Alright. I'm supposed to talk here about my last stroll so far for this year, which was back in February. Exactly, on February 2ⁿᵈ, just the next day from the stroll before, which I've made my previous blog post about.
As I've stated before, I was going to make it all into one post but I realized that probably the post would be too long. The main goal for this stroll was actually to take some pictures of some wall with graffiti that I've noted the day before. Thus, as variation goes, the images shot that day were not varied much. However, there is one shot or scene in particular that made me call it a "day"! I'll come to that later.
Unlike with the rest of wandering for this year so far, and as I've mentioned in my previous posts, the lens in use here was Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 Fisheye lens, which is completely manual, and of course no way to fit the flare filter on the front. This lens had been always my choice for creative endeavors and one of my favorites, despite the somewhat hard control and other lens issues (e.g. chromatic aberrations).

Westward, Again

غَرْبْ
(west)

In the beginning, as usual, I've started to take some test shots in the neighborhood, which later were processed. The time was about sunrise back then. However, strangely, the western horizon had a slight glow as if the sun was rising from there. Anyway, as I typically do for such times, I've set the WB to Fluorescent, thus the final image (tone-mapped from HDR), West, had a nice blue-pink tint to it. Now it's time to go!

My World 2

Test shots were not limited to West, but I've also shot some on my way to that wall with graffiti, but nothing important here. Luckily, though, the puddle that was there the day before, was still there (and it was quieter than the day before). Shooting this puddle with 8mm was a bit of a challenge though. For a starter, I had to rely on my instinct concerning the hyperfocal distance and adjust the lens to that (and putting on more f-stops in aperture to make sure things are within the depth). To shoot My World 2, I had to get so low (almost touching the water surface). Despite its small size, it does somewhat look like a pond or a lake (thanks for the wide field of view and distortion). I was surprised that some of these houses still have antennae on the top!

The Wall

Coming to the wall, I've started to shoot many images for it and on various orientations. However, when processing these images, it did prove to be a challenge on various levels. First of all, the distortion of such fisheye lens didn't serve the purpose and the nature of the subject. I've tried to rectify the images (manually, which consumed a LOT of time), but such rectification would chop a big portion of the wall. In fact one of the problems when shooting this wall was to get a decent angle to have fine details with some interesting view instead of shooting a boring head-on shot as if I was simply documenting the place.
The second problem arose with the WB, as the blue tint from the Fluorescent WB kind of killed the image and its tones, which contained some warm tones.

The Wall 2

However, I did find that the landscape orientation is way better than the portrait orientation, and rectifying the image in this orientation was somewhat a success (despite some areas or angles not being fit I guess). It was clear, in the process of making HDRs and tone-mapping these shots, that Fluorescent WB wasn't a good choice for this particular subject, so I changed the WB (when merging into HDR) into Daylight WB (or maybe Cloudy WB) and added some blue tint later while tone-mapping and editing in Photoshop.
This wall created in me the desire to shoot a panorama in this place, but alas, that didn't happen until the moment of typing this. 

天堂之下
(under Heaven)

Probably the most ironic thing in this short stroll wasn't related to that wall, the main goal of that stroll. Rather, it was a random scene that I've shot on the edge of a big pool of rain water. Shooting low and bracketing for HDR, I've made several successive shots just to make sure I have some workable images. Even though delicate handshake don't quite show clearly when using such a wide angle lens, but I wouldn't have that for granted. At the time when Under Heaven was shot, I've already set the WB to something else other than Fluorescent (maybe Cloudy or Daylight). In the process, I've stitched 2 HDRs and composed a composed (panoramic) image from the two to complete the scene (specially the sky), as depending on one image would have forced me to crop a lot and lose some details from the edges. I'm so happy with this shot, that I've created 2 more versions of it!

Two extra versions: (Left) Color reversal, (Right) B&W.

