Here We Go...

Sometimes, your life can be so catastrophic that being screwed up at work is considered a happy event. This is somehow my new quote and motto. I've been out today (Wednesday) to do some field work in two locations. The work was smooth, but as I expected, this single field work event will trigger others I don't like. The sea is beautiful. I have to plan for more visits with my camera there. The weather is nice; chilly but nice, and windy. My hair was a mess after each location. This field work sparked my passion and hopes again to visit Miskan island, and also a thought of Auhah island (north of Failaka, south of Failaka respectively).

Still working on proof-reading the Ayvarith text for Alexander's story and going on with part VI. The process was sort of an easy one when it was for the previous parts and I would finish one part in one day (around an hour), but with part VI, I'm trying as much as possible to get an average of 200 lines to be proof-read in one day. This estimate can reach 300 or 400 lines even when the blood is bumped into the veins. There is pressure in the air though with the start of the new semester and my boss being back from his vacation. There is some work waiting for me. Too bad I can't work out recording my voice at work, because the time I spend in the work place seems to be the only time I would work with my Ayvarith projects, so far. Not only that, but mostly the time that I mostly write in some of my poems, like the recently done Daydreamer. An amalgamation of feelings that I do get either from being alone, or being awake from a dream. There are things I do write at home of course, but most of the heavy load of thoughts visit by morning or noon time, when I'm at work.

I'm technically trying to reduce my intake of music. Music is one of the well-known triggers to daydreaming, but cutting it out is hard. Specially when I do some work with my Ayvarith text for example, or do some work on some photos, but in the same time, it takes my feet away from my stable ground. Sad ground, but stable. Maybe that's why singing or listening to music is some sort of a taboo in pure Islamic way. The debate though fluctuates among scholars whether it is an absolute forbidding, or just a not-so-virtuous act, while religious singing is allowed as far as I remember. Yes, I do listen to music even though my teachings say so. I'm not an angel myself but this has been the way I steamed off my anger, depression, hate. I guess scientific- and psychological-wise, this Islamic judgment for songs and singing seems coherent to what such things cause to the human brain. I'm officially addicted to music and songwriting (somehow) that stopping them now seems to drive me crazy a bit. I'm exchanging this with running something else on Youtube for example, but the main problem is what to do when you drive your car in a stupid traffic jam with stupid people around? Yes. A big headache.

Been trying my new tools, but not so much to be done so far. One interesting venture though, trying to capture the night sky with the new Tamron telephoto macro lens (70-300mm). I've concentrated on a bright spot in the sky (after failing aiming to the moon which was around 90 degrees above my head and it was so hard to aim that way), later on I've found out this spot is actually Jupiter. However, I was trying the bulb mode with my Canon EOS 7D (never did as far as I remember). With my trials with the old Canon EOS 350D in bulb mode (and it was altogether set with (M)anual mode), the trials were kind of a failure and it was hard even with filters. Now, with my Tamron, and because of the hood around the lens as it seems, the "star trail" for Jupiter was obvious and I got a nice single line after 5 minutes of exposure under f36 (yes f36 not 32). I tried for few seconds and for around one minute, but the 5 minutes exposure was the longest in line and the black area around the trail was starting to get bright. The thing is, the brightness in the sky didn't happen so fast and I think the hood had a critical factor in the matter here. With my 350D and 50-200mm telephoto lens, the brightness was happening so fast in bulb mode.

One static shot and 3 trails for Jupiter blended together.

Another experiment done with my filters this time and my 55-200mm which I got an adapter ring for lately. I've tried to take a long exposure shot for a candle. Simple as it seems but we have some problems here with a candle. It's hard to make some interesting shot about it.

1. Luminance is centered. The metering method plays a crucial part here.
2. Not much movement involved in the flame itself in a quiet room, making a long exposure barely interesting.
3. The candle was not easy-burning one, meaning a long exposure is REALLY long one. I don't have a time-remote (which I plan to get some time later) which can program my Canon to take certain shots at a fixed time interval.
4. Fixing the WB won't change much of the yellowish hue of the candle and its body.
5. HDR can hardly work for such flaming body (but still trying).
6. For HDR, filters might not be a good option after all, and also tried to limit the EV to -/+2.

In the beginning I tried some relatively short exposures like 30 seconds. Later on for one minute and gradually raised the limit to 15 minutes. Maybe the most interesting result was the one taken with an exposure of a bit more than one minute (if I remember correctly, 102 seconds).

