW (as a challenge).
2. Doing an Infrared panorama from a bridge (previously done in a normal mode).
3. Doing more doodles and sketches and convert them to vectors. A project I stopped long time ago was to make a set of sketches about a specific theme and convert them all to vectors and upload them to stocks.
4. Maybe infrared portrait with high flash pulses.
5. Staying alive.

Bridge-O-Rama
Where I want to do an infrared panorama.

I've been busy with the group and specifically with some aspects of the website (raising it up after being down), beside working on getting an international recognition for our group (or club so to say). All that kept me a bit busy as well and away from thinking about my camera. But hopefully I'm coming back to this soon.

The past few weeks had been full of headaches and sleeping problems (though I've always had them but the rate was higher this time). Now, wishing I did indeed sign for a leave for Ramadhan already…

Blessed Ramadhan folks…

Yggdrasil…

This blog post contains a QTVR which uses QuickTime plugin to be displayed. The page might load slowly, and might not be displayed properly on tablets or smartphones. 

Summer is officially here. It is already 43°C (~109°F) at daytime. I wonder how much that would be around "real" Summer? I can't even bear the idea in my mind with getting a splash of melancholy more than it is already.

I've recently finished an eye check-up (last Sunday), which is a regular one done every 6 or 7 months since I've been diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP). Sounds a bit of good news now when the doctor said that the situation seems stable. I do have my problems already in walking around specially in confined spaces, but compared to my eldest brother, I can well take care of myself so far. Probably the Vitamin A treatment is doing its job in slowing down the process of decay of the retina cells. Hopefully!

Success with Mess

I've finally managed to stitch the tricky panorama taken from Al-Hamra tower about two weeks ago. The panorama was tricky because of the moving subjects AND stable subjects in the scene; adding to that, the hardships with moving the remnants of the tripod in some projection styles.

Inside Al-Hamra

Of course, the series must start off with the regular and the most humble project: the flat spherical. The major problem here was with slide 7 specifically (center, to the right a bit). There were major stitching errors in that spot specifically and there was a "gap"; because slide 7 was removed completely. Adding any bit of it would scramble the whole area, thus I had to remove the culprit and try to mend it manually. In a small size it would be fine to look at I presume (and the QTVR looks good I believe). The tripod remnant in this version is not a problem since it is at the bottom, and a simple crop was enough to remove it.

By The Crown

The next "play" was to change the perspective. When trying the little planet projection, I personally didn't like the results, thus I changed my mind directly to see what the tunnel projection would yield. The result was By The Crown. One of the major problems here is the fact that, despite my attempt to centralize everything, but, as usual, things should go astray when the final image is made! I've spent quite a time with By The Crown trying to wrap, mold, and fix the axes to meet my vision. I wasn't lucky in other styles though!

İmparatorun Avlusunda
(in the emperor's courtyard)

Before heading to the little planet projection, I paid a minor visit to the Mercator projection (usually this is one of the "last" projections to explore when I do panoramas). The shape of the straight lines in the architecture and the uneven ceiling of the place did not help in achieving a good twisted panorama, adding to that the fact that the group members do appear in a crucial part of the panorama. Thus, a simple vertical panorama using Mercator format (to have a proper width instead of a slender one) is all I could do for the time being. Yet, I allowed myself to break the normal attitude when tone-mapping the HDR panorama and tried to add more drama to the scene by using "harsh" techniques, so to say., which caused specific halos around some elements in the image.
Yet when moved to the little planet projection style, there was not much to be done in this projection. It did not yield interesting results as much as the tunnel projection did. However, changing the viewing angle in that projection was enough (in fact the tunnel projection is just a planet projection with 180 degrees reversal).