Despite these versions, I think I still prefer the original one. Alas, I don't think it would good to print this image unless on some rough texture, like canvas, to "swallow" up the noise in the image. Otherwise, I'd need a considerable time to manage these noise zones in the image on a micro level to avoid significant loss of details. In fact, de-noising the image(s) on one go failed to remove the noise or grain from some specific areas; Not sure why, but this is typical actually when dealing with HDR tone-mapped images. I've encountered such problems a lot in the past when I was active with panoramas.

This shot was probably the "last" in this stroll. There had been some shots afterward but I don't think they are that interesting, so I won't be talking about them here.

Finale

Ramadhan is almost over here, and along with it I'm hoping to get some relief and some stability with my sleeping schedule, a bit. The weather is getting warmer and warmer though and I'm not sure I would be able to go out to shoot anything. We'll see…

Maidin
(morning)

Meanwhile, since this is the last post for my strolls since the beginning of this year, I'm not sure that I would be able to post further despite the fact that I'm indeed taking some pictures here and there (mostly with my phone actually), but they are a bit chaotic and random with no specific theme. That reminds me of the time when I was a member in a photography group, when there was a monthly challenge for members to participate. Would I be able to imply the same discipline on myself, though? I greatly doubt it. So far, most of my trials to create some sort of a discipline for many things I'd like to do, had failed miserably. Yet, probably I should give it a try and see.
This said, if you are a reader to this blog on a periodic basis, expect some gap as I'm not sure I'd be posting anything in the coming weeks from now.
On the other hand, I'm also still on the look out for any new topic for my Arabic blog as well. Thus, I might invest a bit of this time to think of something and actually post it there. In fact, many things in y life had been on hold, specially during Ramadhan. I've realized just recently that I didn't add anything to my list of writing and quotes (which I keep on Writing.com) for the past month or so. I think this is reflective of how busy had my mind was and is, beside the exhaustion. At times, it feels as if it is one long nightmare, and I just can't wait to wake up…
 

Bipolar…

Here we are, with Ramadhan running now 2 weeks deep, and 2 more weeks to go or so. I didn't take any leave from work this year for Ramadhan, so you can tell how my activities would be in this month. As of writing this, I've already had to skip one day of work because of my sleeping problems. I do have sleeping problems as it is, so imagine the turbulence when Ramadhan comes! However, I've been trying as much as I can to do some chores with the camera, be it astrophotography trials as usual, or some ideas that I'm working with indoors, with some bad news that surprised me: My oval dome diffuser for speedlites is lost, and cannot be found in any single place in the house! I'm not sure what happened there, but I have to work without it right now. I didn't pick it outside the house, so it must be in, and maybe it will show one day, but not sure how or when...

Bipolar

Well, now much have been going on with my camera but I've been really trying to dust off my attitude and mood and work a bit with some ideas that I've been already thinking of doing in a long time now (and one of them is related to Retinitis Pigmentosa which was supposed to be done back in February!). Anyway, as my mind is rambling randomly, I didn't start off with old ideas but just started to work with whatever spark was there in my mind at the moment, and that idea was based on reflections on water surface.

Setting for my reflections shoot (which was adapted after trial and error)
The blue thing is a small fan to make ripples in the water but realized it won't make the image any better.

My beloved lost diffuser
:~(

As you can see in the image above, I had to adapt to using the small beauty dish instead of my usual global diffuser which is lost already. Working with this dish and in such conditions probed to be such a challenge with hard-to-predict results. It took me a while to find out what reflects better. Initially, I've used an aluminum box (biscuits box) and filled it with water but that did not work well and did not reflect well. After surfing a bit I've found out that reflections with water work better with dark/black surfaces and I have to say I kind of felt stupid at that moment! Because I always use dark background under transparent acrylic or glass sheets to make good reflections off them! How come I didn't think of that! Anyway, it was time to get some more kitchen stuff: A cookies' tray.