In The Dark...

In this shot, which to me looked like the most interesting one, I had to be on the side of the scene blowing air into the candle with some piece of paper trying to make some movement into the flame and move it. That's why you see the flame being spread to the sides a bit instead of being directly up (as it should be in my quiet room). The candle stick is green by the way and not pink, but the luminance plays some tricks here (along with hue and saturation fixes). This candle is supposedly aromatic one, but I left it burning for more than 30 minutes and yet I couldn't smell anything! Moreover, the stick didn't melt much, meaning if I was going for a really long exposure, God knows how much time (and power) I would need to record a slight movement in the height itself. An interval time-remote control would be a good option here. Unfortunately, I don't have it now. HDR trials with this scene were filled with grain and noise, so much beyond repair, thus I've neglected the idea.

Still checking the astronomical charts for the moon, and I wish if I can just head to the desert to do some star trailing with my camera, but going to the desert in somehow in the middle of nowhere, needs two instead of one person. My social situation is so awkward that sometimes I don't care about anything, yet I don't have anyone to go out with to such places. Thursday is a holiday here, and I wonder if I will be able to make it to Failaka. I just need the mood.

The time for a vacation is pressing so hard, but my life is a mess that I can't seem to decide even whether to go or not. How is it in New York?

Alexander 6, V37.

Well Well. One busy day I presume. I shall call this day, the day of Panoramas. I've taken lot of short panoramas either vertically or horizontally and most of them were with my fisheye lens. Too bad it doesn't have a zooming capability, as I am working with the images now, seems some of them are going to be small with big portion of the sky showing on. All of that, in Failaka island.
The sea is great. Can be full of wrath, but generous after all. Some of the panoramas I did today were not really exactly to be called a panorama, but rather I loved to include more portions of the sky in the image and hence, I prefered to take them on parts vertically to add a bit more of the sky. The weather was weird though, shiny and cloudy in the same time! And while we were approaching Failaka port, the Salmiyah city port on the main land was still obvious. Such view I've never seen before. The two do not appear in the same time usually.

As luck has it, I was able to view the shores of Miskan island from Failaka's northern shores. Also, there was this abandoned center for seafaring activities which, supposedly as stated on sign posts, would provide a pick-up to Miskan island. Yet, the place was abandoned and no one was there, despite the relatively apparently-new yachts or boats over there. I could see 2 long towers from where I stood... too bad I didn't snap it with my camera! Bad me! I wonder if they were lighthouses as I always thought, or some "chimneys" of some factory over there? Could be? I don't know. Everything is possible after the statement of this man in Silsan, in which he said going there is restricted by now! It was foggy, I could see that. Like some blackish or greyish smoke hovering around the two towers for some reason, and that's why I thought they were chimneys of some sort or an exhaust of some factory and not lighthouses. This view kind of revived the hope in me of visiting this island one day, and I was already looking for someone to ask about going there in Failaka island itself, but no luck.
Not only Miskan was visible, but also the lands of Auhah (عوهة) island was visible before arriving at Failaka's port. I don't know really why they translate it as "Auhah" since we say it as "Oohah" usually, but anyway this is how it is spelled and you check it yourself on Wikipedia.

In the beginning, I played a little prank on myself, again. I got shocked to see the schedule time in the time table for the ferry travels to be delayed more than I thought it was. It said the ferry would leave at 9:00 and come back at 3:00 afternoon, and frankly I wouldn't like to stay there till 3:00 by myself. Yet the date of today, 14th, was on Thursday. I really doubted myself "did I miss counting my days because of this little vacation of mine?". After all I discovered it is all because I was looking at the time table of January 2010 and not this month! Not the first time I do this really.

I was planning to take an inner panorama of that old mesh-holed building, which I think was some governmental place, but I changed my mind later and thought of taking a panorama of the outer area. Moving people there with their four-wheeled banshi all around really frustrated me. I could hard even park there and take the panorama from the outside.

The ruined building from the outside.

What seems to be an ex-electricity housing, in the periphery of the ruined

building and includes in the to-be panorama project.