Παλάτι του Ηρακλή
(Palace of Hercules)

Changing the viewing angle in the planet projection format did in fact yield 2 interesting results as we'll see; with 180 degrees of difference between the two. The first attempt, Παλάτι του Ηρακλή, is probably the most interesting panorama in the collection so far. When posted to 500px website, it was ranked as "popular" in just 30 minutes from posting it. This panorama caused me a lot of headache when trying to fix the axes of the image to make it as symmetric as possible, and removing the remnants of the tripod was a great deal of time and effort and yet it is not a perfect render still - it might look good only in the small version. Here too, I've decided to push the HDR tone-mapping further and try to make a harsh impact on the eye by exposing the black levels and increasing the contrast (and the vibrance of colors too). The tiles of the ground were hard to keep in symmetry and I believe they were not meant to be symmetrical in the first place! I think I'll revisit this panorama soon for B&W conversion or so…

Yggdrasil

The second, or the opposite angle for Παλάτι του Ηρακλή, was named Yggdrasil. Originally I was thinking of something related to spiders, but it crossed my mind that Yggdrasil is more interesting! Yggdrasil is the tree of life in the Norse mythology. To add a twist to Yggdrasil, I've added a Photo Filter to the original HDR panorama before tone-mapping. It was a magenta tint filter. However, I have to say I somewhat regretted this decision, as working with the panorama later on proved to be harder than I thought and the tones were problematic. I'm seriously considering re-tone-mapping this panorama without this tint. Anyway, it did reach the "popular" status in 50 minutes after posting it to 500px website. Removing the tripod remnants from Yggdrasil was relatively easier compared to Παλάτι του Ηρακλή, but it did take a long time as well, and discrepancies did occur in that area later on when tone-mapped and processed. The visual impact was sealed with sharpening the panorama with a bit of overdose. In this panorama, I couldn't hold things in a square format as it was with Παλάτι του Ηρακλή before, because some features at the bottom were not adding much to the scene (and cropping from the sides a little did help eliminate some stitching errors and avoid me the hassle of fixing them). These are the panoramas done from that specific location so far…

QTVR-wise, there was only one QTVR of course, since it is all about one panorama. Again, when making a QTVR right now, I don't have to worry much about the nadir point. I've started to adapt the logo approach at the nadir point mostly right now. However, because of some recent developments, I'm thinking more about changing the style in which I represent my QTVRs on the web; even though it might takes up some learning curve in the field of coding and webpage development…

 

The difference aspect here though, is the fact that I didn't render the QTVR at the size of 400x300 pixels as I usually do for this blog - but it was rendered here in a larger size and the window is fixed at 400x300 size; I think this way is better for representing the details better in such a small space. At the bottom of this QTVR you can find the information about the location.

Revision

In the past two weeks I've been ignited again to have a peek into Chinese and Japanese, specifically after my follow up with an old cartoon: 三国志 (Jap: Sangokushi), or Romance of Three Kingdoms; a famous work of Chinese literature made into an anime.
Digging further into the names of the characters and trying to understand more the tonal system used in Mandarin Chinese, made me sweep through the language as a whole and specially some of the sounds and notations used in the Pinyin system to note down Chinese. Some of these sounds used in real Chinese are not implemented in Geltani, but I did add some Semitic sounds already to Geltani which made it a Sino-like language with a Semite touch. Some of these sounds are: voiced and voiceless alveolo-palatal fricatives. I think applying the tonal system is out of the question here since this would complicate the matters further, but it would be nice to understand AND comprehend the tones by hearing them in spoken manner. I know, things like that sound natural to a Chinese person probably, but as an Arab, tones are used to distinguish a style of speech (as in most languages, e.g. in question or sarcasm), but to use tones solely to distinguish meanings is pretty much a harder task for someone without trained hearing. This ignites in me a question of whether or not such languages do help, naturally, their speakers in musical endeavors. Would someone learning Chinese get, by nature, the capability to distinguish musical notes more easily? Is learning Chinese easier relatively for someone who deals with musical tones?
Anyway, there might not be a space for extra sounds in Geltani already, but I think it is worth some consideration. I do have some plans regarding some revision for the Geltani - and I know, I've been saying this for long now, but most of the processes regarding this project are mental and not noted down! I think I must start building a webpage for it soon and send it over to Omniglot and see what happens.
By the way, probably I should stop using the "semite" and "semitic "notation by now since lot of people, as far as I know, are reluctant to use them because they are remnants of the Orientalists who based their classifications upon the Bible majorly, and less on scientific evidence. However, in Arabic books that I've encountered so far, some authors tend to call this language group as Arabic / Arabian languages or Ancient Arabian languages sometimes, referring to the fact that most of those who speak such languages, specifically Akkadians (the first Semites to arrive in Mesopotamia and lived along side with the Sumerians) were immigrants from the Arabian peninsula, and hence it is logical to call such group as Arabian languages as a whole. Anyway, in modern Western styles, such group is called mostly Afro-Asiatic languages as I reckon.

