Ludendorff and The Titles...

Here I am. Writing this before the arrival of Thursday as usual, but with one exception. As you are reading this (seriously) I'm supposedly waiting my turn in the clinic to do the ERG test. An annoying test for the eye, but a must to check the status of my retina. I'm typing these words as a slight fever is occupying my body slowly and I'm hoping that I can stop it in time before I fall completely ill. I had to use my first "casual" leave this morning (Monday) to skip work and remain in bed, after a long insomniac night, with headaches and shoulder pains.
Because of the rains (again) I couldn't do much at night except for some trial in the previous location of the week before, which didn't appeal completely to me, but I will share it with you here with some comments. I would like also to discuss and talk about the issue of the titles of the images (below).

Surreal Night

I've posted about last week when I've headed to some place where I did a panorama for (and this panorama is re-visited as well). This week too I've decided to visit the place again to change the perspective.

Das Licht der Dunkelheims (or Dunkelheits)

As I've mentioned in my previous post, in this shot, Das Licht der Dunkelheims, the lights at the back of the monument were annoying (specially at f/11 like this with fisheye lens). For this reason I planned to visit the place again and change the perspective. But unfortunately for me, things were not better, if not worse even, this time.

Der Traum

As you can see now in Der Traum the situation was much more drastic! Lights were ON in front of me! Beside some annoying people walking around (which didn't cause much harassment, thank God). The greatest mistake I've done in this shot is to concentrate on the movement of the line of the roof, in hope to make a guiding line, and totally forgetting about the brightest spots in the scene. I do not hold firmly to the law of thirds, but in this occasion like this one in Der Traum, it seems that this law would have served me better with this glowing lantern.
This shot is in fact a collection of long exposures, i.e. HDR. I tried hard to light the lantern and avoid the sparkles or the flare surrounding the lantern itself but that didn't work in any possible way at hand right now. The least I could do is reduce the presence, but not eliminate it completely. I got my lesson here, and I'm not sure if I will head back there another night, but if I'm to do this, probably I would have to head pretty late. I think those lanterns are automated to shut off at a specific time, hence in my first trial they were off, and then they were on (the time was earlier relatively in the second). I do have other night time schedule for another location but it's too early to talk about it.

The frequent visits to the previous location inspired me to produce another panorama (and good thing that I still have the HDR slides). Unlike the first trial with Planeta Columnae, my aim here was to do something crazy a bit; out of the ordinary and no symmetry (or let's say at least I tried to keep some symmetry but no use!).

Ludendorffs Wirklichkeit

Keeping some perspective symmetry in this one was hard if not impossible mainly because that the original panorama was taken a bit off the center. The dome of the monument and the pillars were competing for symmetry; fix one, then you screw the other.
The harsh noise was not a big problem with Ludendorffs Wirklihkeit; all I had to do is some Median trick and smooth out the rugged "surface." Probably, even in this small scale image in this post, you can see some cut lines after trials to fix some stitching errors. The original panorama did suffer from this as well.
In processing and adjusting the colors to produce a certain "dreamy" atmosphere, there was not much difficulty I would say, but the hardship in fact came from naming the new stitch. I had the word (hanging) and (suspended) and the likes of those in my mind, but suddenly for some reason, the name of Ludendorff kicked in. Just in case you don't know, Ludendorff was one of the major generals of the German imperial army during WWI, along with Hindenburg.
I'm not sure what came to my mind at the moment I've named this panorama the Ludendorffs Wirklichkeit (Ludendorff's Reality). In fact, I was indeed reading about him on Wikipedia, but what was serious about this panorama and Ludendorff? Is it the surreal look and Ludendorff's dreams or theory of the Dolchstoß (the stab in the back)? Do they have something in common? More about titles to come.

Luna

I've stopped shooting the sun and moon for some time now. Mainly because of the rains and the clouds, and also because I believe that the critical stage for the sunspots had faded by now. On the other hand I got the chance to shoot the full moon (which is said to be a super moon) on January 16^th. By comparing several shots for the moon, I've realized that some of the features had changed mainly because of the change in the light direction and level; a typical concept in shooting to show textures - always give light on the side.

