Dull Times...

Another dull week, with few serious work on any front. Summer just began and I wish it's over already. It does sound sometimes as if all my problems start with summer. Anyway, work is minimum, and by work I mean my camera, not my "job". I don't have much respect for this place right now actually.
On the other hand, I'm slowly starting to figure the headache of the Irish visa (again). Things should be sorted out as soon as possible though, and first of all, I have to set a plan for the dates of traveling and such. Thank God the passport is valid till next year and I don't have to do anything about this. If they keep a record of visitors to the Republic, probably granting my visa would be a piece of cake... ah well.

Macro

It was a day in which I brought my camera to my workplace to take shots of the beautiful garbage containers that were left beside my workplace for months now. After taking these shots, I've decided to check out the garden on the side of the building, which was colorful and blooming just some months ago - when we had some "weather". Even though it's filled with dead blooms and plants now, it could be a good target for some abstract work as well.

لب (Core)
Canon EF 50mm + 30mm ET, f/7.1,
100^-1sec, ISO640.

Because this was not planned initially, I didn't bring a tripod with me, and I guess this is obvious if you check the ISO in the specs of لب (Core). After many disastrous trials, accompanied for handshake AND slight breeze, I decided to go even beyond ISO400. The sun was fine but in such a macro level (with the hep of extension tubes of course) and such a shake, a compromise had to be made. And truth be told, I'm not sure how it became f/7.1 either! It was supposed to be fixed on f/8; seems I've nudged the dial without noticing!
I'm quite satisfied with the details in لب (Core) despite the out of focus regions which might somehow plague the scene a bit. The geometry of the details inside the dead core is to my eyes satisfaction, and the overall resolution is quite good even after cropping, so that even the fine hair on the side were pleasantly sharp at 100% view. Let's call it, a "strike of luck"! Cropping though did take some time to be decided, and yet I'm still not satisfied about it. Probably the law of thirds inside the square was due and the heart of the core should have been placed in one of the "power points".

تلك (That One)
Canon EF 50mm + 12mm ET, f/3.5,
320^-1sec, ISO400.

Seeing how long are the stems carrying these dead blooms, I changed the extension tube from 30mm to 12mm. The next shot I was planning needed some perception of depth, as I was planning to shoot the stem from above. The problem here though, I must use extension tubes to allow for close distance focus (50mm's closest focusing distance is about 45cm, or about 0.18 in.). However, I think that تلك (That One) needed more than just close focusing distance. It needs more angle of view to show some curvature in a clear way (and I'm not going to use the old 18-55mm here). The situation literally left me puzzled. However, with some sharpness to a distance object (thanks to AF!), probably the depth is depicted somehow. What was left was simply squaring and adjusting to the law of thirds.

البركان الناعم (Soft Volcano)
Canon EF 50mm + 30mm ET, f/6.3,
100^-1sec, ISO400.

Back to the 30mm extension tube. This time, my eyes captured a small "volcano" formation inside a dead core, just like the first shot above in fact, but this time, the point was protruding more. In البركان الناعم (Soft Volcano) the aperture was set mainly by "sense" and not by using any rules of thumb that are usually taken in macro photography. It is almost a rule that in macro shots, the aperture should not be any less than f/8. Anyway, as I was trying to make a compromise between the shutter speed and the ISO with the aperture (I was using Av mode, without tripod, without flash), f/6.3 seemed reasonable. The final result is a perplexing combination of out- and in-focus areas which makes it hard to specify exactly where is the plane of focus, as it has rendered the shot somewhat in 3D; to my eyes at least. There were several shots in fact, because I was using the burst mode (which I like to use in times of shake!), but this one seemed the finest. The protruding point from the core was not sharp enough though, unfortunately. Again, it was squared and fitted into one of the "power points" according to the law of thirds.

I'm not sure why I did name these shots specifically in Arabic in the first place, but to some sense, it did sound more "plausible". The squaring of all of these shots sounded "natural" to me since there are lot of unwanted details and the area of interest is pretty small compared to the whole frame; a whole rectangle wouldn't look "elegant" so to say, besides, it would have added more space than planned to the shot. It is also a better choice, as it seems, to rounded objects like these dead cores!

Kill It!