Finale

Feeling a bit down since I couldn't accompany the group to Dubai this week to attend PhotoWorld Expo. Too many things on my plate that I couldn't really afford to go and come back just for 3 days. Anyway, many positive feedback are coming already and I'm glad that they've made it as the only Kuwaiti corner in the expo.
I've got visiting visions in my mind about writing some short story of some sort (many topics crossed my mind actually), beside writing poetry as well. Yet, when I look at the time I do have and all the things that I must attend to, makes me scared to even think about adding one more task into my daily scheme and schedule. For this reason, I might have, at some point, to give up some of my time that I do spend here in front of the PC and processing images, as well as dwelling on some social medias aspects, to pour that time down on other sides of my own self. 
Meanwhile, I'm trying to re-collect myself; my judgements, actions, reactions. Many things to go through in my life, as I get more isolated. Sometimes, leaving and relocating yourself in some far away places might be the only solution available, to gain some respect that you deserved in a long time…

Dilemmas...

Here we go, and as expected. Ramadhan has arrived and the unneeded stress started along. There is never enough time to do anything. Majorly, the main problem is the after-work nap which takes from 2 to 3 hours and sometimes even for 4 hours, and that makes me awry at night and unable to sleep early as in regular days. People in Ramadhan do indeed make a time shift and sleep late (because working hours are also shifted as well) but for me, I always try to fix my sleeping time as in regular days and never stay late unnecessarily. Now, I need to do that more than ever because Mom's dialysis timing is not changed and I do have to pick her up to there in the same time as in regular days. Moreover, I have to make her something to eat before leaving home (while we used to grab something on the way in regular days). In Ramadhan, it is insulting (and illegal) to eat in public while the whole nation is fasting. Well, we do have a medical permit or reasoning, but still, no need for embarrassment.
I've been to the doctors to check up with my nose and see the reason for bleeding. He said that the capillaries are probably weak and I need to have more vitamin C in my diet and provided me with some method to stop the bleeding as well. Finally, he said if that didn't work, then I have to go back to cauterize, probably by laser (?). I think in this week alone, I've lost a quarter liter of blood just through my nose!

The Dilemma (1)

This week I've been working on an idea for a panorama (and barely did) which I've been cooking in my head for a while. However, unfortunately for me, I'm having technical issues and a sluggishness in my skills. The panorama was taken twice in two different days, and two different lighting conditions, and with two different techniques.
In the first trial, in order to fix the bracketing for the HDR merging later, I've used my light meter and measured the light (incident) from different angles to the camera. There was a considerable gap in the EV values. In the beginning, the expansion of the bracket was from -2EV to +2EV but apparently that some shots were somehow dark and the +2EV shots appeared as if they were taken at 0EV instead, thus I've started all over and made the expansion from +3EV to -3EV. However, the story was not over here.
In the current time and because the memory issues in my old PC, I've decided to work with my (new) laptop as I'm still preparing my new PC before plugging it online completely. Sincerely, I'm so lazy to do all of that and it's connected to my TV at the current time; Not a pleasant view and my room is a mess. However, in my laptop and after merging the RAW files into HDR slides and trying PTGui to stitch them out, it turned out that the slides were apparently dark and PTGui could not find control points at all!
This matter triggered me to do another trial and this time, instead of working in Manual mode and taking light measurements, I've decided to go back to the old methods (tried and true!); Working in Av mode and letting the camera decide for the shutter speed, and I had this occasion to increase the f-number from f/8 (as in the first trial) to f/16, to make sure than things are sharper.
The reason I've decided to do a second session is the assumption that the dynamic range was so wide that PTGui could not assemble some control points in between any two images. However, even in my second trial, Photomatix and PTGui followed with the same behavior: dark slides, and unstitchable panorama. After many trials to install and re-installing older versions of both programs, I've finally came about to some solution and finally the panorama was stitched.

