Alexander 6, V105.

Hello. How are you folks? Hope your day is, or was, better than mine. Not really that bad day, but I hate it when I have to walk in the sun for about 15 minutes with a trolly carrying tank that is supposed to be filled with liquid Nitrogen on a rigid ground and with cars blocking my way so I had to take the long way and then wait up for more than 10 minutes under the sun waiting for one sucker to come along but he never showed up despite my phone call prior to my arrival. As surplus for this day, I have a painful wrist that is never seem to be cured whatsoever.

Away from this fuss, I'll get back to photography here now. Yesterday, and after reading the chapter of the black and white in Mastering Photographic Composition, Creativity, and Personal Style, it jumped to my mind that I can probably fix some images who really didn't take up much of my time or imagination and try to fix it in black and white and see the reaction from people I know and how they feel about it.
One of the trials I went on with was merging some images of Aughnanure Castle from the outside into a 32-bit black and white. Then I figured out there is no much sense in that in fact, or maybe little sense! I mean, HDR images are supposed to provide an open EV range in a colored image, but in black and white the EV is limited in general by the nature of the system itself. But does that mean that a HDR in black and white would provide more contrast range (i.e. High Definition) more than the usual black and white? One of the definitions of the HD it is a measure of the levels from black to white (or vice versa) that can be seen or viewed by the device. That is, if some device can view White, Black, and 8 levels of gray in between in a precise manner, then we can say the contrast here is 1:9, 1 being for white, and 9 is the total levels that come after white to the final black. At least this is what or how I understood it when Christian Bloch explained it in his book.

I don't think HDR represent a "HD" in black and white though, I've never heard of this term! Anyway, I was doing that for that specific image trying to eliminate the fuss in the moving branches which introduced a ghosting effect (they were moving because of the breeze). Unfortunately, it didn't work out at all in several softwares, and even in PhotoAcute which is supposed to be good (as reported) with removing moving objects.

Image under inspection

Later on, I've just given up with this image and started to look for something else. This time, I've picked one that really inspired me with the strong presence of the light in it. It was also taken for HDR (3 bracketed images), but here, I have to deal with it in black and white.

Second target. Inside the tower in Aughnanure.

Here, there was some shake but it was fixed simply in Photoshop's "auto-align" command. Now, I have 3 images at hand with different shades of gray (remember, they are all converted to black and white). I was hesitated which one to work on. There were some details here and there that I wanted to include in this image, like the branches that show up on the roof of the tower. This gives me somehow a sense of hope in the image. To go around this, I went on doing a manual labor with manual tone-mapping. It is not a HDR toning, but rather stacking your 3 images in 3 successive layers and apply some masks. I might explain in details in some other post maybe? Maybe! However, the result was good (after doing also some contrast and sharpening), and I reduced my choice into two images, that I have to choose from to upload and try my luck with the B&W now! The first was the black and white version of the first image with EV equal to +0, and the second of course was the "tone-mapped" black and white composed of the 3 images altogether.

Left: +0EV black and white. Right: Tone-mapped black and white.

Most people agreed on the right one being the most acceptable, I think mainly because of the dramatic effect involved. The story was not over by then but I thought maybe a sepia tone would be favorable to add some old or ancient effect, since the place is a historical monument.

Left: Sepia version. Right: Regular version.

The response from people that I've tested these images with was just amazing! I've never thought that black and white images can do such things to the imagination! Most people liked the sepia version for many reasons, but there also some people who liked the pure black and white version because simply it is either reflective for purity, or mystery.

This said now, it encourages me highly to dig for more from my old RAW files and try to work it out in B&W in a suitable manner, providing of course a good light and a nice composition at least!

__________ 

2497. Alexander thought for some minutes about it
2498. and he thought about the ground that she meant
2499. until they passed over a dark land with dead trees
2500. so harsh and lonely it was that Alexander's heart jumped
2501. then he asked: is this the land of the promised Hermit?
2502. and Aramramátáníth answered: yes indeed it is,
2503. but the time to see him is not due yet at this hour,
2504. the night must fall and a moon must rise upon the mount
2505. it is then when you can see your promised man,
2506. because he spends his days in worshipping,
2507. while at night time he takes a rest for his body
2508. Alexander asked then: and why his land is so dark?
2509. it gives the scent of sadness into the soul of a human!
2510. then Aramramátáníth answered: do not blame the man,
2511. verily he is a lonely old man in this spot of Uhir Daynur,
2512. his arms are his companions and his legs are his carriers,
2513. he eats the plants of the desert and barely brings water,
2514. in this dry land only wild animals live and fight,
2515. this is the Hermit's life in Uhir Daynur, poor man
2516. then Alexander asked: but why he has to live here?
2517. I am sure there are plenty of places in this life
2518. thus Aramramátáníth answered: O dear Alexander,
2519. you should know by now that there are some people,
2520. devoted themselves for nothing but to God

Alexander 6, V27.