With minimum photographic activity, I'm still going on with Black and White exploration with old photos. Nothing special for this week in fact, except for an interesting encounter with an old panorama taken from the Arab Organization Headquarter (February, 2013), namely the Tiempos Andaluzas.

Tiempos Andaluzas

In this panorama, as you can see, there were lot of reflections because of the polished floor and, naturally, the glass facades everywhere. To me it was one major point in the weakness of the whole panorama; if these reflections were combined with symmetry, the situation might have been different at least. However, when converting to B&W (and adding a red tint), some of these reflections were simply "killed;" in the sense of being camouflaged with the surroundings. This helped a bit here and puts forward a new venture of thought and considerations when processing panoramas. B&W render could be a savior at some point beside being a touch of art!

Comparison between the colored and the B&W versions.
Notice the black arrows on the colored version.
Click to Enlarge

As you can see, not all reflections could be eliminated, naturally, but this was a good start. Moreover, the veins of the marble floor were emphasized further because of the tint. The original tint was pretty red. However, with going on with processing, the general tone changed to (dark) sepia somewhat, but I don't think it's that bad after all. I think some tint does help on pronouncing some details in white areas more than white does at times.

Finale

Well, I was supposed to talk a little about some work with Geltani conlang, and supposedly do a recording, but I'm canceling this for now as I had some technical problems concerning recording these events. I've done a primary check up for translating the UDHR and I have to say, it does sound a jaw twisting venture; not only a tongue twister! However, I'd rather train myself on producing these sounds rather than changing the value assigned. The main work though remains on putting key rules (to myself) for producing the glyphs for words, as well as adding some touches to the grammar and words manipulation. This is important because the conlang is largely based on Arabic, and Arabic script is an abjadic script, which means we might have more than one word with the same letters, but different in vowels. Vowels (short ones that is) are not recorded in Geltani.
I've been doing my homework, and sent some email asking for help with the Arabic phonology which I'm trying to understand. However, no reply as of yet. Seems I'm not good at getting responses anyway! This matter, which I reckoned to be a simple task, swept through a learning curve of phonetics and anatomy of the mouth just to understand how I speak!

After successfully sending and printing two of my photos, I've decided to add them to printing gallery on my website; which is something I didn't update in a while! The two photos are almost of the same size (around A2 with the margin) and would cost around 35K.D. here. Still thinking of easy ways to send these prints for benefit outside but having a strong currency and the lack of means to transfer money easily, makes this project a failure for the time being. PayPal wouldn't let me receive money with my current location and credit card.

Print Screen of two pages from my website after update.

My life is getting busier now and I had to stop fasting for the time being, in hope that it would empower me to do the hanging tasks on my schedule. It's not a language or a camera matter only, but a complete sweep through my life and the capability to organize it. Just to think of all the preparations I have to do just before traveling gives me a shiver in the spine really, but remembering that it is something that I must do, makes me calm down a little. I'm starting to get careless and careless about everything around me, day by day...

Mechanics...

Writing this post at the last moment before posting. Well, that's natural. My week wasn't productive much, feeling deteriorated because of summer. I've been trying though to do something in macro level and I did come up with something but it wasn't much to consider. I'm not sure I will be doing much the next week either, except of writing articles for my other blog.
On the other hand, my gift of prints to some friends in the US finally arrived and were received. I'm so happy that the prints were even above their expectations. Instead of framing and hanging them in the office as they said they were planning, they decided it is too good to have it in the office, and instead they will hang it at home! Big smile on this face; such a feeling needed in a long time! In the meantime, I'm not sure what to exactly do with my black and white prints of the same images. I might try to offer them for sale on Instagram - though I'm sure no interest would be yielded.

The Prints (Colored Version)

Mechanics

As I've stated above, the activity is dormant this week, and I'm not expecting any raise in the level of work with my camera in the coming few days. However, just out of curiosity I've brought my camera with me to work one day, and in fact I was planning to shoot the garbage which our admins pay for respecting us in front of my workplace. Anyway, I got better idea than wasting my battery on work issues.

Time Mechanics
Canon EF 50mm + 68mm ET,
f/22, 1h5m, ISO100.

