Chaotic Life…

Busy week, and busy health issues as well. I did not feel like typing this blog post really but I'm pushing myself just to get myself out of the circle. Car issues (not over yet with those) occupied my mind (and still) for the past few days and I was not able to work with my camera and incense sticks to apply some ideas that occurred to me.

My new Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

Moreover, there was a bit of news I was lazy to post about last time, and that is my nifty-fifty lens (Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM) had gone dead with the focusing ring not responding; Not in manual, nor in Autofocus mode. This is one of the critical lenses I have, and having it ready is a must. Thus, I was anticipating in my mind to order a new one and this time it would a 50mm lens but from Canon's L-Series (higher quality and, well, pricey). Unfortunately, though I had to ignore this option when I discovered that the diameter of this lens is 72mm and not 58mm as its cheaper counterpart.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM

This difference will make lot of troubles with my arsenal of filters which I usually purchase based on the 58mm standard, as most of my lenses do have this diameter and some do have step-down or step-up rings for them to attach these filters. Using a step-down ring for 72mm to 58mm is, as far as I know, does not exist and most probably I would need 2 step-down rings (72 to 62 and 62 to 58) and such a setting is not advised for because it might cause more vignetting and probably more flares because the body of the filter would be separated more than usual from the surface of the lens front. Thus, after checking it out, I've finally ordered the same lens I have from a local store (AABWorld) which Ironically offered the lens for $4 less than its price on B&H! I got it delivered on the same day. Man, I'm spending lot of money in this month...

Smoking Smoke

I've posted in my last post here about working with incense sticks and some plans about it but I didn't post any results from that experiment. In fact, my aim in the first place was to do a long exposure with periodic flash bursts from my speedlites and thus making a multi-exposure-like image within one frame and one single exposure (by working in a dark room). However, we are talking here about exposures that might extend to 30 minutes, and the stroboscopic feature in speedlites won't handle this situation properly. Therefore, I was looking for another solution to this. Meanwhile, I was busy the past week in writing a blog post in Arabic for my Arabic blog specifically about this experiment and how I did what I did. See, I was busy!

The set for shooting incense sticks.

Thus, since I couldn't work out my way with such idea, I had to do things digitally, by using the intervalometer and take shots automatically every 30 seconds (I worked with 1 minute as well) just like if I was doing a time-lapse, and then work hard digitally to compose and overlap the images and convey a sense of movement. Well, the end result was actually more surreal and far from being about movement! Yet, I still like it. For fun (probably posted this before?), I've created a reverse time-lapse out of the 80+ shots that I took of the burning incense sticks. I didn't bother to add sound or anything.

My first step in processing this amount of images (more than 80 shots) was to use the Blend technique, in which I would change blend for each layer to merge it in a somewhat similar look to the multi-exposure option in some cameras. Mainly, the Blend option to fit the usage here was the Lighten option.

Emerging Smoke

I have to admit though that the general look might be messy with Emerging Smoke, yet I do like such a mess with its abstract sense and randomness. Notice that the final image was rotated as well to add a bit of mystery to it. The coloring was done digitally of course and I used a simple gradient here close to baby-pink and baby-blue, but I think I should have made the grading softer some more as it appears as if the change was sudden from pink to blue. The smoke here also does have some metallic sense to it, and I think it would be good as a background of some sort. It is already accepted by some stock websites already with its counterpart coming next. One thing to notice here though, the Lighten blend does not work with all kinds of images; Sometimes, if the images are generally bright, the Darken blend would work better, or maybe at times a mix of the two blends would do!