Wooden Hall (trial stitch)

I've spent several days trying to figure out what was going wrong with my (usual) procedure and why things do not work out in the laptop as they do on PC. The panorama above, Wooden Hall is just a trial and not a final image to be submitted to stock sites because of the weird (and usual) blue spots, but I've decided to put it online anyway without any fixes and ask for help about this matter, if there is any available! I'll try to summarize my thoughts here in points:

1. Apparently, the main problem was in Photomatix and not the (new) PTGui. After installing several versions of both, it turned out that Photomatix v4.0.2 yielded clear HDR slides that are viewable easily in PTGui (any version), but the new version (v4.2.4) was problematic. I'm not sure why this is happening but there were already some issues when I moved from Photomatix v3.0 to v4.0, like the ability to tone-map without opening the HDR slide - a problem I used to encounter with large little planet panoramas, and my way around it was to set the values in v4.0, save the settings and use the side-cart file (the XMP file in which settings are saved) into v3.0 using the batch process facility. The thing is, because of the large file size, v4.0 used to give me a memory error and stops responding when I try to process the tone-mapping at once. Why don't I use v3.0 to tone-map already? Well, it turned out that v4.0 has a better on-monitor representation of the actual image after the tone-mapping is done. When tone-mapping in v3.0 (as far as I remember), opening the image in Photoshop later would yield a completely different image in terms of colors and shades and I would have to work around this with adjustment layers. The situation here is somehow similar in between v4.0.2 and v4.2.4. Advice: Don't always jump on newer versions of any particular software. It is good to try new stuff but always make sure you will be going smoothly with it. Keep older versions in store somewhere, as you might need them at any time!.
2. The new PTGui (v9.1.6, and I think v9.1.7 is out there) has lot of interpolation possibilities, more than I had in the old stuff in my old PC. Interpolation is the way that a program would interpret or "read" the pixels across the image. The three basic ones were Bilinear, Bicubic, and Nearest Neighbor. Each one of those of course got a specific usage (some of them are explained in Photoshop resizing facility), but in PTGui there are no descriptions about any of them. In the new version, however, the list is expanded further to include Lanczos and Spline (with each one of those got several types). Speak about new stuff to learn and burn the time with!
3. I've merged the RAW files several times and stitched the panorama several times (and thanks to my fast laptop, the stitching process takes merely 5 minutes for a 10,000x5,000 pixels panorama!) as I was trying to figure out the reason for these blue streaks across some regions in the panorama. My conclusion is (and I've done that before actually) it is more related to the color space, and it might be related as well to some gaps in the dynamic range of the HDR slides; I'm not sure yet. However, merging in different color spaces and stitching the panorama after, proved to me that the blue color spots (you can see them in the image above) were reduced significantly (in saturation let's say) when merging the HDR in a lesser color space as sRGB. Also, the streaks appear more or less around regions were there happens to be some stitching errors. Stitching errors cause such problem? Color space? Dynamic range? All of them? Not really sure, but it is surely annoying. I couldn't edit the panorama and fix it in this laptop mainly because of the size of the laptop and my sluggish movement with it and the display is small already. Thus, I've decided to upload it as it is and might try to fix it later when my new PC is ready.

My world is spinning right now and I have to finish up with this PC and try to hold to my camera again, and work with more panoramas even.

