Fakhroid Muse…

Well, schools are back here and traffic jams as well of course. The typical "normal" life I usually lead is here. What is not normal for me now is the fact that I'm not traveling this year anywhere. No plans so far.
My friends urged me to follow them to Germany for Photokina event (even if not from the very first day of the opening) but anyway I couldn't just skip everything on my shoulders and fly away; beside the budget that I'm trying to manage. According to news, our club did pretty well and the most astonishing part is the fact that we are the first "club" to participate in the history of the expo, and the first Arabian party to participate as well! Unfortunately, I don't have a proper coverage to post right now but I might try to get some for later.
Meanwhile, after ensuring that everything is going fine with the group, I asked for pardon from the founder to withdraw for a while from all the activities in the group, mainly to touch my camera more and create something.

Muse

My hands and mind are eager to work with some panorama, but the lack of locations in mind still put a block on my way. To find some rest, I decided to try to work on something at home and try hard to push my imagination further. For this reason, I've started to attend the theaters for a while, but the most significant effect took place via music, and specifically, Arabic classical music.



I've been fascinated lately with his voice: Sabáħ Fakhry [صباح فخري]. Even though I do remember watching him on TV when I was just a kid but I wasn't much into this art back then of course, and my mentality had changed drastically since then of course. His voice and the lyrics of the Syrian folk songs as well as the traditional classical Arabic Mowaššaħát do make a mesmerizing mix; specially the song posted above, with the title Send Me A Letter. I will type the lyrics at the end of this post if dear non-Arab reader wishes to know what the song is about.
Listening to Sabáħ would eventually form some ideas and created a sort of muse inside my head, but still lot of work is required to perfect this sense. My first trial is sloppy but I will post it here anyway, since this is all I could do for now; and probably I will try to make it better next time if I get any new "museful" input! 

إن كنت هويت ونسيتني
(if you have loved and forgot about me)
Sigma 70-300mm @120mm, 250^-1sec, f/29, ISO100

In the beginning, I was thinking of something with a romantic look, but my mind doesn't wander much into that arena. I wanted to point out a break of heart, some emotional breakdown of some sort, and after doing some tiny brainstorming, I arrived at the idea of reflecting a line from the lyrics off a broken mirror; the envelopes and drops of color (mimicking blood) came out later to fill some of the emptiness which was abundant around the writing. The hard time was delivered for breaking the mirror, placing the mirror, and placing the speedlite properly.
I decided to work here with my converted camera, and with a calibration from the WB disk, the colors were almost back to normal (some bits of color fixing was required later). The shot above is in fact a tone-mapped HDR slide, which after all, probably, wouldn't differ much from editing a single RAW file in a proper manner, but it was an experiment I loved to make. Later on, it was time to take "real" Infrared shots with this converted Canon EOS 7D…

 (IR) إن كنت هويت ونسيتني
(if you have loved and forgot about me)
Sigma 70-300mm @120mm, 250^-1sec, f/11, ISO100

Now, because of applying the infrared filter on the Sigma lens, I had to decrease the f-number a bit to allow more light in and make the exposure faster (even though the camera was on tripod). The fact that the camera is converted would still, at such high f-number such as f/29, require a second or so for exposing with the infrared filter on (threshold=650nm). The drop in the f-number proved drastic in terms of depth of field here as the envelopes and the cracks as well got blurred quite easily while focusing (using AF function) on the reflection of the writing itself. Processing the image later was quite easy but fixing the tilt (unlike the first version) made some out-of-ratio crop (i.e. 3:2) and produced quite a space on the left side. The first image was cropped as well but according to the ratio (3:2) and the tilt was not fixed there.
Now, generally speaking, it was sloppy idea as I said before and I had some imagination for it to be taken with a candle and some quill and ink. However, seems, to me, that such depiction is quite "soft" and doesn't reflect the meanings behind a broken heart.



Listening again and again to Sabáħ Fakhry has some hallucinating effect to my mind, if I dare say. For my break from the group's activity, I'm thinking of getting inspired constantly from his songs (though lot of them are actually traditional and Syrian folk). Thus, I might as well continue to think of something to create out of the lyrics of his songs, or at least the first song posted above. Sounds weird that despite the fact that I'm an Arab, I'm indeed discovering my own culture like I've never seen it before, and even deeper a bit to the limit of reading about Arabic musical culture and Maqams, beside calligraphy (which is a passion as well). Sad to realize that we have a rich culture, abandoned by its people…

Finale

Well, I won't go strolling about life matters for now and all my ups and downs and mood swings. As I've mentioned above, I'm going to put the lyrics for the song above (first Youtube post). The language is colloquial Syrian Arabic, and in translating I'll try to stick to the meaning as much as possible (and of course no rhyme). Notice that some lines and verses are repeated all over and over again and that's why one song takes such a long time. Each repetition is supposedly done in a different vocal style or Maqam. The lyrics are as the following (but without an order of stanzas or lines):

