MonoContest…

Well, it's finally here! The expo of the Monodrama Festival. Which means I can finally share my pics on the so-called "social" media; and here of course.
However, before proceeding to the slideshow, I have to mention the winners of this contest. The committee only provided 2 places for winners, and by luck, both of them are members in the same group I work with (we worked together in fact).

Ibrahim Al-Erady with his shot of the Kuwaiti actress Ahlam Hasan.
First place.

Jassim Al-Saffaar with his winning shot of the renowned Iraqi actor Sami AbdulHameed, PhD.
Second place.

Meanwhile, unfortunately, not all photos from the contestants were printed as we, or I, thought. Thus, one of my most favorite images was not printed and displayed. This shot is from the stage with the first performance (in the opening ceremony), for the renowned Kuwaiti actor AbdulAziz AlHaddaad. The title of the play was The Story of Yesterday [قصة الأمس], which is in fact the title of a famous poem written by the late Egyptian poet Ahmad Fat'hy [أحمد فتحي] (whose role was played by AlHaddaad) and sung by the renowned Egyptian singer Um-Kalthoom [أم كلثوم]. In this scene specifically, the apogee of emotions was at its max, with the poet holding a portrait of his daughter whom he didn't see in years after his separation from his English wife and coming back to Egypt. He was building his dreams on the future and on this scene specifically, Haddaad was portraying how the poet would have been playing with his daughter and singing for her… something that never happened, for his ill luck. I called this shot Tomorrow, as a reflection on the hopes that were built upon an unknown dark future…
Anyway, I've made a short video here with all my shots for the contest. There are other shots of course and processing them is still ongoing. However, the ones in this slideshow, are the only ones that I've included for the contest. Hope you enjoy the show!

Music: By Grace.
By: Podington Bear

Source

T-Shirt, Anyone?

They have been rough 2 or 3 weeks. Starting from the monodrama festival, to processing the images and submitting them to the contest, and ending with the current situation of sleeplessness. Unfortunately, we are supposed not to expose our images which are submitted for the contest at least till the time of the expo and the gallery of these images, which would fall by the last week of May! Thus, I wouldn't want to risk leaking some images here! However, there is one show specifically that I think I would be able to share some shots from. I wanted to include the snaps from this show into the contest in the beginning but it seems most of the snaps were not properly focused, beside the decor didn't help much (it got into the way of the composition of most shots) - while cropping would be severe.

This show was entitled Al-Jazzár [الجزار], i.e. The Butcher. I'm revisiting the snaps from this show to extract more if possible. There is always hope in shaky images when it comes to a small size view; accompanied with good deal of noise reduction and added sharpness. These two operations are easily done with not much loss when the image is in a small size (both images were taken around ISO2500). However, for the contest I've been told that the minimum resolution was 7MP (but later after submitting I've been told it's 2MP), so I started to minimize down to that limit (after cropping) and try to work on cleaning and enhancing. Some images were as good as 12MP (down from 18MP) after cropping, yet I had to sacrifice all of that for the easy processing. Meanwhile, we're still waiting for the results of the judges. The leader of our photography group is one of the judges as well and hence he did not help any of us in picking the proper images as we usually do with him before contests.

However, since judging was supposed to take place last Saturday, I happened to ask him later about the results and he said the process is ongoing still and it is taking a long time because of some technical problems (mainly concerning the TV on which the images are displayed). All I can do is wait! Meanwhile, I'm just digging these old photos and converting some to B&W with and without tone-splitting, or revisiting the snaps taken from the latest Mawahb expo (Mawahb 5), and even the former one, (Mawahb 3), which was held in 2013.

The t-shirt snapped from the website.
The actual name for the panorama
was Oriental Lights. However,
for cultural reasons, the name
was changed to Enlightement,
which is the name given to the
horizontal format of this panorama.
Click to enlarge.

Meanwhile some good news are coming along the way! It is finally here! A t-shirt bearing my own panorama printed by Worthwhile Wears (Instagram: @worthwhilewears). Well, I didn't imagine myself doing an ad campaign but here you go! You can get it from their website here. I'm up to see if they need more shapes and styles of various panorama in my arsenal.
Also, it happened this week that I might have actually gained my first customer over to do a commercial panorama. I wouldn't have gotten to that without the help of the founder of our group, since he has been long in the business and made various connections. It is a cautious step forward, as we are trying to build a portfolio, and establish a line of business not well-known in the area around here. My technical mind on the go right now as I'm typing these words, as I'm trying to figure out the possible hardships on location and putting forward a plan to solve them. However, some failures in the future seem to be a must in such field, because this seems to be the only way to learn! I can't deny that it does bear some stress along with it in the process, but I think it is the only way for the time being to maintain a value of myself instead of stinking myself in a stupid workplace that I've spent 6 years of my life just to get a certificate to work in, and then treated like a janitor.

Summer is already starting to scorch my body, announcing a boring season, and an annoying one too. I didn't put any plans yet for any traveling abroad, but first I need to do some official papers, and  I can't help but to act lazy in such weather. I've been sleeping my weekend, literally, instead of going out at least once (usually on Fridays). I need to spark myself somehow to do all of that work… oh Winter, how much I miss you…

Monodrama…

Again, a quick wrap about this week. I've been busy this week (and up till Friday 17^th) as I've been working with the group on documenting the Monodrama festival here in Kuwait starting from last Saturday. Many celebrities, local and Arabian in general are attending this festival. It is a good practice and better than being idle with my camera specially with the arrival of Summer (remember, Kuwait has no Spring season!).

The official poster of the event

Personally, I didn't imagine that I would love the shows performed on that stage. They do indeed have a philosophical questioning and impact, and sometimes I do feel like putting the camera on the side and enjoying the show myself. All shows were good (to my taste), though I did skip one show because of the severe headache (which later turned into a migraine as usual); but I do feel somewhat touched deeply by 2 shows mainly: The Story of Yesterday [قصة الأمس], by the renowned Kuwaiti actor Abdul-Aziz Al-Haddad [عبدالعزيز الحداد], which gives a glimpse into the life of the late Egyptian poet, Ahmad Fat'hy [أحمد فتحي]; and the other show was Foreignness [غربة], by the Iraqi dramatist Sami Abdul-Hameed, PhD. [د. سامي عبدالحميد], which speaks about the experience of a man estranged away from his homeland (and I do firmly believe that it does have a glimpse about his own personal life as well).

Abdul-Aziz Al-Haddad
الفنان الكويتي القدير عبدالعزيز الحداد

Sami Abdul-Hameed
الفنان العراقي القدير د. سامي عبدالحميد

Probably these two specific shows do relate to something about my personal life. Who knows. After finishing those sessions I need to sit down and filter out the images, and after filtration I need to pick out those that are supposed to be good shots, for the contest which is related to this event. Frankly, up till this moment, the contest's rules and conditions are still fuzzy and I'm not sure what are the requirements. Generally speaking, I'm having it as a practice and not as a big deal and I'm enjoying my time there regardless of the tiresome and exhaustive posture (standing all the time). The images are mostly taken in an ISO no less than 2000. Hence, I'm not so optimistic about having a good series here. I've been trying out my barrel or mirror lens as well (Rokinon 800mm) but I didn't take it seriously. The extreme zoom and the manual focus (beside the large diameter) makes it hard to follow an actor on the stage with it and re-focus. Hence, most of the shots were taken with Sigma 70-300mm, and sometimes with Bower 2x teleconverter.
Till next week, let's hope I get at least ONE good image of all this mess. There will be some big deal sitting in front of this monitor to delete and filter more than two thousand shots (if not 3K).