Trying to keep my camera busy (as well as my computer) but unfortunately that did not work for today's post. Anyway, I've made an experiment and waiting to get out of my workplace just to continue working on it back home. This time, I made a 360 panorama of the guest room at home. Relatively the take was easy, but stitching so far had proved to be harder than I thought, and with using a fisheye lens!

The last time I made a panorama of the yard in my house, I was actually using the fisheye lens in a landscape (normal) position,

but this time and in order to take a wide range vertically, I went on catching the whole thing in portrait position in a circle of 360 degrees. I know that I don't have a VR head, but I think in other situations this would be much easier than what it looks now. I made a template from the original RAW files (2 of them from each group of bracketed exposures), and yet none of them sounds that good for the stitch. For this matter now, I've posponed my idea of buying Panorado for the time being, and I really want to get this right. The general view sounds fine, but it will require some load of work with the cloning tool in Photoshop to fix some stitching errors in some corners. Could it be that the Spherical projection is not a good one for this image? Or the whole thing is really related to the parallax error? Although, from what I see on location, the parallax should not be a problem... not a heavy one at least. Been in worse conditions before, like taking a panorama of that small chamber back in Ireland:

The chamber of the small tower in Aughnanure Castle field.

This chamber was so hard for many things; a) small space I could barely rotate around myself, b) working in AF mode (autofocus) was hard and even harder to switch to manual mode to sharpen the image, because I couldn't look at the viewfinder of the camera all the time, c) the curvatic ceiling caused many erratic results when stitched in PTGui.

In the guest room panorama, the shot was run on 3 rows on different angles running around in a circle. The first row, as usual, was the middle one, or the basic one if I should say. This time I couldn't really follow the dial on the tripod head so, I merely followed the overlapping rule of the focus points inside the viewfinder. Later on, however, I managed to rotate the camera in segments of 30 degrees.The light outdoors, which showed through the windows, was dark as the night was falling. I was hoping to make it brighter really, and hence I should have done it in daytime before the dusk, but my busy schedule and home improvments tasks around the house left me exhausted and could not do a thing until few minutes before dusk, and after that the night tends to fall quickly. I wouldn't be able to race the night fall with such sluggish movements like that ones I do behind the camera! I'm trying my best to work faster, and neater, if I ever could.

A piece of advice people. Go on and download the latest OpenOffice. It is free, and sometimes when Microsoft screws you up with Word or Excel applications, the OpenOffice can be the solution for you. I can't say it is the best, as there are some options in Word or Excelt for example that cannot be found in OpenOffice, but also vice versa is true. I had for days now tried to do a simple formula in Excel and I thought I was doing something wrong when suddenly I did the same thing in OpenOffice Calc (the equivalent for Excel) and ta-da! It's all done and with a blink of an eye! Get IT! I think there are also some add-ons provided by various users to do some jobs, but I didn't try any really.

__________

625. then one night came and the moon was full
626. and with harsh winds blowing the moon became red
627. and the dust was reddish and smelled like metal
628. thus Alexander knew he was in the spot indeed
629. but what more to do if he could not know a thing
630. then he remembered the gesture of Ázilis to Charnagút
631. thus Alexander raised the sword up high and looked
632. to understand the meaning of all what is happening
633. then he noticed a ray of red light striking down on the sword
634. like how a magnet stone attracts the iron pieces
635. then he moved the sword left and right, up and down
636. but the ray goes wherever the sword goes
637. and the hero remembered the words of Ázilis
638. thus he sat down and waited with a hard breath
639. and the dust almost went into his lungs and eyes
640. then he pointed the sword to the ground
641. and he rested his hands over its pommel
642. and the sword went easily into the ground
643. like how a sharp knife cuts into the meat
644. and the land started to shake violently
645. so violent that would crush houses to the depth of Earth
646. and the Earth cracked like a piece of wood under an ax
647. while Alexander jumped to one side in a fast move
648. while the Earth kept on tearing apart from North to South

Caisleán Achadh na nIubhar (again)

Today, I went walking back to the castle of Aughnanure after breakfast, because I had some ideas for some photos that I wanted to apply and see. For my surprise I discovered that there are some things that I didn't see before in the last visit. There is a tower in the corner and seems the inner structure has gone, and the niches in the hard rock wall were filled with some plants.