3D Luna

The difference in the "facade" of the moon for January 14^th and January 16^th made me drool on some 3D action by making an anaglyph from the two images. Simply, with the slight rotation of the moon, the view in my eyes became like a right-eye and left-eye shots. I needed though to rotate the image around 90^o to coincide some features. I've found out that with some staring but with the eyes relaxed, the eyes can overcome some of the ghosting and the moon pops out a bit like hovering on the page. However, the lower part of the image suffers the harshest ghosting and probably won't be easily merged into a single image in most of the viewing eyes. It all depends on the distance between the two eyes of the viewer.

Ghosting (anaglyph): The inability of merging the right (blue) and left (red) layers in anaglyph images into a single view, raising a distorted view of the subject.

Warum and Why?

(About Titles)

Now to the main issue that I wanted to talk about in this post specifically. The issue of images' and photos' titles and addresses. It came striking to me that lot of people, either artists or casual photographers, or simply those who document their lives, are simply using "phrases" to address their photos. Typically though, I noticed this phenomena abruptly among Arab photographers around me. The phrases, however, in many cases do become as a line from a poem.
In this position, I have to announce my rejection for such practices for entitling and addressing photos. Yes, there might be some sessions when a photographer takes thousands of images, e.g. sports photography, and of course naming them one by one is simply not applicable, if not impossible. My talk here though is not about documenting photographers, but more about artists, or photographers who aim at producing a work of art after all.
One might argue that a sports or a wild-life photographer is not documenting, simply because the images taken are not for covering up an event for example, but looking back at the nature of the shoot and session, it does not differ much from documenting. Let's put ourselves in this scenario for example: shooting a football (soccer or American doesn't matter) game. Principally, the photographer is not knowing what he or she is looking for, unlike, let's say, architectural photographer, who has somewhat of a vision for how things should look and what to be expressed (specially if this job is paid to be done for some business!). There are, of course, certain rules for the sports photographer, like following the events, or following where the ball is to catch the action and so on. However, after all, there is no meditative status before the operation itself and it all relies on sorting out the images later on after the event. Now, this type of behavior in photography might not be really documenting for an event, but it runs in a way of documenting because the artistic venue shows later when sorting out the images. The images themselves can be submitted, say, to magazines and newspapers for publishing and thus, no name is quite required to be given to those shots, but this is just the beginning.

Now, if the photographer is willing, one of these images can be represented as a work of art by itself despite the sportive nature let's say. At this point, let's imagine some photo of two players with a football in between them. What does that mean? What does this photo express or say? One can argue that it is enough to "see" the photo to contemplate or enjoy the scene. Of course, we can enjoy the scene represented because it is a joy for the eye; colors and shapes. Now, contemplate? On what basis? The fact is there is no single base to start the contemplation from, or if you like, not a single concept to imagine something specific further behind the photo presented. Notice I said "specific," which means you might be free to imagine whatever you like beyond this sportive scene, but there is no single direction to direct your imagination.
Sure, there are the titles that are identifying elements by themselves, like what was most commonly used in personal portraiture paints in the classical era or even right now in some portraiture photography, as well as in sports photography or wild-life. However, as it is stated already, these titles would be identifying elements. Yes, they can be enough for non-artistic approach, but when art is present I do believe that philosophy must be present too, and a title that reflects this philosophy or this specific imagination beyond the presented photo is something that one must hold on seriously.

I always give this analogy for how a title might really affect us as viewers, on both levels, consciously and unconsciously. The level of consciousness though might vary from one person to another of course but a title would sure help. Imagine now you took a photo of a flower that was blooming on an arid land. Now, you produce the same image 3 times and you are to hang it in 3 different places. However, under each one of them you are supposed to hang a title, thus you entitle the first one with [xxx xxx] which is supposedly the scientific name of the flower, and on the second one you hang the word [challenge], while the third one bears the title [flower]. Put yourself in the place of the viewers visiting your printed photo, what would their mental status be when they read a scientific name, a challenge, or a simple statement as "flower"? At least, I can assure from my perspective as a person who graduated from a scientific background, when a scientific title is issued for any image, people usually would look a scientifically-motivated examining eye to the matter at hand and not bear the artistic look or imagination that they are supposed to have (if the photographer hoped for it).

