Post-Languorem…

Well, good things are never complete they say here. I guess it's true. I've stopped most of my activities for few days and thus not much material (photos or experiments) were done because of my sickness last week, with temperature soaring close to 40°C. I guess this is the tax I had to pay for the good change in weather and the coming of fall. I just can't wait for winter to be finally here!
Anyway, before all of that I did try some experiments on the go, if I can call them so, I will try to talk about them a bit here.

Quran: 18/9.

Impact oval diffuser.
Source: B&H

This shot is a remnant from August's project which was about books, but unfortunately, I could not apply the idea and work on it until the past 2 weeks or so. Anyway, the trick which I had in my mind did not work quite well here and I had to use two speedlites instead of just one. My main idea here was to strike the book with flash and make it reflect off toward the face, but many factors here did not help (face angle, paper not reflective enough, angle of the book... etc). Thus, I needed to use another speedlite (430EX II here) with an oval diffuser. I've changed the position of this one a lot until I've settled down placing it in front of my brother to the right a bit and lowering the power just enough to give a sense of reflection from the book a bit.
Now, generally speaking, the shot has many problems in composition; Majorly, the black space which I've used for my watermark but originally it has no use and adds nothing to to the image (unless maybe it can be used by stock customers to write something). My brother's shirt was problematic too but we solved that by throwing a black cloth on his shoulders  to cover it, but now looking at it, probably I should have cropped that portion too just under the chin (vertically). So, it was just an experiment and an idea that I had long ago and didn't want to let it go just like that without trying at least.

Lumicon H-Alpha Night Sky Filter.
Source: B&H

Now we come to the "funny" part; Well, if I can call it so. I was, and still, testing my filters for some time and trying to figure out more creative ways to use them. Specifically, my relatively new filter: Night Sky H-Alpha filter from Lumicon. To my understanding, so far, this filter is actually wider in range of wavelengths it passes than infrared filters (it passes infrared, and reds). However, the difference might not be so great actually. Just 10nm or 20nm more than my B+W 092 infrared filter, which has a threshold of 650nm (the H-Alpha filter has a threshold around 630nm according to some transmission charts). The H-Alpha filter though is said to reduce the night sky noise and light pollution; I have yet to test that for myself though. Now the fun...

The Surprised Ghost!
Sigma 70-300mm @70mm, f/5, 1/4s, ISO400 + H-alpha filter.

Again, my victim is my brother here. I did a minor calibration with my camera for the white balance and I was roaming the house with H-alpha filter on my Sigma lens, when I noticed my brother on his way out (all that on LiveView) and how his body looks bluish against a reddish background. Not sure though what causes such extreme contrast and difference; is it the heat? I doubt. However, In order to increase the shutter speed just a bit and stop the shake, I've used the on-camera flash quickly. This did stabilize the image a bit but not completely, as there are still some shake marks (the head and his right shoulder on the left). The reddish tint of the background was reduced as well by this stroke of flash. Despite calibrating the WB in camera, this is almost useless because in Photoshop (more precisely, Adobe Camera RAW) this range cannot be defined and special camera "profile" which I've made before for Infrared photography has to be used to stretched the WB range while processing. Now, though, it is time to think of more interesting things to shoot at with this filter; things more dramatic.

Finale

Here it is, just a quick wrap for whatever I was doing before getting sick. And despite having some ideas that are almost ready to be applied yet I can't have the time to do them nor the hand to help me with as they require so, and needless to say, a proper place. But I'll keep that for later.
Meanwhile, as I'm still looking for a good subject for my Arabic blog, I've received an enlightening email from the Jordanian Arabic Language Assembly replying to my months-old email, asking for a proper definition for "anaglyph" in Arabic. Notice that my English spellchecker still does not define "anaglyph" as a proper word! However, according to my description and their research, they did finally put on a word into the system and in case I need to, I'd be using it in the future! Now that, I call achievement.
As days pass by, I'm trying to find more peace of mind around me here. Passion for Ireland is ignited again. Would I be traveling to there for a 4^th time? I'm not quite sure yet. Winter is in and this is not typically the time for my travels, usually. The weather is cooling down slowly and can't wait till I feel that cold breeze in early mornings. I'm seriously growing sick of the weather, and other things…

Post-Morten…

Well, I barely have any time to type this blog post, but after stopping for a week for mourning I think it is due right now even though I don't have much material to be posted here. The mourning is still going on though and many hearts have it as a heavy burden to see such a great man who created a big portion of Kuwait's history to pass away in a quick whim of destiny. May he rest in peace.
Not much have been going on in fact, except some trials now with my August project about books so I'm going to talk a bit about it here, and a little bit about some idea that I'm still working on.

Leabhair

As the month is going on, I'm still working with ideas for this project, and frankly, I'm not satisfied yet about any of these ideas, but I'm trying.

