Mirrotrait!

Here we are, back to the old rhythm and the troubles with sleep and work; But to be honest, my sleeping problems are a bit down for the time being, but I often do find myself going to work without sleep and somewhat I'm OK with it! Schools didn't start yet here so, traffic jams are still lurking.
Anyway, for this post this week, I'm going to talk a bit about 2 shots I've taken some weeks ago. I was supposed to put them together with the previous post but I think that post became too long so I decided to cut it out at that and make a separate post now for these 2 shots specifically. What's so special about these two? Nothing special really; They are just portraiture shots taken at a focal length of 800mm. Yes, eight hundred millimeters.

Mirrotrait

As part of my effort of getting used to, and getting some work done, with my mirror lens, the Rokinon 800mm f/8, I've decided to put it into use for taking portraits. The design is that of a telescope and probably if I was in some other dimension or some other world with better capabilities I would be using that lens for some astrophotography indeed, or maybe for some wildlife photography. Anyway, not my luck, and I hated to see this lens just lying around being idle.

Rokinon 800mm f/8
Mirror Lens
(this one here for Nikon it seems?)

One of the "creative" tools that a photographer can (and encouraged to) use, is using lenses out of their "typical" purpose or perspective; e.g. shooting portraits with a wide angle lens which is typically used for landscape photography, or even shooting landscape with a lens which is typically used for portraiture. I, for one, been doing that for quite some time and in fact I've never believed in this "typical" purposes or dedications for lenses. Because in my mind, all I think of when I see or think of a lens is the magnification, distortion, proximity to subject and so on. This is why many of my selfies were shot using 20mm lens or wider (20mm being almost equivalent to 30mm on my APS-C camera).

Sample of donut bokeh
Source

Anyway, one of the key features of these Mirror Lenses is that they make up some weird bokeh shape. A bokeh in the shape of a donut, and this is exactly what I was after but, as the progress will go on, you will see how I've actually failed in achieving that donut, so far! Nevertheless, working with such a lens for portraiture is still an interesting experiment, despite the hardships with it. In fact, with such hardships, I'm amazed by those specs listed by manufacturers or sellers who state something similar to "for wildlife" or something like "cheap telephoto lens". The truth is, despite its focal length, I don't personally really classify it as a "telephoto" lens and absolutely not suitable for wildlife or birding; This is unless you really get the hang of it and master its controls, AND come up with some ways or innovate something for quick shooting and proper focusing. Maybe if I list these difficulties as points the image would be clearer:

• The lens is manual (of course).
• The focusing ring is bulky. In fact, it is not a focusing ring as much as it is a focusing "barrel".
• No collar, and with such long focal length, putting vibrations under control is a headache.
• Fixed aperture; F/8.
• During the shoot, I got some errors and I stopped shooting but then things gone normal again and I'm guessing the weight of the lens is the reason.
• Just forget about using filters. There are specific rear filters for this kind of lenses, but I don't have any, and the front thread is 105mm (and I have a ring for it and barely fits for fitting the solar gel filter on it).

Needless to say, with such a focal length one would need quite a space, and for this reason I've shot the portraits outside in the neighborhood just in front of my house. One technique I've adapted here is to fix my camera and tripod in position, and ask my brother to move accordingly to get him where I wanted in the frame. All I could do here with my brother is 2 shots mainly (because of the problems mentioned above) and for each one of these 2 I've approached processing in a different manner. Unfortunately, I was supposed to make some shots at night in hope that I would show the donut bokeh clearly this time because of the point light sources from cars or the houses around the neighborhood, but that didn't happen yet as I'm typing this post.

First shot
Original

First shot
After cropping

First shot probably with
a better crop using the
Golden Ratio rule.
But the image size is
drastically small.

 Generally speaking, images from this lens are "dull," if I can call them so. They lack contrast. Thus, there is some extra work to be done in post-processing phase. In the first shot, the background seemed fine, but of course no donut shapes because it was done afternoons and no pointy light sources were there. The pose itself was probably a mere coincidence, as I didn't ask my brother to make the pose and I was kind of busy doing the work with the settings when I looked up to the LiveView to see that he was there looking up so I snapped that. Moreover, in the post-processing phase, I had to crop the image but unfortunately, I didn't seem to follow any specific rule here, not even the rule of thirds. I think I've used the Diagonal Method here for cropping but I'm not sure it is quite suitable here, specially with the logo on the shirt showing. But no use now I guess since the photo has been already published on some social media platforms. The image's quality is "fine" but I wouldn't say "good" though. I had quite a struggle to put things in focus here, so there is a chance of human error I believe when it comes to some softness on the edges. Things had to be fixed later with my arsenal of sharpening tools in Photoshop.