The Dilemma (2)

Well, this second dilemma is somehow to a lesser degree. It is just a dilemma about Geltani and some aspects about it. I've been working a bit with the sounds that are to be used in Geltani and I've figured out that it is almost impossible to avoid repeating some sounds. I've decided here that it is time to introduce some sounds that are unfamiliar to the far east in general, thus giving a touch to alienate the conlang from a typical Asian sense. With these new sounds, like the Arabic ħ [ح], I've decided to add some possibilities for creating dual-consonants and doubling (or stressing) some. Even with those creations, it is impossible as it seems, to provide a distinctive sound for each combination of leading and driving couplet. Would there be two words with similar sounds and different meanings?
In that sense, the scenario would be a mimic of reality of the far east languages, and specifically Chinese and Japanese, where is typical to find one character with several pronunciations and even meanings. However, I don't think Geltani would be close to that level of complexity of the real languages, but it has a comforting effect to think that having a repetitive scheme of sounds for different types of couplets is not really a bad thing, and it somehow mimics the real world to some extent. The characters (or logograms) would be definitely different if, at any chance, two words or more bear some resemblance in the sounds. The question now is, on what basis I should base the driving sounds?

Finale

David Schap's book is over with right now, and I'm trying to find something to replace it with from my arsenal of old books. As I've mentioned before, probably I would go through my old languages books.
Many ideas are racing through my mind right now, like having a leave for the rest of Ramadhan just to have my own timing and not to worry about work and waking up in the morning, but Mom's dialysis schedule holds me back from this idea, because the center is near my work place and eventually, the torture won't stop (but yes, I would have more time for myself).
Because of all this pressure, in the work-front and the home-front, all what I'm trying to do right now is to break all the cuffs and find a way out of obligations to work with my own projects and my camera. Feels like being married without a real partner, I guess.
Also, I'm trying to consider some way to integrate myself through the group back again, but without the work load that I used to get. Probably my membership would be changed from special to regular because of the low activity level I'm participating with. There is also a crazy idea cooking in my mind: to write a book in Arabic about the basics of photography. This idea arrived to me looking at the arsenal of the photography books that I have that are all in English, and many people here can't have the benefits of such books despite their love for photography because their lack of expertise in English. It is such a sorrowful thing that a language can stand a barrier in learning. Not sure this idea will go further but it is worth considering anyway!
I'm typing this post and watching TV in the hall, with some show about the Canary islands; It makes me dream of vacations and traveling again. I want to see the world again out there... if only I can find someone to take care of Mom as much as I do...

Xiŋwiñzaji!

A somehow idle week with iterative sleeping problems. Not sure though if the sleeping problems are related to my back and legs muscles pain, or are they related to my busy mind. Because of this, my activities were minimal and I didn't even head to work for some days (also because some painting job in my office). Yet, I was working on some ideas while in the meantime uploading more photos to some new stock sites which, unfortunately, seems not doing any good.

Glossa

I didn't work much on Geltani conlang this week and I doubt I would do much as well because of all these time-consuming "problems". However, I've done some trials to solve one problem that was buzzing my mind for a while, which is the ambiguous formation of words from Arabic into Geltani in which the short vowels are different but the main consonants are the same. Just to give out an example:

laħam [لَحَم]: (he) welded

laħm [لحْم]: meat

luħim [لُحِم]: welded (passive)

In Arabic, there are many examples of this kind. In one of my previous posts I gave out a similar example with the root [M-L-K], which is related to ownership and ruling.

However, since I've been making trials with verbs for some time right now and decided to derive verbs from nouns (mainly because nouns would vary significantly in their consonants), which solves the problem partially, I've decided now to derive nouns of professions and titles in a similar manner as I decided to do with verbs. Thus, The word for king would be derived from the noun kingdom. Just to show:

Kingdom

King

Kingdom: Xiŋwiñz'

King: Xiŋwiñzaji

"X" as "CH" in Loch,  "ŋ" as "ng" in English, "ñ" as a nasalized vowel, and " ' " as a schwa.

Of course this transliteration and vocal system is still not finished but let's call it a demo. I'm not sure if I'm happy with the "-ji" suffix because it sounds too Japanese and I'm trying to put something on the same line but would better sound differently. However, I'm not going to put much thought on this issue for the time being, as if I didn't find another suitable substitute then I'm going to accept it as it is. Notice that I've added a vowel "a" before "-ji" to merge it into the word, this is because "Z" has a schwa and not into a syllable itself. 