"Creativity"
Voigtländer 20mm (R), f/11, 30s, ISO200.

My first trial was, typically, with a macro approach as can be seen in "Creativity" where I used Bruce Barnbaum's book, The Art of Photography, p.301, as my subject where this word exists in a paragraph. I was not sure what I was thinking, but my mind called me for an extreme macro just like the days when I used to shoot into my microscope some weeks ago. Here, with the camera dangling vertically over the book, I shot various segments of the word (which was extremely magnified at about 3.17X by using Voigtländer 20mm on reverse). My aim here was to create a collage like I did before with Killing Evil, but the circumstances and the fact that I'm zooming to 3X+ and the camera is stable on a lateral arm (while the book is hard to be moved around with ease), all that made it difficult to take various segments easily and randomly, and forced me to take the shots in a sequence and finally overlapping them to make one whole word. The only clue which I've added later to note various segments is the difference in gamma level, while the skew at the end of the word might be a clue as well. I couldn't use speedlites here so I raised the ISO and had to bear with the long exposure for 30 seconds!

Killing Evil

All in all, the idea of shooting a word in a book, as I think, do not resemble the real idea of the project about the importance books. It is merely a word, an element, inside a book - but not a book. Thus, the search did not end yet about something to shoot for this project. In fact, concerning this same word and this same book, I do have another idea to apply just yet, but without magnification up to that level. But I kept myself busy with other things lately that I didn't get the chance to shoot this.
Meanwhile, with the help of my brother, I got to shape a new idea out of scratch fed with some background "legend." And I say legend as I don't really know how accurate such news are (specially in this part of the world), but before explaining this "legend" let me first introduce the image.

وفوق كل ذي علم عليم
{and over every lord of knowledge He is more knowing.} (Quran: 12/76).
Canon EF 50mm, f/11, 1000^-1, ISO250.

The legend says: At the time when Muslims ruled Andalusia, pupils who studied various arts and crafts come to the end of their studies with some ceremony or oath-taking, for which they invented the graduation cap as we know it today with a flat top, to place the holy book (Quran) on top while taking the oath and to apply the verse (and over every lord of knowledge He is more knowing: 12/76) from Quran. Anyway, I'm not sure about this story, but it was a spark in my mind to do this image.

Since I needed to kill the ambient light, as well as for the candle's light, I had to go on with the HSS mode (High-speed) to do this shot and compromise with the aperture a bit. Even though f/11 has a good depth of field for such small scene, but I like to always keep it on the safe side and push the f-number a bit further. However, I had to step back here and stop at f/11. One more reason to increase the f-number here is the desire to create a spark or a burst around the candle's flame, but that didn't happen! The real setback though was the need to place a dark yellow gel on the speedlite, and that alone takes 2.5 stops away from the power (as noted on the gel itself). Thus, even with full power, there was a need for some extra light, and at that point I've decided to use two other speedlites with no gels; that explains that mix in colors in the image above. Moreover, I've resorted to use the flash extender which I didn't put to practical use before this time in hope that I would give some strength to the pulse; which it did but slightly. I had to get my speedlite as close as possible to the set. It is evident from all these setbacks and problems that there is no escape but to raise the ISO as minimum as it could be (and I did have my struggle with the noise when processing the image above).
On the other hand, my brother had some remarks about the image and suggested some changes which I'm willing to try out as soon as possible (already did before typing this but the results weren't good). Here are some of his suggestions:

1. Wait for the candle to melt down further, which is something I've done already.
2. Shoot the set with the light from the candle alone. Tried that, but didn't really work, and the candle itself has a weak flame. 
3. Get things closer together.
4. Change perspective and move up further (i.e. shooting looking down to the set).

These are the major notes he made and I'm still trying to apply them (using Voigtländer 20mm lens instead of Canon EF 50mm) but still it didn't work out in a good way. Probably changing the lens was not a good idea after all and I would have to get back to 50mm. I'm envisioning the usage of my pinhole cover to shoot this set as well but I'll keep that for later.

Finale

As these words are going on, I'm pushing my way alone this time trying to get or grant a permission to shoot at a special place: A theater where a mural for the deceased artist was painted there with the opening of this theater after renovation (which now bears his name in gratitude to his services to the comedy and arts in general in this country). So far, official channels seem blocked and no one is giving a listening ear, so I'm resorting to some connections in hope that I will get this grant to shoot some ideas there. I'm doing this work solely alone without any help from anyone, as I'm trying to find a name for me somewhere out there rather than being dependent on my group.
Meanwhile, it seems that I'm giving myself a break from the group again and this time it might be for good indeed. I'll try to keep my activities minimum. There are more important things that still bug my mind, e.g. travel and creating ideas. I'm working on the latter, but not sure about the former. I'm getting nervous here... panic attacks had been frequent lately with insomnia. I need some good relaxation time before I lose my mind, and myself as well.