Think about it: there might be some poems, and other artworks that do not have a title, but how many they are compared to those who already have an issued title? Another example would be books. How often do you find a book without a title? Probably a book is not a piece of art (not necessarily) but the title plays a great role in attracting the viewer and identifying the book itself - a book without a title would be hard to be dealt with in, for example, references let's say. This is if such thing exists. In the world of Arabic literature, writers, specially of the middle and late eras, worked a bit around the titles of their books and often they were chosen in a rhythmic way, resulting in a a bit long titles, but with ringing harmony. Probably modern Arabic writers and translators do not tend to this habit. Anyway, the point is that they realized as it seems the importance of the title in attracting the reader in the first place - it is the appetizer before reading if we can call it so. If it applies to the covers of books, then it must apply to some extent to photos. Notice that in most Photo sharing websites, .e.g Flickr, there is a space for the Title and another one for the Description.

Because the title of the image, as explained above, is to be a guidance to the imagination of the viewer to a specific category that we, the artists, want the viewer to be indulged within as we did, then it follows that the titles are greatly affected and are characteristic of the photographer's own unique style. If the title has to do anything with the feeling of the photographer then it must be unique to that photographer as well, in the sense that a photographer would develop or tend to develop his or her own sense of titles and what should be used, and what not.
If I want to talk about my experience, I mostly use English and German to give names to my photos. The problem probably is that, I don't really know why I'm using different languages but in some cases I'm aware of the effect. For example, taking pictures for holy places like a mosque (like the Grand Mosque of Kuwait) and the cathedrals and churches (old and new) in Ireland, I've used Latin to name a lot of these photos. This is mainly because in the western world (as most of my followers are non-Arabs) Latin is usually attached to classical literature, and to religious rites (specially in Catholicism). Thus, in order to approach the mentality of a viewer from that culture, the titles given were in large part, Latin. On the other hand, I've used Greek to name some photos that I've taken in Failaka island (in 2012) as it is an effort from my side to link the cultures; the local, and the Greek. Failaka island has a very well-known Hellenistic past. I seldom use Arabic (mainly because, as stated before, most of the followers are non-Arabs), and for some specific shots, Spanish  and Turkish were used as well. Probably it is part of me that acknowledge the feeling of the different languages and the way they are perceived. It could be that naming large number of my photos in German is a trial to add some strength, mainly because most people perceive this language as "hard," but the fact is, it is not a conscious process. It is the feeling that guides me to name some of these photos into German (and in fact I do have a number of soft or romantic-themed images named in German as well).

Harmonie (Harmony)
The sound of the title is not of big difference between German and English, but still I preferred to use the German spelling when this image was made.

However, this is just my own experience and style when it comes to giving the titles. The core of the matter is, titles, just like the style of photography under any field, they are characteristic and undergo the style of the photographer him- or herself.

Probably we can see the affect of the titles is pronounced more when it comes to abstract photography, where the viewer's mind would dwindle in between the ideas trying to figure out the purpose and the nature of the presented photo. Adding to that, entitling your own photos (with some good title, that is) would make it suitable to give a reference much more easily. Sure, with the advancement in EXIF technology it is relatively easy to record the data in the original file to be viewed digitally, but I don't think this is applicable for a printed material for, say, an exhibition of your work of art.