I've made up a special character for this characteristic syllable (or maybe I should call it the profession syllable), but a critical question come to my mind amid all of these fuss: what about the Queen?

In Geltani, unlike in Ayvarith, I've tried to strip the gender bases in formulating the words, but as time progresses, I find myself creating words for He and She or words for His and Her. It seems to me that however I try to step away from this issue it just pulls me back in and there is no escape but to create a special grammatical entity based on genders. This said, I might be inventing a special character for the profession in a feminine form (like in Queen), and probably the suffix would be simply "-jin". This is just the beginning but I'm willing to think it through and see if there is something around this problem. Another problem that is already prevalent somehow is the fact that with such method of deriving from nouns, the writing and pronunciation processes might be longer than normal. 

I might be the first to invent nounal verbs instead of verbal nouns? And then, what about adjectives? For the time being, I'm taking adjectives as they are, i.e. transform them directly from Arabic (in masculine form) without referring back to any idea about derivation from verbs or nouns. Might be a bit illogical in the context of the process, but hey, it's a language after all!

Smokes

I've been planning to take some pictures of smokes for a while since the time I've seen this lovely censer among Mom's possessions. It wasn't until last week though that I've finally began to do some experiments with this subject, and I've hardly done it.

Censer I
Tamron 70-300mm @124mm,
f/13, 250^-1sec,
ISO125.

There is a funny story about these images but I'm going to tell that in the next section of this post. When I decided to work with this censer, I've taken around 30 minutes or maybe more just trying to adjust (and search) for everything. It was late at night in the weekend which is the perfect time to work peacefully with no kids at home. In the beginning I had to take several test shots using only my 580EXII speedlite with a correcting gel (to balance the flash color temperature with the tungsten light in the room) affixed with a reflector and a panel for turning the reflector into a softbox - nice stuff from Expoimaging Rogue lighting kit.
I kept some white boards at hand and it proved very critical for some minute details, as I've used it to pour some light on the dark areas (and the dark areas would change with any slight change in the speedlite's orientation). 

Censer X
Tamron 70-300mm @124mm,
f/18, 250^-1sec,
ISO125.

The next hard part was to fix my other speedlite, 430EXII, to light smoke that comes out of the censer. I've used a spotlight setting (with honeycomb grids) to direct the light and make it spread as less as possible to other parts of the censer - but this specific detail was changed several times to see which setting was the best. Burning incense sticks was not successful enough, thus I had to resort to a more robust solution: burning tissues (Kleenex). With burning tissues, I had more smoke and could test my 430EXII and see if it is really working with the smoke. I put two gels on 430EXII just for fun and see the results. However, the result was like a mix of the two colors; naturally!

Censer XV
Tamron 70-300mm @300mm,
f/14, 250^-1sec,
ISO125.

After taking some shots for the whole body of the censer, I've decided to go deeper and get a closer look (since I'm using Tamron 70-300mm already and no need to move the tripod). The final result for the whole experiment was something close to100 shots, but after filtration and picking those special ones, with specific move in the smoke, a total of 21 images are left out. There was some editing in Photoshop as well to enhance the saturation and to darken the background completely, as the background I've used was not completely dark and it did reflect some light (probably from the room's spotlight rather than the speedlites), beside some unexpected additions to the scene that I didn't notice during the shooting session! I wanted to increase the shutter speed beyond 250^-1sec, which requires using High-Speed settings, to kill the ambient light completely (and darken the background even more) but unfortunately because of using the wireless function to control the speedlites I was not able to achieve this. This can be done with a cable or cord only (and some specific wireless controller or radio transfer probably). Such situations make me more eager to get a long soft cable rather than the helix-like cord that I have already (which hardly extends for more than 2 meters, i.e. around 6.6 ft). I made a mistake here though for not creating a sweep as a backdrop and I've simply placed a black board behind the censer, but checking the limits of the space itself, I think creating a sweep was also out of hand.