Second shot
original
You can see how dark
is the skin here.

 
In the second shot, here I've already asked my brother to do a specific pose for me. But to shoot this one I had quite a struggle because of some malfunctioning, which I've mentioned above already, and maybe it was because of the weight of the lens, because when I've placed the camera back to landscape orientation it started to work properly. After that, I've flipped it back to portrait orientation and it kept working - and I had to snap my shot quickly to avoid any mishap.

Second shot
After crop and
fixing the tilt
Tried to lighten
the overall look.

Second shot with
probably a better crop
using the Golden Ratio

While processing the second shot, the image appeared to be quite washed out, and in order to enhance the contrast a bit, I had to play a bit with the exposure slider a bit, just to find out that there are indeed some details in the background that could be retrieved; The area was quite white! The thing, though, was that the front (my brother) got quite dark. For this reason, I've produced two versions of this shot as if I've bracketed my shots: One with dark background for the details, and one with proper exposure for the front. It was a great deal of work in Photoshop to merge the two and produce and acceptable image and still though I don't think I've made it. My brother looks darker than he should be I think. Here, too, the cropping seems to be made randomly, unfortunately.

After these 2 shots, there were supposed to be night shots as I've mentioned but nothing happened, for various reasons. Mainly because my brother is a busy man. I seriously thought of shooting a selfie of myself though (with the help of Case Air wireless tethering tool), but with such lens and such a focal length, the situation is quite cumbersome. Still an idea though which I might perform at any time. Speaking of shooting at night, that would definitely need some usage of speedlites I presume. A complicated process that already cooks in my head without doing much about it. I do have other things to do but just waiting for the right moment, and power, to do so.

Finale

Well, this is my little post for this week and hopefully I'll be having more to post 2 weeks after. I'm seriously thinking now for some topic for my Arabic blog since I didn't post there for some time, but I'm not sure what to post about. Maybe another photo story? Not sure.
Meanwhile, I'm doing some more experiments on specular lighting. Didn't get the chance to do much so far but I'm trying so let's hope I do get away with some nice shots. Just to note, that "specular" lighting is when the light direct and hard without any diffusion. In fact, there are other ideas I'm just waiting to implement.
Away from camera, mood swings had been frequent visitors lately; More than usual I'd presume. I'm trying hard to forget my pains, set backs, and the damn mood swings, by working as much as possible with the camera but the thing is, such swings make me powerless, and as usual, procrastinating. Add driving to and from work to the recipe and here we have a tasty dish of misery. If you are reading this, trust me, it was not an easy task to type this blog post over a span of 3 or 4 days and trying to finish it just before Thursday. Those moments where I would stand and look around me to see who would support me or anything like that are frequent as well; I just realized, I'm all alone. Not even those whom I'd consider friends would help me to make me feel not being ignored. I don't blame them anyway. I guess I'm just a boring person after all, who leads a boring life, and doing boring stuff just to let himself feel alive while being single at almost 40. Rant over.

Reflections…

Well, unfortunately, this will be kind of quick here since I was lazy in the past 2 weeks but nevertheless I'm trying to do something, along with the endless sleeping problems! I'm now being optimistic about a venture in astrophotography, but I'm not sure of it yet and I'm still doing experiments on that side of the photography spectrum. I wanted to show some results here but unfortunately that didn't work and many things kept me from working fast (some off them related to the rains and the weather). Anyway, I was able to work on one image, indoors, and I'd like to talk about it here.

Reflections

To begin with, I had this idea for a long time actually and I tried to work with it a bit but stopped because of the "conditions." Now, however, I've persisted little bit and with the help of my new acquired Case Air tethering tool, I was able to work easier and smoother with my camera while not being behind it (this is despite the limitations with Case Air already).

Case Air Tethering Tool

This idea required a mirror, and thus what better place to shoot in would that be other than the bathroom!? My bathroom, unfortunately again, didn't help a lot with this, so I had to move to another bathroom in the house and try my luck there. After changing in between lenses (mainly the Voigtländer 20mm and Canon EF 50mm), I've decided to settle down with the old nifty fifty, because the 20mm would be too wide and showing details I don't really like to add (meaning more cropping later on), plus the need for the wide aperture here to keep things out of focus properly (Voigtländer's 20mm widest is f/3.5 while Canon's 50mm widest is f/1.4).

Reflecting On Reality

Kenko's Big Stopper.