This said, I'm looking forward now to have some sort of a software to fix my fisheye distortion for real now. The PTGui software, for stitching panoramas, usually takes care of such distortions, but I can't tell it does them as well for single images however. Thus, I'm looking for some software or plug-in to do so. Photoshop does it as well, but it sounds a bit tiresome in Photoshop, and maybe I would get more precise tools out of the framework of Photoshop. I wish if there is any program that would fix a straight line by specifying 2 dots marking the beginning and the ending of a proposed straight line in the image. Maybe there is one, I can't tell really.
Talking about a plug-in, I received a response from HDRsoft people about my suggestion for a web plug-in to view HDR images, and here I quote it for you:

Dear TJ,

Thank you for your interest in Photomatix and for suggesting an HDR plug-in for web browsers.

The closest thing to a plug-in for  displaying HDR images in browser that we know of is webHDR:
http://luminance.londonmet.ac.uk/webhdr/

It might also be worthwhile having a look at Christan Bloch's 'HDRI Labs' website for such software:
http://www.hdrlabs.com/

Regarding Photomatix, we don't have any plans to develop a web browser plug-in to display HDR images at the moment.


Kind regards,

Andreas
Photomatix Support Team
www.hdrsoft.com

This is nice so far. I'm still checking the website as I am writing this (and I'm doing all of that after getting back from that tiresome ferry trip). I don't feel like concentrating on anything so I might leave it for later. In a quick glance over the webpage, there are some freeware included, but I can't tell which one is to be used as a plug-in to view HDR in the web browser, if any. I guess I'm going to ask Blochi for this! Blochi in case you didn't know is Christian Bloch, the author of this magnificent book:

As for now... I should take a rest and work on batch-processing my bracketed images and put them into OpenEXR format for heavy use later. I leave you now with Alexander's story, verse 37.

__________
865. when the stranger calmed down he gazed upon Alexander
866. and Alexander smiled back at him and put down Charnagút
867. then Alexander began the speech again with the stranger
868. "tell me O friend, what is your name?"
869. and the thing said: my name is Birbuár, son of Árúc
870. then Alexander asked: you know this sword? why were you scared?
871. the strange thing then stuttered and said: of course I do,
872. it is the Charnagút, the sword of the great Ayvar king,
873. it is the torture of the sinners and the sign of kings,
874. thus now I believe you are indeed a king,
875. please forgive my impoliteness master
876. then Alexander said: I am not your master,
877. but I am happy to be your friend in this world,
878. I was a king in my world before, but not anymore,
879. tell me O Birbuár, where am I and what is this world?
880. thus Birbuár said: yes I shall answer your questions,
881. but if you do not know already, how come you are an Ayvar?
882. and Alexander replied: I am not an Ayvar, but a stranger here
883. and Birbuár had a weird look upon his face and eyes
884. and this he said to Alexander: but how you got the Charnagút?
885. and Alexander replied back: it is a gift from my father Pilippánút,
886. but I do not know how he got it or made it,
887. but this sword helped me a lot to come here,
888. and discover the truth one by one

Ąart^alí...

Two days passed in my life and they were the most sarcastic I would say. Yet, they went on fine. I took Tuesday off since I wanted to avoid the traffic jam, and since it is a one day off, I had to make the request for this leave one day before, that is Monday. Directly after doing this request on the system, I discovered that the streets were amost empty and no jam at all! The roads were better than normal days even! So I recognized the fact that people (most of them) actually requested 2 days off before the event and thus, not much was happening in the streets. However, although I could cancel this request, I decided to go on and take one day off.
Yet, the pranks did not stop. I was playing with myself some silly games. I was planning to go to Miskan island on Tuesday morning (and first I have to go to Failaka by ferry), but then with hesitation I decided to cancel. Later in the day I realized it is Tuesday already and no ferry is going to Failaka! Ah well, nothing was lost, but I had to sit around and laugh at myself for some time.


I went on a shooting course on Monday taking pics from around the labs and trying to make panoramic views out of the labs for the website that we are trying to enhance for the center. Yet, I faced many problems later on when I reached home and tried to stitch the pictures together. I discovered many mistakes that I do when I take panoramic shots under the light of the new information that I get from reading a book about panoramic photography, yet, I cannot avoid such mistakes because of the financial limitation already. For the time being, I'm planning to order a "dedicated flash" and filters, yet, I have to wait still.

The labs corridor in CRER

The image above is a panoramic stitch for the labs corridor in my work place. It was shot as HDR then reduced by tone mapping of course. I made many mistakes here, specifically I think I shouldn't have make the shoot in portrait position, but it should have been in landscape orientation, and hence it would be easy to cut on the edges of the composition later on. The weird thing is also that, in the lower part, the composition seems OK and balanced and centered, yet the top portion of the ceiling seems tilted a bit. I wanted to try more methods for stitching, but anyway, I thought it is better to shoot the corridor again and in lanscape orientation this time. For this reason, I made a run again today, and some work is waiting for me back home.