Jokes in Stocks

I've stated in my previous post that I'm looking forward to upload some of my images into other stock sites and try to increase the exposure. However, I'm quite aware of the fact that I'm not a commercial photographer and I don't deal much with tabletop photography, so far. Thus, my mission in this regard is not an easy one. Stock sites are not like fine art dealers nor like beauty lovers; they want something practical for usage in designs and ads. Nevertheless, some of their methods and ways in sorting out images are still funny to mention. I've realized that I've created a login in some of these websites long time ago and it was just a re-discovery from my side. Probably I know now why I didn't like the idea of uploading to them in the first place.
Dreamstime: In the beginning, they rejected most of my images and accepted only 2 (out of 10 or 20?). Now, I'm back again uploading to them. I've started to upload almost with the beginning of this week (including the 21 images of the censer) and so far, till the time of writing this blog post, no updates about the rejection status. Yes. I'm not that optimistic about accepting these files.

Depositphotos: This website has really good humor. My account was actually a buyer's account and I had to contact them to switch the login to a contributor. To be able to upload you need to fill in the tax form, and then upload 5 images as an examination to be able to upload to the website. All of my five images were rejected BUT hey! my tax form completion was done successfully! You can't imagine how happy I am. One more happy news here is that I can't put images for examination again till the passage of 10 days from the first examination.

123RF: All what I can say here is, stay away from this website. If Depositphotos rejected 5 photos from the examination sample, this website rejected 30 out of 33 images I've submitted, including ALL of the 21 images of the censer. You see, I'm not expecting all of the images of the censer specifically to be good - after all, the reason I've made several shots is to make different shapes of the smoke and also different zoom levels. For example, Canstockphotos did already rejected 11 and accepted 10 out of 21. When I checked closely, I've realized that reviewers on Canstockphotos did accept mainly images of the censer as a whole and rejected images of the censer in close-up. Here with 123RF, the whole set was rejected under the reason of "Poor lighting/Composition". OK, I understand the fact that I'm not a good photographer, but what kind of composition you are expecting for an isolate object in a tabletop photography? Or what kind of light you are expecting when I state in the file description Golden Censer lit partially? If they stated the reason as "Not marketable" I would quite understand that, but poor lighting and/or composition? That just doesn't add up. From some info bits in their website, I think the website is based in Dubai, and that thing specifically made me more optimistic about submitting to them but now, the whole game rules have changed.

FeaturePics: This is one agency that I do have some hopes for. They did reject some of my images and they did accept some others. One thing I don't understand here is the fact that I have to have 10 accepted images to be able to upload via FTP; my favorite method. So far, I didn't upload my censer images set onto this agency because I do prefer FTP for such large quantity of files. One thing I don't like here is the change in my images titles but to be fair, they did explain that already in their uploading tips, as they see poetic titles are not a good way for marketing and makes it hard for search engines to find the image, i.e. such titles would lessen the exposure to the public. They got a point somehow, even though I think in search engines routines it is usually the keywords that play the key role and not the title.

I'm still looking further but I can't get into any stock website I see. Canstockphotos and Mostphotos seem to be my dominant admirers for the time being.

Finale

There remains some experiments to be done yet but I didn't have the time this week, mainly because I need a model, and my model is, usually, my brother. Even though I did some tests and the results were fine so far, but I do need a good background.
I've notified the group about my inability to enroll in Redbull's contest and they expressed their disappointment. What's significant in their response is their reply: our participation is weak and we will disappoint them. When I asked about who was the initiator for such offer, turned out that the group was and Redbull's team didn't come to the group to ask for participation. I've blamed them (gently) for not checking on the preparations and the readiness of the group's members before involving the name of the group in such contest - specially that my own circumstances with my mother are well known and it is natural that I wouldn't have the full capabilities and time. Their response in fact, to some extent, did prove my point that they did have some heavy dependence on my shoulders which I didn't meet.
For the time being, it seems all I can do is concentrate more on tabletop photography and try to find new subjects to photograph with a twist. Probably this will have some marketable value as well. And they say don't carry the globe's load on your shoulders - how that is even possible?