I had to get out of narrow tower though in a hurry because the wasps seem to have a nest there, and the weather was nice and shiny which made all sort of activities for all these insects!

Also in the castle, I discovered a passage that I did not go into before and it leads to the back of the window that made a shot of before, and I found out that it had ornamentations at the back with an arc. Since I couldn't catch the whole scene with my lens, I decided to go on and make separate several shots for every corner in that window, to stitch them together later on.

On the way back, I was barked at by a dog near one of the houses and I tried to stay calm as much as possible. Combine this with flying wasps all around you, and you will have a very nice feeling!

Tomorrow, hopefully, I'm thinking of some shopping... if the time allowed me to!

Headache, Headache, Headache...

An awful day. The headache just doesn't leave my head. I don't know what pill to take, and the humidity just makes it worse.
After going around as usual on Thursday's night, and after dropping my friend back, I went to the seashore to take some photos finally after delaying the plan for one or two weeks. The humid weather makes it good for light sources, so I didn't want to miss the chance for taking photos that night. I got back home finally at 2:30 a.m., and worked directly on the photos. I'm not so satisfied with the results though. Each snap took some seconds for the shutter to close and open again, and in that time, the camera might have shook a bit, despite the fact that I was using a tripod but there was some breeze in the air. I tried as well to make a panoramic shoot for one building (which I don't know what it was exactly), and like any panoramic shoot, several pics are taken, but this time I had to take 3 shots for every part of the building going all the way up to the top. I could have taken all the building in one shot but with a zoom-in and making a panoramic shoot, you can enlarge the building enormously. Still, I am coping with the noise in these images.

On the other hand, there is always the typical shooting for the Kuwait Towers and this time from afar (and I did this one before as well). The humidity I guess helped to add to some sparkle and halo around the light sources in the image. The image is composed in HDR but also been twisted around with colors and contrast. Otherwise, I think it would be a dull image.

As for now, I have to find something to eat (though I don't feel like it) because it is the beginning of Ramadhan, the month of fasting. With this headache I can't force myself to eat, but maybe some dates and milk would do. I don't know what pills to have now to calm down this damned headache. Maybe some Cataflam would do! Not a weekend that I would like to have again in my life...

Humid...

Today is so DAMN HUMID. These are the simplest words that I can describe it with. Let's see what other beautiful things I had in this day:
1. Pick my sister from the garage (her car's battery went dead last night).
2. Going back home of course and dropping stuff (along with my sister).
3. Aftre coming back to work I had a little rest then went on with my friend driving him here and there to do some paperwork around the campus.
4. I got a heavy dose of unuseful blabbering as usual.

All of that was in a nice, romantic humid weather. Needless to say what happens to my hair in such situations! Made me really uneasy with myself. I'm at home as I'm typing and I'm planning for my next BIG shower. The main problem now is that, in such weather, taking a shower can prove really fatal and you won't be dry again til September comes!
All of that made me really uneasy and I was coping to stay awake and type something for my story. I typed few words but after all I had to give up and take a nap in the office for like 30 minutes at least. On the road, I had to play Twister again, not only because of my absent mind from the tiresome weather, but also for the stupidity and the amazing driving of some people. I had to slow down on the left lane just because I had the mood to make the guy behind me fly off the handle... and guess it worked.

One of the latest discoveries recently, is that Stupidity started to spread over the internet with me finding out that some guys think I'm lying about my identity when I say I'm from Kuwait. Moreover, when I tell them the weather is humid today, they laugh and act the know-it-all and ask "Kuwait? Humid?." I do feel sorry for them really, but I can't help it with such weather today and such mood except to curse them all the time. Let's hope their tomato sauce won't get deeper into their minds.

Away from all of this stupidity, I made ready some of the photos that I took already in the past few days.

The topmost photo is, of course, for the Kuwait towers. This image was combined in HDR and some contrast play is applied after that. To smooth it even more, I had to apply a "surface blur." The final touch, and the hardest, was to blur the front and make the towers show firmly at the back. The idea sounds a bit weird to me because it is typical to see the subject against a blurred background, but not a blurred foreground. My eyes isn't used to it.

The lower image was one of the images I took in the morning of my birthday, where I combined the HDR image and then applied the dramatic effect. A larger image is better to be viewed here, because of the complexity of the subject.