Thus, just having some spark in my mind for some activity I decided to do a long exposure for another clock (which I did many times before) - this time however, for my watch; and that means a macro setting.
I figured a tripod won't be much useful as I'm intending to work on the meeting table in my workplace, thus, I used a stack of files and for the stability of the watch, I've placed it around the edge of a coffee mug! Too bad I didn't think of taking a shot for the setting back then. Anyway, as the main subject is the second dial (or hand), a small exposure for one minute or even 40 seconds would be just fine to show the movement of the dial - but something was not going OK here.
Because of the light coming from the windows in the office (and the room's lights), there was some apparent flare in the results and the watch facade was washed out of details. It's not like having an over exposure, but it is simply light pollution into the system. Tried to turn off the lights (and the windows cannot be blocked unfortunately), and tried to block the small distance between the lens system and the watch in some way by placing dark objects, and I even tried placing the polarizer on the lens, but all of that that didn't work well. Anyway, decided now it is time to get a black cloth which is something I was planning to do for long time - you will know why below.The place for clothes is near my workplace and just takes 5 minutes driving from my work place (1 minute in traffic-free road!).
With the black cloth, I was able (according to my measurements) to extend the exposure time up to 4 hours! But with my limited time in the office, I had to adjust the black cloth covering in such a way to allow some light to get slightly and thus the exposure time, after some trials, was set to one hour and 4 minutes (added one minute just to be on the safe side).

I wasn't disappointed here. The white tip of the seconds hand worked well with the slight light coming into the set, and because of its (relatively) rapid movement, the movement is recorded clearly on the sensor because the hand goes on all around the hour. The details on the black surface of the watch showed significantly nice (needed to reduce the brightness later and add contrast). The hard work though was with cleaning the noise and the other artifacts. For the first time ever, I try the Dust and Scratches command in Photoshop, and proved quite useful for some type of noise that neither NIK nor NoiseNinja was able to remove.
I think I made a mistake here for trying to smooth out the images before doing the adjustments needed for the colors of the image. The chromatic noise specifically was also persistent and I had to do "cleaning" before and after the processing. I've uploaded this image to some stock sites, and I'm not sure it will get accepted for the "cranky" quality when viewed at 100% zoom. I might as well use it elsewhere anyway.

Scanography

I've mentioned above that it was about time to get a black cloth. This black cloth (preferably velvet but didn't find one) is essential in the art of Scanography; an art of doing images by flatbed scanners. A black cloth is not always the choice, it can be a white cloth, but I think with bright or reflective objects it is preferred to use black cloth instead.
This is my first time to try this kind of art, and there is so much to learn ahead. However, from what I get, it seems that old fashioned flatbed scanners are better equipped for this task, more than my (relatively) new type scanners; this is because the depth of field of older scanners is relatively higher (still shallow) than modern ones - something related to the use of prisms in older scanners and fluorescent light to light up objects. In modern scanners, like mine (HP 3-in-1 type), it seems that LEDs are used and the use of prisms is not involved here as it seems, making the depth of field so shallow that 1mm high from the glass board (the bed of the scanner) will render the object blurred.

My Life Is A Scopa

I tried varied objects (a ring, a watch) initially, but since the depth is not what I expected, I headed to try thinner objects that can somehow stick to the bed of the scanner; and couldn't find any better than my scopa deck of cards. The scanner, after spreading the cards, was covered with the black cloth to block the light as much as possible; the cover can't be closed here because the cards are forming a thick substance after all.
The scanning process was done at 1200dpi, and according to what I understand so far, the resolution has more to do to the magnification factor and not the printing size of the final image. Anyway, to fill the image of the cards, I've made two scans here, each with a different distribution of the cards, as random as possible. These two images later were duplicated and mixed up and blended to form My Life Is A Scopa. As you might see from the image, a slight shift in the height of some cards would render the image blurred and out of focus. I have to say I'm somehow disappointed but nevertheless, I'm willing to try more of this technique, providing that I get the appropriate substances.
In working out with this image, I had to crop some portions of the edges and recompose the framing (after duplicating and blending the two images), as well as remove some black areas in the middle by copying some parts into these places. I wonder now if there is some way to increase the depth manually by placing some subject over the flatbed? Just a thought...