Bipolar

It took me a while to perfect the position of my head in relation to the tray of water here, and also to position the speedlite with the beauty dish (and a diffuser) in a good place to light the face. The idea of the image was already to take 2 or more shots and merge them reflecting on the bipolarity disorder. Excuse the messy hair in Bipolar, but I really had hard time leaning towards the table (with my face almost touching the table) just to get the reflections on the tray right. No need to delve deep into the work in Photoshop I guess, but I have to say that I didn't like the abundance of black space between the two faces; I've tried to remove it but it didn't work out well, so I kept the original. There is also the luster on the edge of the tray which proved somewhat annoying, but then after a second though, I kept it as it is just to define the limit and edge of the water body.

Bipolar (B&W)

This said, I think I do prefer the B&W version more as it shows a stark contrast of emotions, and mood. This is aided with the fact that I had to do some extra sharpening here (just on the smaller versions for this blog post). But the thing that annoys me remains, that black empty space. Not sure if I'm right with this annoyance or not actually but this triggered me to think of doing it in another way, if I can. What I really didn't anticipate for is the hardship in working with water reflections. Despite the simple settings, but location and lighting proved hard to achieve (or let's say needs time to get it right). This is with the help of a polarizer on the lens (Voigtländer 20mm here) to get the reflections to pop up clearly on the water (in contrast to its typical use in photography I guess!).

Bipolar II

The second trial was to be using my Canon EF 50mm lens this time and not Voigtländer 20mm like the previous shot. That required a change in the positioning of the tray and other things and I tried to use another modifier here (a simple reflector from Rogue attached to the speedlite, which can be bent to direct the light in specific direction). This one, too, took me by a storm as I was trying to fix the distances and the lighting (and because of the change in positions, I had to fix the background a bit). Like its previous predecessor, the idea of Bipolar II was to merge 2 or more images together. And while Bipolar was shot with camera in portrait position, Bipolar II was shot in landscape position but then cropped to keep the important elements. My plan was to show a full face but physically that was not possible and I didn't want to switch back to 20mm (it would have been problematic for all the elements I would need to crop out later). In the make of Bipolar II I decided to use the little fan again but placed a bit far away from the set to cause gentle ripples (unlike the tense ripples while working with Bipolar which made me stop using it). In both instances also, I had to take a "blank" frame; That is a shot for the set without me being in it to use later for corrections and cover-ups. This blank frame was essential for Bipolar II, as the table and the edge of the tray were quite clear, so probably a black band in the middle seems plausible!

Bipolar II (B&W)

As is the case with Bipolar, I find satisfaction with Bipolar II in B&W rather than being in color, as it is more dramatic and shows stark emotions. Moreover, working with Bipolar II was somewhat tricky as the original shot did not show the ripples and the looks through the ripples clearly, but once I've rotated the image upside down, it was clear that there is a contrast in emotions between a smiling face and a "maniac's" look. I've rotated the image originally to see portions of the eyes clearly and try to dodge them a bit but then when I saw how it is clearer than the original position, I've decided to keep Bipolar II in that position. I think the ripples here played a good role too, adding to the drama and the mood of the image. However, dodging the shady areas in general was not quite smooth and I had to abandon the idea altogether. You might have noticed how the light and shadows almost divide the lower half in the image into 2 halves. Probably I needed to use a reflector here on the other side of the settings (but the space wouldn't allow for it anyway). But my expectation is, this would not have happened if I was to use the oval dome diffuser on my speedlite.

These four (or rather two) images are all I've been trying to do with my lazy mood and schedule. As I've mentioned, there are some more ideas that I'm willing to try but I just need to push myself harder, specially with Ramadhan ongoing. Not sure how I'm going to work without my beloved diffuser though; Just when I started to like working with it, I lost it! If I didn't find it any time soon, I might have to prepare for another order. For the time being, I'll try to work with what I have and maybe try some DIY solutions.