Then, how a title is supposedly given? What would make a good title? I believe it is hard to answer such a question because, as stated above, a title undergoes the woes of the style of the photographer and the ideas that a photographer wishes to accompany or to indulge the viewers with. However, probably there are some pinpoints that can be stated about the nature of the titles, and how they (most probably) should be - though I'm not trying to give rules:

• Concise: The title should probably not be too long as to not scatter the thought and the general idea that a photographer wants to deliver with his image. This is the problem with lot of Arab photographers as I can see so far - lot of them simply put a line of a poem as a title for their images. This is more like a storyline, and not merely a title. Few words with direct impact on imagination to ignite the viewer in his or her own world and vision of the photo shown.
• Imaginative: The title should work on indulging the imagination of the viewer. How this is done might be hard to precisely explain, but it is greatly connected to the audience. A photographer should have a hunch about his or her audience, if not know them well, to know what sparks their imagination. The imaginative title could have a physical meaning or a non-physical existence that connects to the mind (and heart) of the viewer. In any way, an imaginative title is, as I believe, highly dependent of the audience and its relation to the photographer. 
• Connective: The core of the idea of giving titles for photos is to provide the viewer with some connection; one end of the rope of imagination, if you like to call it. Thus, the title must connect to some idea; specially an idea that is exchangeable between the audience and the photographer (i.e. of a known topic to both). But probably it is not necessarily to be like that all the time as the photographer can be an educator sometimes by educating the audience about the work of art itself, and here the title can work as an aid and as a gate to connect different ideas into the work of art (remember Ludendorff?).
• Vocal: I do believe in the power of the sound itself to the hearing ear. And I guess that naming a photo in some language, native or not, does affect the sound, and in return how a viewer would perceive and receive the title and the photo combined. Probably I do use German most of the time because unconsciously I see it "out of the ordinary" or "unusual". In some occasions, I did use lengthened German words (e.g. Sonnenuntergangsstadt) to emphasize the vocal vibrancy as well as the "unusual" look; at least for the non-German speakers).

These are some of the points that, after some thinking, did ring a bell for me in the topic of giving titles. It is quite unfortunate to see that many exhibitions, here at least, run after displaying the images without their titles. This, in my humble opinion, is suppressing one of the dimensions for the control of the imaginative thinking for both, the viewer and the artist, and loses the effect of "tunneling" the general thoughts in a specific direction for the viewer.
It also seems to me that in serial photography, where a photographer represents a group of photos with some connection in between them, the role of the title could be shaky in this part, but I'd rather say it is essential specially if the connection is not easily apparent in between the shots. For a series of sportive shots, for example, probably a title won't matter because of the matter of the action involved, but if these shots are for different sports types in one series? How to explain the connection or give a hint for the connection that the photographer had supposedly achieved in the series? I think a title here would do the job perfectly. The only difference though, the title would rather be for the series, not for any single photograph within the series.

Thus, I beg you, please: give your images their worth of a good title.

Shattered Poltergeist...

The week started with a dust wave and suffocated lungs for some. Many things are keeping my mind occupied at the moment, but trying to push my work forward for now with the new pictures taken from Failaka island. Full panoramas, handheld panoramas, all are on the list and I'm trying to pick some new items to include in my website, but the great burden for now is the expo, which seems from my perspective that I'm enrolled in it alone and not with anyone else (i.e. my sister). I'm writing these words earlier so as to be posted on Thursday as scheduled. I'm nervous somehow for the expo, but I'm hoping for a positive response (but I'm not confident I will get it). I just hope I close my eyes and open them again and everything is just over with. I have to get ready to decorate the booth. I don't know how, but we'll see in time.

This said now, I've spent my days in the past week mainly on doing photos from Failaka taken recently in my last visit last week. I've started to name some of them with Greek names already, relating to the Greek past of the island. In fact, the history of the island and its surroundings of other islands and the main land of Kuwait do extend further back in history before the Sumerian civilization in the same area, in what is known as the Ubaid culture. Known as Culture because it is not yet in the level of an organization as a civilization, but something below that with tribes living under certain common shared thoughts and ideologies.
However, beside Latin, Greek seems a promising and interesting point of change in naming some of my pictures. I wonder though if I will put the name on my pictures, and whether, in case I put them there, would or should I put the original Greek text or a transliteration of the name? I'm not sure yet, but seems the original text in Greek is quite attractive to the eyes (and people are not used to it). I'm still looking through the collection I've made so far and I'm not sure I still got quite the image to add to my website. All of this talk about the Greek and Hellenic past of this island, makes me wonder, is there a Greek blood in this nation? Was the island just deserted by the Hellenic soldiers and other settlers came in? Or, life continued in a continued spectrum of living through the ages; Hellenic, Christian, Abbasid, to the time of modern Kuwait? I suppose some DNA tests can do some work here!