Smokey Carnival

The next play or trick required some special sorting for the images: Only those with longitudinal smoke shapes would be picked for the process. And the process was simply assigning a channel from the RGB spectrum to each layer (consecutively), in addition to some tweaking in contrast, and at a later stage tweaking the colors with Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and voila! We have a Smokey Carnival. I'm not sure how many layers I've used here but it was somewhere between 70 and 80 shots. This combination of images, too, is now available on the stock, and I think it does make another background or backdrop image, or even a wallpaper. Things won't stop at these two, as there are single layers which produced some interesting shapes of smokes that I'm willing to experiment with and add some digital colors to keep things interesting (probably combination of gradations made of complimentary colors). Yet, because of the hectic life issues I'm having currently, I had to stop editing those images and even stop doing some plans with my camera. Let's hope this weekend gives me some breath of life to stand up again.
As I've mentioned earlier, I was thinking of some method to time the speedlite to shoot in specific periods of time with a long exposure (extending to around 30 minutes maybe!), and seems the solution is here finally but I didn't get the chance to try it out yet. Without delving much into the details, it seems that I need to dig out my multi-gate trigger (which works with infrared, laser and sound) and hook it with the system for this experiment. Let's hope I would be able to work with it this week or so and get some good results!

Finale

Well, as you can see here maybe this is kind of a short note of what I've been doing lately with my "life" - if I can call it so. Too bad my mind had been too busy to write or think of some words to jot down or even to look inside myself for feelings to express in a poem. However, in the mid of all of that, I'm keeping a record for some of my thoughts about life on Writing.com and I do post them as well sometimes on Twitter and FB. Anyway, probably not the time to post the link for that for the time being.
Times is ticking away and to be sincere about my feelings, I'm loathing and getting disgusted by every second the ticks while I'm in this place. A place that I call home, or maybe I'm forced to call home. Time passes and I feel more estranged and more isolated. Adding to my eyes trouble that makes driving such a hassle to be aware of, the hassle of dealing with the outside world and with such savage and barbaric creatures that call themselves human beings makes my anger deep inside incremental. So much that I feel like crashing everyone I see in front of me with my car, if I can get the chance to. Probably this is the effect for not traveling out for 3 years... Probably I'm on the verge of forgetting that once upon a time, I was a human being.

Mí Lúnasa…

August is in, and the heat is in surplus combined with humidity. Well, the good part is, my birthday is coming and I'm planning ahead for this day to... sleep some more. If I'm lucky enough I might as well get the chance to have free lunch with friends! Let's pray…
I've been busy the past few weeks doing many things (and skipping many things), but mainly finished a whole post/article for my Arabic blog explaining how I shoot through my old microscope, in hope someone out there find it beneficial anyway. I was also busy working on July's project: motion and splashes. But since I've done splashes before (and they require a messy set-up) I've decided to confine myself to do motion images as much as possible. I think I've posted some trials in the previous post, and some of them were a great fail.

Waiting

As I've mentioned before that the lines from songs of Sabah Fakhri [صباح فخري] are still inspiring me for these shots. My first trials with stroboscopic function didn't go well majorly because of the nature of the clocks or watches I've been using as it seems, so it was inevitable to do some Photoshop work out of the context of photography a bit as in Waiting. However, because of the depth of field, which was not shallow enough, and the irregular gaps between the ghosts of the minutes hands, all that made me think of re-doing the shot again with some fixes.

Waiting II

As shown here in Waiting II, I've pulled the rose closer to the table edge toward the camera to increase the distance and hence enhance the look of the shallow depth of field. However, it seems that I've done it with a bit of extra spices since I doubt that movement of the clock's hands are obvious at this level, but I'll leave that to the viewers. This is not the end of the story as I will be back to this project in a bit.
In my trials to depict motion I arrived at an idea which I've encountered some time ago in fact. A method of merging various channels of various similar-looking images (mainly those containing a sort of motion in them). The method was described by Yuga Kurita, a Japanese photographer. Though his method is a bit different but the final result is essentially the same almost. It's about merging one channel from each shot, in a series. I was set to go and try this new method with some spin-tops!