Send me a letter and let me rest*
if though it is a blame
but don't abandon me

Your absence has been long
and I'm waiting
and your heart is in rejoice

If you have loved
and forgot about me
and been cruel to me
without consideration
Just send me a letter
and let me rest*

Been patience with you
and tasted bitterness
and sent to you news and news
just to find that
you have forgot about me
along the days
and you were satisfied
to let me through the pains
but send me a letter and let me rest*

I have a God who knows me well
Who will bring justice
for the heat of my sighs
I cannot say you are the culprit
I'll be patient with my sorrows always
just send me a letter and let me rest*

* "rest" as opposite to worrying about something or someone.

Well, I hope dear reader enjoyed some of the music for this post. I'll just hope that I'll create more work and get inspired more to work on some of these projects!

Alexander 6, V120.

Feeling numb again. So numb that I can't do anything except of being idle in my best suit. Now I wish I did pack up some electronic books about photography into my flash memory and brought it with me here to read after finishing several books now, but thinking about a bit, even that wouldn't work for me today. I was out of work for like 3 hours for my car service and also checking my watch for repair. I needed to finish everything just before Ramadhan begins because it's going to be somehow a sluggish time to do the many things I need to do. With this weather, fasting in Ramadhan is indeed a big challenge, and even though I've used to fast alone for around 2 months in the past few months but Ramadhan and the change of times for almost everything (work, shops ...etc), makes it a big deal to go through it all. The feel of hunger or thirst is nothing really; not to me. People are the big problem in Ramadhan, and specially if they are smokers and out of their nerves.

Been working yesterday again with my beach panorama and, thanks to my absent mind, I've lost the file that I've already created when I saved a small version of the file over the same name. Hence, I had to do the job all over again with the original HDR file which didn't go exactly the same, specially with the cropped portion.

First Version

Second Version

Well, after all I believe the second version is better than the first. The cropping is more organized in the second and also I tried my best not to oversaturate the blues and yet keep them interesting as much as possible. After all is done wuth the hue and saturation layers and fixing the blues and the reds (and/or magenta as well), I worked on dodging the sky little bit to make it smoother and going well together. As you can see from the first version which was to be worked upon again, the sky has dark areas in the middle caused by difference of lights as I was doing the panorama, and the sun rising high faster than my pace. The dodging, though, should not be simply smooth so much, or as I think, it's going to be dull and not so interesting. That's why there are thin dark lines in between that I didn't work on removing them even though I can; to add more motion to it.

It's humid now AGAIN which gets on my nerves, but I've noticed that in the early morning, the sky is having a weird composition; clear sky, no clouds at all, except where the sun is where you can the sun light pass through the clouds. Like if the sun was a magnet for clouds. Interesting view that I've been observing for 2 days now, but I wish I can settle my mind on some location to shoot that view. With my work pace and time, it's hard to be done almost any where, except in the busy streets (which are empty a bit busy at the time I go to work). I don't want any more troubles with cops just now. I have my own load.

I received some positive reviews (well, not completely positive of course) for my poem (or lyrics) 1945. I'm happy that I got my feelings through it, even though I didn't live that era. Being idle today made me think of writing something indeed, but my strength was leaking like water through mesh because of the heat outside and all that time I spent outside. There was no time to concentrate on my feelings, but rather I spent the rest of the time thinking how can I get myself cooler!
And now it feels like no one understands...


__________

2857. Alexander fell on his knees to the ground with no power
2858. the melancholy attacked him severely for the deeds of his men
2859. Agdalán passed his hand over his head like a father does
2860. and this he said to Alexander: raise up O dear, you did it
2861. Alexander looked up to Agdalán with heavy eyes and said
2862. "all what I did is mischief across the lands and wars,
2863. I wandered this world to let people know God,
2864. but then I found out that my loyals did not know Him"
2865. Agdalán smiled and said: but you did the commands already,
2866. you should be proud for you happen to do what none done,
2867. if people are to be judged for the mistakes of other people,
2868. or if the son should be judged for the sin of his father,
2869. and the daughter would be stoned for a sin from her mother,
2870. if all of that was to hold true and a law for life,
2871. then who shall be living on Daynur, or Uhir Daynur?
2872. Alexander then stood up again with hard movement
2873. he felt no power in his body to do anything he desires
2874. then Agdalán said: go and take care of your Cadid,
2875. we will talk about some of the matters later on dear
2876. thus Alexander went to check his Cadid who got better
2877. he passed his hand over the head of the horned Cadid
2878. and while doing so, he sang a song he learned from his mother
2879. then this he said: now my friend, no one is out there,
2880. but a tired man like me, and a loyal Cadid like you