Processing Story

I. New Planet:

Until the time of writing these, I'm having some hard time with some panoramas, specially the one I made for the hotel itself from the inside. I'm not sure why but enough to say the panorama is full of straight lines with less features specially on the upper part of the panorama.
However, there were some successes on small fronts I'd say. Like the Planet Herba, made from some location near by the old bank location (and posted previously last week).

Planeta Herba

Probably should have named it in Greek! But the idea back then didn't occur to me in fact. This is one of the images under consideration for a simple QTVR (without zenith and nadir originally) and also, of course, a flat panorama of some projection (e.g. mercator, spherical) or even a tunnel view. It is under consideration as well to be added to my website for printing.

II. Megalou:

One of the largest panoramas done so far (and only in flat format so far) is the one I took from the ramp few moments before complete sunset...

Before The Storm

There was no real storm in fact, it is just a title! Anyway, I challenged myself (and my computer) here to do this panorama at 20,000 pixels wide (20K, 20 thousand). The maximum I've been doing so far was 10,000; meaning this is the double. Things went OK with the tone-mapping later on and hopefully I will produce more projections of this panorama alone too. A little planet is already waiting to be processed.
I've changed the watermark here into my new website, as a form of advertising, though I know it is hard to read anyway! I've been embedding the website also in the file's info (IPTC).

III. Poltergeist:

Then comes one of the most beloved shots to my heart, but unfortunately, something I can't put on my website and offer as a print because, simply, it is not in the taste of regular people! However, it is one of these images that offer you many chances of changes in colors, specially when done in HDR...

Poltergeist

Poltergeist - BW

Poltergeist; in Arabic this name is translated into something close to "Noisy Ghost" [الشبح الضاج] but Google Translation machine was not good enough and simply yielded [evil spirit] in Arabic.
The place is the main power plant, with many turbines like these three spreading all over the place, and those were the last ones in the plant, with some space allowing me to stand and erect a tripod. There is a third version of the same image, done in low saturation style, but not shown here. A friend said it is more mysterious that way (low saturated), even more than the Black and White version, while some did like the colored version, maybe for the looks themselves without much feelings put into it. I like both versions, but I'm not sure it will be a lovely subject for printing, thus I'm reluctant to add it to my website so far.
Cleaning the noise from the colored version needed a bit of a lengthy work and layer masks added to control the effect (again, the Median trick). The Black and White version on the other hand was dealt with with a trick of "glamor" addition; an effect that adds a bit of fog to the highlights with some blur, to give a ghostly look.

IV. Golden Days:

An image that I was considering for adding up to my website, despite the comments I've received from some friends about its background.

Golden Days

Golden Days - BW

The image might be a bit unclear in this size with the water mark, however, the comments were pointing about the background of the dark trees. It can be a problematic view, with dark spots catching the eyes of the observer before the golden stems. I'm not sure Iwill add it, or maybe the black and white version is a bit less in distraction? I'm not sure yet...

V. Tranquility:

I've mentioned earlier that I've managed to do some handheld panoramas on the island; well, not completely handheld in this case here, but the main point here is that the VR-head was not used for such a simple panorama. Maybe it is one of these instances where a tilt-shift lenses can be useful for a simple job like this.