Because of some of this pressure and walking around with my camera, I didn't have the time (and power) to translate more than 2 verses as usual. One of the words made today is the title, "Ąart^alí" [Ankh: AurQpulY]. Ąart^alí, means "naked" and the verb is "Ąart^al" [Ankh: AurQpul] (to be naked or get naked). In fact this word is not completely made up since it is exactly the Aramaic (Syriac) root of the same word.
Along with writing so fast with the translation, I noticed that I've been deforming some of the letter for the purpose of speed writing, and that sparked in me the idea of a "curvatic" Ayvarith script other than the one that I already made before, which I called "Magdúb Yúdiþ" (hand script). This one keeps the separated letters and do not join them, yet it has curvatic appearance, and different already from the shapes that I already made in the former version of the hand script.






A new set of images had been accepted by Canstockphoto. I love this website.

Busy Around...

Been now one week since I got back from Ireland, and I do miss it a lot. It feels so hard to get back to the old routine and stress that you used to be in before, and sometimes you think even "I used to be living in such pace?"
However, I went on a cruise yesterday to Failaka island but without going to Miskan island after that, as we spent 1 hour almost going around with my friend and looking for some restaurant to have lunch there. As soon as we finished, the time was almost up to go back on the cruise to head to the main lands. On the cruise, we went silent for a moment and before the cruise starts to move, to find out Mr Dangerous was in front of us and peeking at us behind his nose... he was Mr Attitude (or Mr Personality, or whatever you might call a person with ego...). This thing was... this:


Well, thankfully he did not jump over our car.
As we sat sail from Failaka, the current and tides were larger and thus, and after such lunch, there was a chance for some sea sickness. I didn't feel it much but after one hour outside, I decided to head back to the car and stay in the cold air of my AC with my friend. As the coastline appeared from afar, I had my zigzag walk on board trying to reach the edge of the cruiser with my camera. I snapped some shots, but of course as we were shaking, not much of them were good;



I had some break now working on photos from Ireland all the time, and did the images above (and working now on a third image but I can't get it right still with the noise, and might just abandon it). On the other hand, my work with images from Ireland is now blocked and clogged with one image that gives my pc a problem with memory. It was taken on several parts, and each angle was taken in 3 shots with different exposures, which were made later into separate HDRs combined and saved in EXR format. EXR format, as I read in some article, it saves the exposure rate and values for the 32-bit image. I used to save such files in PSD format, but seems PSD does not contain all the values of the 32-bit as well! I'm not sure about this item of information yet. The work with EXR was not successful though after all because of the memory problem and photomerge command in photoshop always hangs after some time or just give an error. My next approach then was to give up with some of the resolution and converted the files into 32-bit TIFF images with smaller (relatively) sizes. TIFF images in smaller sizes were relatively faster in processing (faster in terms of minutes and hours, it is still a long time for a regular person I suppose!), and yet, the problem still occurs. I gave up with it now and I'm going to try later on, trying to find out another way to go around this problem.

I printed out 2 images currently to be framed and sent back to my host in Ireland in the Waterfront. Hope she'd like them. I found out that they were dark and not as I view them on the monitor, or, it could be because they might have been converted into CMYK (they are originally in RGB format).



The above image is one of the images but the second one (which was larger) was not made into a smaller on to be in photobucket. I was lazy!
Beside these images, and the other image that causes me some sleepless nights right now, I worked on other images that I kept to stitch them out here,

The first image (the Ashford Castle), was fixed with some extra stuff and I sent it to some email address related to the staff of the hotel there, as a little gift. Well, I don't know if they saw it or not, but I hope they'll like it.

I finished reading the Graveyard Book, and seems, from the acknowledgement that I read at the end, that there is a trial indeed to make it into a movie. Well, it was a nice and weird story that would indulge you in the world of graveyards and the night life... I mean the quiet night life, mostly! Left for now, I need to go on reading MY own story again to connect my thoughts back and try to complete this and finish it. I hate this feeling to leave it unfinished. And as for my translation work, I don't think I will start with it any sooner for the time being. I have to think as well how to build my Ayvarith website again... and this boils me blood!
Well, I will see if I can go to Miskan on my own this Sunday or Monday, IF I was able to wake up in the morning...