Finally, and because of this MARVELOUS day, I couldn't translate anything in my story. I was planning already to do something, at least one verse if possible, but with all that running up and down I just couldn't do anything at all. Needless to talk about my screwed mood already.

THURSDAY! HERE I COME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stimulus

Quiet weekend. Not going out or anything but sitting here facing my photoshop and mangling with my photos. I woke up at almost 9 p.m. last night and stayed awake until the morning of today. Diarrhea was attacking me now and then. I think it is a consequence of the change in weather or the wave of dust we had lately here. However, by the morning time and just before the sunrise begins, I started the engine and went over to the beach beside some restaurants there to try to catch a glance of the Kuwait Towers and convert the images into an HDR. Boy, was I sick of the situation! Kids and families were sitting there before the break of dawn and playing soccer as well! The most amazing interaction was, when I was pointing my camera in some direction and then suddenly and icecream guy looked at me and just stood there and not budging. I know what's the definition of being rude but this guy can be set as an example!

However, I left the beach in a hurry as I couldn't catch much and the sun started to rise already. I think HDR are best when you have a dark atmosphere somehow and not to catch photos under plain lights. This is my impression at least. I might post some photos for the Kuwait towers later on though.
After leaving the beach I was heading to some market to buy some stuff for my own breakfast but unforutnately on the way I felt such a severe pain that made me get a U-turn and head back. On the way back though, and despite the pain, I decided to stop a moment after I glanced some view that captured my attention, and so I decided to snap it. Of course, after snapping, the work at home starts:

The picture above was taken from several angles but I think this is the best angle it was taken with. At home, the picture was composed into HDR and then several processes took place to enhance colors and give some other effects to the image. This scene reflects the old and the new Kuwait and whether we are building or knocking down our heritage to be a nation without a history. The old muddy house below dates back somehow to the 1950s at least, judging from the way it was structured.

Last night as well, and since I was not going out anywhere, I spent most of the time playing around at some of the photos I took of the dome, that I snapped on the 12th. I had a problem since the best image I had and composed into an HDR was in fact not centered and the right side of the image was cut. After many, many, many trials and hours of working on it, I think I got a fine result by now, although I can't say it is as pretty as the one I did before and posted in the last entry. This image was composed of sticking and gluing parts of other images together and doing a short panoramic merge for 2 images and then taking parts from other images to fix the lost area. After all, I took the complete half (left side) of the image and tried to complete the right side with it. When all failed because of the light and shadow in the image itself, I got some success, when I converted the image into a rectangular coordinates then back to polar (guys who deal with photoshop know this from the distort menu). This move filled in some empty spaces in the image which made me crop it later on with some equality on the sides.

Just few hours ago, I was also working on the panoramic view, taken from the same hall of dome, and despite the colors, it had in fact lot of noise and remove them I had to sacrifice somehow with the sharpness of the image, which makes me reluctant a bit to submit it to stock photos sites. They are hard to accept such "normal" photos even! The real size of the image is supposed to be 240cm tall and around 110cm wide, and sorry can't convert this to feet right now!

Notice that the "pipe" looking thing at the top of the image, is in fact the pillar that was just behind the camera. The photo shoot was running from the ground level (at 0 degrees) and I was pushing the camera upward for few degrees between every shoot. At the end, when the camera was at the final position (90 degrees) you can see the result is a pillar going on the top of the image!
i have to make some cleaning for the images taken in the past 3 days. I have 3 folders so far and the PSD (photoshop format) files are mixed with JPGs. The size of the 3 folders reached almost 2GB!!! I have to remove stuff, and store it the usual way in its own folder to be packed later on on a DVD, but that does not mean my work with the dome is over yet. I'm still planning to look more into it so I might get a new idea and new construction that can be made with what I have so far.
An idea just occured to me, I might make a shoot of my own work place from the outside. But such a building is a sensitive place to be posted in stock photos!

It had been some days now and I didn't do any work with my Alexander's story, which made this blog more like an artistic place for photography and not the conlang of Ayvarith. The translation is almost stopped. I have to think of some way to stimulate me on writing more of the translation! Now, with my partner's coming back from vacation, I think I might have some time for myself and try to write down both, the Alexander's translation and the Blackened Image story. The month of fasting, Ramadhan, is on the doors by next week or so, thus I don't know how am I going to do, specially that I need some stimulants (coffee, redbull, ...etc). I pray my mood would be in a better situation by the coming days. Mood is very important in writing, and for this I didn't write any poems lately, and my pace with other activities is downed. All what I'm waiting for, for now, is my vacation...