Chromamotion
Voigtländer 20mm, f/11, 1s, ISO100

Unfortunately, I didn't take a shot for the set, but it was a simple set with camera dangling vertically over the set with a lateral arm. I used my Voigtländer 20mm lens here for its sharpness and quality, and to have more freedom in the field of view as I was planning to crop later on. I've set my Speedlite (580EX II) on second-sync on the camera and directed it to a white cardboard on the side of the set. With some angle it was possible to make elongated shadows for the spinners. All these measures later on, however, proved to be kind of useless! Anyway, the main task was to have a proper image for the motion and that was kind of possible at 1 second exposure. After spinning and shooting several shots, it was time to combine some of them. In Chromamotion, three images were merged by channels. Later on, I've decided to merge all of the shots in sets of threes (made about 6 groups).

Quarks

The sprinkling colors across the white space here reminded me of the quarks so I named it after them. However, despite the colorful look, the motion blur in the original shots is not quite obvious here so I was doubting about the ability of such work to deliver the idea of motion to the viewer; any viewer. Things, however, got into perspective with my next move when I thought about the first shots I've made for Waiting above. Why didn't I think of that before? I can merge those in the same way instead of stacking them together in a regular manner!

Waiting III

I think in Waiting III, the allusion of motion is better and more obvious than Waiting I and Waiting II because of the colors on an almost-black-and-white image in general. This beings me to a conclusion as to why Waiting III is depicting motion better than Quarks or Chromamotion, and I think this is mainly because the image itself has mixed elements of stable objects and those in motion, and in fact those stable objects are, somehow, more general than those in motion. In Waiting III, also, we have a center (the clock's center), something which the motion is going about or around - since it's hard to depict the motion blur in this method it would be better to have the moving object in some periodic motion (visually at least) or attached to a static object (e.g. waves and beach, or moving branches in the wind). This is just my observation for now, and we'll see what to do about it later!

Finale

Well, there had been so much on my table lately, whether it's photography-related or domestic. I've been learning new stuff about Anaglyph making and 3D illusions, specifically for videos. I've posted a video last time which was not very concrete in terms of its 3D effect, but it was a trial and now after learning new things, I might try to record a new video; However, it does require some work on prepping my gear first just a bit.

Source: Amazon

I've stopped my ongoing reading list to read and finish my 2 new books from Amazon, and I've already finished one by Syl Arena (which I've read books of his before) This book is quite easy to digest and the beginning bulk of this book is for beginners, but nevertheless what comes then is quite useful, specially when it comes to discussions about his projects and situations. He describes exactly the mental process as needed to follow on with creating the needed light (even though some professionals might disagree with his methods).

Source: Amazon

Now I've started reading the second book, Schaum's Outlines: Optics, which is supposedly and introductory to the world of optics. However, the book kind of looking weird, because I feel as if it is in fact an answering-model for another major book (or let's say a solution manual). Nevertheless, it gives good information still with some good explanations in paragraphs before giving questions and their solutions. It is in fact a good refresher for me so far because what I've been reading so far is what I've studied long ago in my physics classes and completely forgot about right now!

There are other stuff I need to test and examine too, but waiting for the right time as I'm pressed (and can barely type this blog even!). I have the focusing pyramid (to calibrate the focusing system for lenses) as well as the H-alpha Night Sky filter which I didn't examine properly for the night sky yet, except lately for shooting the lunar eclipse (image at the end of the post). It is a regular job (and imaging) with such a filter and when I ordered it, I was really aiming at using it to shoot at the sun, but seems I have to wait till summer is over or I will simply be a fried egg! As for now, I need to get myself involved in August project with the group, which is about "Books." So far, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, but only glimpses and visions in my head waiting to get out to reality.
When it comes to travel, it seems that I have to delay my plans a bit further and probably skip this year as well. I guess things are going crazy in this world, too much that a travel itself is a stress that needs a stress-relief. Needless to say, I don't quite have any idea as where I should be going. Sometimes though I wish if I can meet some of those amazing people I knew online… Well, till that time comes, I better get back to my Irish lessons and learning, and maybe add another language to the list.

Lunar Chain