Initially, and at the back of my head, I've envisioned this shot in B&W and not in colors, as I think that monochromatic images show feelings in a drastic way more than colors do (and I'm speaking of human feelings, specially those related to the dark side of the personality). I wanted to really add the two sides (the real and the reflection) in framing the image but switching to 50mm and the lack of space made that impossible, and I could not use any other lens (Sigma 12-24mm was a choice but I have no filter to fit its 82mm diameter). The idea was to take two exposures; A normal one, and a long one and then combine them together in post-processing phase. For this reason, a ND filter was needed, thus I've used Kenko's big stopper (10 stops) for a bit of an "extreme" light stopping, and actually it didn't slow the shutter speed drastically (that is more than one minute so to say) - about 35 seconds were enough for a good exposure, but this is normal I guess since I was using f/1.4, and probably the lighting in the bathroom was quite efficient!
The rest of the job was then a work for Photoshop: Converting to B&W, adjusting the curves and tones and emphasizing the features with the help of dodge and burn. This is all what is it about actually when it comes to B&W; No colors to try to fix and remove casts, but still not an easy job when it comes to a pretty dramatic look, and tones must be delicately changed. In fact, I did have a problem when I merged the two photos and worked with layer masks to hide and add features in between the two; The traces of the layer mask's limits were apparent (i.e. the brush strokes made a turbulence of the exposure or a mismatch in the area surrounding them). To solve this problem I had to soften (blur) the layer mask until it was all ironed out.
Looking at it now, I do have some thoughts about the posture though (like, maybe, I should have done that with my arms extended on the mirror?), and maybe my hair should have been wet a bit? Anyway, no time to think about an image that is done already for the time being as more ideas are cooking and I'm still not doing much about them!

Finale

As you can see, here's only one photo I'm talking about its creation and I wanted to share some more but, as usual, my life has been erratic along with my sleeping pattern and body issues. Getting older I guess.
One of the things that is really getting me excited nowadays is discovering that it is possible to do some astrophotography without a tracker! A tracker is an addition (luxurious somewhat) to enable shooting the sky (specially deep sky objects) without causing star trails. The process a bit a complicated though (typically) and requires taking lot of images and shooting "light" and "dark" frames beside other shots and all that is fed to Deep Sky Stacker (which consumes a LOT of resources from my PC when working with). This is beside the ability to shoot in urban areas using the H-alpha filter to reduce or eliminate the light pollution. All that is good news, but I'm still having some issues here with this work and I'm trying to figure out the ins and outs of it; Needless to say, I'm still having a hard time to focus the lens into a blank sky already (I usually do test shots before doing the actual work of shooting to see how focus the lens is). Let's hope I have something new to write about in this blog (and in my Arabic blog) in the next few days!
On a side note, it seems I've kind of settled down to travel, maybe by September, I'm still not sure really. The thing is, many events are happening and my nerves are in need of "liquid nitrogen" literally to keep them cold and hard. Starting from family issues to moving my workplace further away from its current situation - lot of fuss, lot of paperwork, lot of questions, and lot of self doubt inside of me as whether I can cope with driving that distance everyday with my eyes condition. I already hate it as it is. The transfer or maybe the new location must be in use or active by September already; The time I usually have my vacations in. All I want right now is to be left alone, specially at work. Unfortunately, not many people understand this, or maybe they don't want to?

Alexander 6, V6.

It is such a busy day I have today. Too many things to do from the morning, and I have to get out of my work earlier than usual to get back home and wait for some guys to fix the pipes and such things around. For this reason, I'm posting this earlier, since I know I won't do it at all when I get back home.
I didn't make out new images, but I was hoping to make a successful trial with a coffee cup, after having some nice turkish coffee. My aim was to re-produce the image of the inner walls of the cup, but unfortunately, the experiment wasn't successful enough. I still have the images though and I might try something else. I think it would be easier if I used a concave mirror at the bottom of the cup to reflect all sides at once.
I leave you now with Verse 6 of Alexander VI;

__________
121. and the hero stayed there for three days
122. and you can hear the mumble of hermits
123. worshipping and praising while working
124. and the Tell was producing lights from their torches
125. then in the morning of the fourth day he left
126. amid the tears of his lovers of hermits
127. and to the Three Sisters Lake he went
128. to get some water for his travel
129. and while he was taking the water up
130. he smelled something sharp and awful
131. and noticed from far away to the north
132. the smokes of Fulkan Muttere
133. while some people appeared from afar
134. bending and worshipping the volcano
135. he ran to them with amazement
136. then stood in front of them
137. trying to make them stop what they are doing
138. and they almost wanted to kill him
139. when one man of them yelled with anger
140. "are you trying to kill our sheep O fool?!"
141. then Alexander looked around him slowly
142. but no sheep he saw and did not understand a thing
143. then he throw dust upon them to stop them
144. but they tied him and made him a prisoner