Tranquil Door

The stitching of course was not out of problems, and some cloning was used later on to fix some points. Unfortunately, my aim from the very beginning when I captured this panorama (with regular pan head on tripod with 6 angles; 3 top, 3 low) is to have a flat image with horizontal line being flat and straight; not curved.
Fixing the image was hard to be done, and even more hardships arrived with DxO as problems occurred with edited TIFF files. The files cannot be loaded into the program to be fixed for distortion and other things; and once loaded, it was hard to fix without losing key features in the image (by the cropping). I've decided to leave it like that after all.
The main purpose of the image, as the title endorses, is the simplicity of life and the tranquility provided in the island, with some depth. I'm not sure though, but seems there is a weak connection between the style of the old homes on the island with the Hellenistic style. I even remember that some old houses (deserted by now) were decorated in white and blue, just like the typical homes and houses that the Greek islands are famous for!

VI. Elliniki Glossa:

It was in fact the previous image, Tranquil Door, that inspired me to start to name some of my images from the island in Greek; as to show the Hellenistic connection with the island and its history. It was a bit hard in the beginning (technically) but I guess with CharMap provided by the Windows system itself, it is possible to type down simple names with ease (but I do have a Greek keyboard layout installed).

Ερείπια (Ereípia)
Ruins

One of the funny things that I've faced when trying to type in Greek, is to discover that when typing in caps, the accent marks on a vowel are not placed on top like the regular Latin-based alphabets (e.g. É, Í) but instead, on the side! I thought in beginning there is a problem with my keyboard system until I've checked it out on some dictionaries online. Thus, if I was to write down the name of the image above all in caps that would be: Ε Ρ Ε Ί Π Ι Α. A bit awkward to my eyes if you ask me! Anyway, because the Greek alphabet is shorter than most of the Latin-based alphabets, I had some hard time finding the accent key on the keyboard; but the good news is that still most of the letters of the Greek alphabet coincide on keyboard with their Latin counterpart.

Back to the image.I rarely do take sunset images in fact since my work is typically at sunrise moments, when the beach area, on the mainland that is, is usually not so stuffed with people (but some annoying moments persist still). Anyway, this one image was one of the rarest moments. I've decided to make a silhouette here (by metering the highlights and putting down EV to one stop or so). In fact, right now I regret that I didn't experiment with my flash unit to make some interesting foreground and background. I did take some shots in a series of the same scene changing the value of the EV, but after all no HDR was intended, but only a single RAW file editing.

The morning started with a staggering wind and a low tide on the shores in front of the hotel. Although I was planning to wake up late since the ferry won't be leaving the island until 2 p.m., but anyway seems the freshening air there would keep you active all the time. I went hunting for snapshots along the beach, and it did feel like something... mediterranean, even though I've never been to any county across the Mediterranean.

Παραλία του Ίκαρου (Paralía tou Íkarou)
Beach of Ikaros

It is one of the images that I might consider adding to my website collection for printing despite the fact that in a close up view, there are some out of focus region as it seems. However, my experience so far with the prints somehow tell me that such out of focus regions are not a big deal, specially for large prints that are designed specifically to be viewed from afar and not in a close encounter. Also, with extra sharpening and canvas printing, such problems tend to be "covered up".
It was a hard time doing this image out of a single RAW. Although taken in brackets for HDR, but I thought some HDR here is really unnecessary, and vibrant colors can be achieved with simple adjustment from the RAW. Done previously with DxO to straighten the horizon line and elongate the image a bit, but the original file without any distortion fix was fine enough I believe, thus I've neglected the idea. The image was taken with my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens but with Vivitar 2x teleconverter attached (thus supposedly pushing the focal length to 16mm). Maybe not much a difference from the Canon 15mm fisheye which I posses already.

The last of the Greek "icons," for the time being that is, is the staircase in the hotel itself. A view I liked, but I was somehow careless about it when I processed it! Don't ask me why, it is just one of those mood turn-abouts.

Έλιξ (Éliks)
Helix

It is a handheld panorama, and as expected, problems occurred, but not in stitching this time, but mainly in fixing the perspective and the tilt and having the perfect crop. So far, I don't see any of that is achieved so far in this image, and maybe this is what attempted me to tone-map the final image in a reckless way making hard contrast and hard highlights and shadows. Some people though did like the image like that already, but definitely it is not something to add to my website collection; unless I fix it somehow!