Lingua

On the lingua side (i.e. language side) I've found (or more like deducted) some time for working out with tiny research about the IPA representation of the standard Arabic sounds. I stumbled on a specific article in Wikipedia dedicated to the phonology of the Arabic language. The page has some notes about the essential phonemes I want to research; namely [ط], [ظ], [ض], in addition to some notes about [ع] and [أ]. For the former three, the IPA mentioned on Omniglot, and the one mentioned in this page - these sounds are supposedly pharyngealized (issued from the pharynx) and it also mentions that sometimes they are "velarized"; meaning to be issued from the velum point. The points are mixed up in fact and mostly put (as it seems from the resources at the bottom of the page) originally by non-Arabic speakers.
According to this chart and these notes, we should have, for example, two variations of [ط]: velar, and pharyngeal. I'm trying to figure out the real variation here. Probably, just probably, some people in the Levine circle do have a deeper sound of it which might sound like it is produced from the pharynx. Yet, this is not exactly the standard Arabic we are talking about. Anyway, this variation is simply not thought over when I listen to other Arab speakers. It is not like shifting the sound of "j" (/d͡ʒ/) to "g" (/g/) when an Egyptian person speaks. We do see that "j" and "g," as sounds, are different, but I do not think that we think over the sounds of velarized and pharyngealized /t/ [ط].
Now looking deeper and trying to understand the "standard" version of Arabic starting with a sound as (tˤ: Voiceless/Stop/Alveolar/Pharyngealized). Technically, after spending some time saying it to myself and trying to check the movement of the tongue inside my mouth, I realized, first of all, the sound is not "voiceless" but quite the opposite; voiced. This is apparent from the fact that the pressure of air in the mouth to say this sound is harder than simple /t/, or it can be considered something in between /t/ and /d/ in pressure; but I do not think it is completely voiceless like it is in the chart. The Arabic Wikipedia's article about this sound is, it seems, a mere translation for the English one (in short) but it does give a description for the movement of the tongue after the plosive movement of the tongue against the upper ridge; specifically, the back of the tongue. It does sound from this description that they classify it as velarized, rather than pharyngealized - and without the movement of the vocal cords. This would make the proper symbol /t̪ˠ/, and the "t" is shown here because it is the most approximate version for this sound, despite the fact /t/ is voiceless and here I'm inclined to state that this sound is voiced instead.
The case is even more complicated (for me) with the sound of [ض], which goes under the same criterion as the sound before, but it is more complicated here because of the amount of the air pressed against the ridge and the plosive movement. The Arabic Wikipedia didn't help much here to decide, but this one too doesn't sound pharyngealized as in Omniglot version, and more into velarized region; yet I need to work more on my sounds to decide!
One of the surprises that I've encountered in Wikipedia's article about Arabic Phonology, is that some linguists consider the sound of [ع] as a voiced fricative! As far as I know, fricative sounds like /s/ and /z/ do produce a continuous (or a person is able to produce a continuous) vibration of air when said; the sound of [ع] is clearly not so! It is apparently a plosive sound.There are extra notes about this notes in Wikipedia's article. Needs more to check out, and I need to ask an expert about it.

On the other hand I worked a bit with my UDHR translation into Geltani and I'm not sure I'm satisfied about the final form of the sentences. The grammar, which I try to mimic Turkic languages with, needs more patches and fixes, beside adding idioms or expressions unique for Geltani for some regular phrases (e.g. "each other"). Also, there is some more check ups to follow for the glyphs and the way they are written. The progress is slow but it's going on. Hopefully I will be able to produce a sound recording for the UDHR in Geltani later on.

Finale

I've reserved a room in The Waterfront already, the place where I stayed in my first visit to Ireland back in 2009. I had to do it early since there was only one room left! A friend of mine was wishing to come with me to relax (been into his own troubles) but I'm not sure if he is able to.
Now, I have to do the usual errands related to all the work with the visa, taking photos and preparing for the trip, and most importantly, taking care of things for Mom. I'm just hoping my load of "good" photos from there would be more. Frankly, I'm not sure if my budget is ready for this or not but I'm putting a sign on my forehead that says "I don't give a damn!"... I NEED to travel after all this stress and havoc. I need to really know and feel that I'm alive still.
Well, this has been my life for this week. It sounds goal-less somewhat, like I'm living week to week; I guess this is the best I could do. Am I supposed to exhaust myself to the point that I block my mind from thinking about the future, and the emotions and my life in general? Probably the most appropriate answer here is: yes.