VII. Failed:

I've mentioned probably in my previous post that I've tried to do some long exposures on the island when the darkness hovered on, but I've failed. However, I did go on and tried to work on the only "real" long exposure left in the camera (other shots of the same scene were test shots made on ISO12800) with a time of 20 minutes.

Star Race

The high noise level made it necessary to an excessive effort with noise filters, and that, naturally, dispersed lot of details. However, the game kept on by trying to achieve a good contrast to enhance the thin lines of the star trails. I might as well summarize the problems in work here:

• Generally, not a good location. The horizon contains light sources (from the mainland) making metering a bit harder and achieving a longer time for the exposure even harder. That made me use a smaller aperture (high f-number) and in return, that caused some flare as you see on the right side of the image (hexagonal rays).
• Another problem with the location; on the top of the ramp with not a suitable orientation of the camera made of some excessive cropping in order to straighten the horizon, and that minimized the image size severely.
• The noise level was so hard to clean at once. Cleaning with several plugins made the image in general without much details and only good for small size viewing. Probably I should check back again with "passive" noise cleaning - where I have to take an exposure of the same length under same settings of ISO and F-number, but with the led closed on lens, then take the picture and layer it on the original image and blend it in to subtract the noise. This method, even though I didn't try it much, but it is hard to deal with at the time I'm planning for more processing to the colors and other aspects of the image. This method requires that the image is not processed at all to subtract the noise correctly, supposedly.
• Finally, in such dark environments, I proved to myself that I'm hopeless. I need some assistance with my tools and moving from one place to another and being alone in such atmosphere is not good, specially with my well-known clumsy movement.

Now, it is time to schedule this post to automatically be on the web by Thursday! I'm not sure how much I'm going to process but I'm sure there is so much stress awaiting for me in the coming week, and I might even not post anything by next week. As I write these words I'm still thinking of the decorations that I'm "supposed" to do to the booth. I do wish if I went through this all alone. I do hope though that I'm up to the level and won't disappoint others with the show. Maybe that's all about why I'm a loner person. Simply, cause I can't be around people for too long...
ta ta!

Happy New Year. Really?

Happy new year. So they say. Anyway, not much difference to me, for all days seem to go on one direction in a monotonous rhythm.I didn't even touch my camera for a month or more, well, except for trials to take a picture of myself to work on my idea for Asperger's but even that was a fail. I need a hand at this, but all I have is myself to work here.
I've began to really hate the start of the week for all the bad news that might come to my ears, just like the situation with my dear friend, who gets all the heavy dose of bad news in the first day, in the early hours of the morning as he steps into his work place.
I try to amuse myself now and then in my idleness by working on some of my photos from this year and the last year, and of course most if not all of them are from Ireland, as I didn't capture many photos from here. I did however catch few that are somehow worth the mention, mainly two, from Boubyan island 2 weeks ago, which brings me to the point here that I'm supposed to go to Boubyan tomorrow, Wednesday. The news makes me sick somehow in that it is, again, with the military. The view is nice really, but I'd rather work in a different environment. Moreover, we are limited by time in that we have to get back to my work place for the damn fingerprint scanning.

Boubyan incipit, Boubyan fines.

A road on the island.

As mentioned before, I've started to use Latin to name my images, thinking it gives some sense of power or mysterious hue (but Irish Gaelic can be included sometimes of course). The name here means "Boubyan begins, Boubyan ends," denoting the fact that this island is simply, clear. The long road won't make much difference in the views. Well, maybe in the middle of the island it is different, who knows! Tomorrow we are supposed to go deeper into the island. I will try to bring my camera and see what I can snap. On the right side you can see the bridge that leads into and from the island. I took a small panorama of that bridge from the same position but I didn't look after it. I don't think the angle was good.

Post-war Traffic

This truck maybe was the best catch in that trip. The rusty metal is always a good subject for HDR composition, with its destinctive reddish hue. The soldiers gathered around their officer and discussed the matter of the bullet hole in the front glass or the windshield. Some say it is the one that killed the driver while others say it is an after-math process. What an intellectual dicussion! I tried to catch the scene again with a fisheye lens but in fact, didn't make much a difference. I think I should have stepped a bit further away from the truck to allow more space for the land on the right, and to give a clearer view of the fisheye effect.

Beside those, there were many pictures processed from Ireland, old and new. I've finished my third album and going on completing my fourth album. If there is anything worthy living for right now, in my life, is the pictures I make. I'm trying hard to put my feelings into them, but I do give some space to technical matters as well sometimes. On the technical side, I'm fluctuating between sRGB and Adobe spaces, but I do become naughty sometimes and feel like I want to work in ProPhoto even though I know it won't fit my needs perfectly. It is just the need for vivid colors that makes me eager to work with this color space.

I'm tending now to use more and more adjustment layers (after tone-mapping the HDR slide of course). All to give the vivid or the mysterious look. Not everyting can be done in the tone-mapping process but at least, controlling the light and the sharpness of some zones in the image. Not much panoramas now since I worked out most of them in the early trials as I arrived back from Ireland, but nonetheless, there was one or two and some of the small ones that I needed to do. One of those was the panorama taken from the front yard of Hore Abbey, which in fact, generally in shape, didn't differ much from the previous done panorama from the inside of the abbey:

Hore Abbey in the front yard.

Hore Abbey from the inner court.

I think the two differ only in the amount of details of the structures, of course. In order to make the new panorama a sort of a magical place (and I called it already Horeus Magicalis), I used many adjustment layers to control the color of the skies and the grass (which was green of course). I preferred the yellow here because normally it adds a good contrast against a bluish sky. One of the major tools that are in use in my work is the Selective Color adjustment layer (of course beside the normal and everyday tools, like Curves and Levels). This adjustment layer allows me to blend-in different colors into some other color in varying degrees, and that affects the appearance and the mood of the image a "lot". Having the mood I want for an image is a serious, hideous and tedious work when it comes to sRGB space. Thus, as a norm, I tend to use Adobe 1998 color space the most. Ghosts and artifcts forming in HDR slides is another problem, along with the chromatic aberrations which Photomatix doesn't seem to fix them properly, hence I need to use Hue/Saturation adjustment layers often to eliminate the magenta lines from the edges (and sometimes cyan as well).

One of the small panoramas (vertical this time) that I've done recently was the chestnut tree taken from Cahir town, along the long path beside the river bank leading to the Swiss Cottage.

Castán (Chestnut)

This little vertical panorama is weird a bit because the upper part of the tree is in fact dangling over the path, i.e. it was above my head when I took the shots for this tree (handheld). Here it appears likeif the tree is springing outward like a flower and not really bending over my head! Just the effect I want! The problem here though was, as usual, fixing the colors AFTER tone-mapping. If I remember correctly, the space here was sRGB and it was so hard to convince myself with the saturation in general, but here you go. I was aiming really at elaborating more of the trunk's color and make it more reddish like. Nowto include the whole tree is another story. I would have to take a wider and higher panorama, which in fact would be probably better be done in a 360 panorama. The situation there is complicated!

Now in the mess, I'm starting to work just a little bit on my web page. Just a little and not much. The previous design I've made before was not really to my likings, so I decided to work on another one. This time I will try make the whole ting in GIF (with transparent background) and then cut it out into slides and convert the whole thing into HTML. Hope, that won't take much of the connection speed needed, and the design is simple I believe. I finished reading my book about manuscripts, and hence I have some time at work to do something about my webpage. All I need right now is just a push and a flare in my brain. I tend to sit idle in this place not able to do anything because of the bad mood.

I need some push with my poetry. I didn't write anything in a long time. I just hate it when this happens. I got the damn feelings, but I don't have the damn connection to put them together. What's happening!!!