Finale

As the situation is growing crazy in this area, as much as I get sicker and sicker of my reality. Not only for that, but because of the irony with these traffic jams, which proved to be denser in Ramadhan than in regular days (our working hours in Ramadhan are shorter). The weather is already reaching 42^oC in temperature, and of course this is not so-pleasant occurrence. Things at work are going crazy for preparations to move to the new location and as for my department we still don't know if we are really moving or not because of the complexities of laws and protocols. I'm starting to regret my decision for not having a vacation during the month of Ramadhan actually but I'm trying to keep myself going by wishing to myself that I would be traveling some time later. This said, I'm really not sure about any plans nor any real wish to travel with the craziness around me, as much as I love it and eager to do it, as much as I am getting tired every time I do remember the hardships of traveling plus the preparations. Sometimes I do wish if I have a companion for such travels. I'll be dreaming for now. Sometimes trying to be optimistic and fighting the darkness inside yourself leaves you so exhausted that you cannot even see the purpose of all of this. One it will all over, so I'll just be waiting…

AstroFails - Reflections…

It has been a semi-idle week. I had many hopes but they were crushed down; Regarding astrophotography that is. However, I might keep trying after a while, but right now I need to focus more on some ideas I'm trying to achieve and do for a while but I was simply lazy to do. What I liked about my trials with astrophotography is the fact that I can do it at home just in the yard and I can have a decent time alone even when everyone is inside the house. Reminds me of that time when I used to climb up to the highest point on the roof just to shoot the cityscape of my area from there or do time lapses for the sunset. Unfortunately though for me now, I can't go to the roof, and in the yard, my field of vision for the sky is limited by the surrounding houses which somehow limits my good view to the zenith above me alone. But that's another story anyway. Yet, I will post here some of my failures with astrophotography, which is still under studying and learning processes.
Before heading to my failures in astrophotography, I'd just like to list here my results certificate from Treierenberg Circuit, which was emailed to me on April 19^th. I wouldn't call it a success, nor a complete failure, but I was hoping for more brilliants results than this actually.

A=Accepted, R=Rejected (for exhibition).
Click to enlarge.

 First of all, if you have OCD please don't look at the list because I didn't have the time to organize it with my copy/paste process! It bothers me as well but I have to do with this right now. As you can see from the list, lot of images were rejected (and some of them were kind of unexpectedly rejected). However, I'm happy that my first time with "Series" photography, entitled Syrian Girl, was accepted; All five images. This series was shot some time ago (I think in 2017) for a project with the group which I was a member in back then, and it was not really dedicated to the topic of a Syrian girl at all, but was more general about how a girl would remain a girl even in adulthood. But somehow the meaning can be twisted as well to reflect the status of a girl, who lost her parents in war.
Anyway, no gold medals this time, but I'm happy that my shot Anxiety got accepted. I can't post all images here but probably you can roll back to my previous posts where I posted some of these images (and I made a quick video as well for one of the posts).

AstroFails

As I've mentioned earlier, my trials with astrophotography from the yard at home were prone to fail mostly and I couldn't catch but a glimpse of some constellations or stars. My real target, though, is to shoot something exciting like a nebula or a galaxy.
In the course of learning, I had my hopes up for various reasons, as well as learning many other aspects that might be beneficial for the photographic vision and processing as a whole later on. Specifically, the power of RawTherapee! I still have my hopes high despite the failures that I've had already. I've read and still reading from time to time about the trials of many people in shooting high ISO and in the city bringing the space to life with their images, without even using a tracking mount which typical for a serious professional astrophogoraphy, Despite following their steps, I didn't come up with anything serious though and I guess it's all laid on my own problems with the location and gear.

A trial with 50mm lens on April 21^st. Probably Leo constellation appears here.
The black spots are probably passing clouds or just stacking artifacts.

So far, I didn't exceed the limits of shooting constellations only, even with the range of 300mm, which I've read in some pages that it is fine for astrophotography. The downside though of using my 300mm lens (Sigma's) is the small diameter compared to more professional photo lenses (62mm) and the high f-number (f/5.6 @300mm) which limits the passage of light (specially faint beams) even while shooting in high ISO. Using my Rokinon mirror lens is of course out question here (but I tried it anyway!); The lens if 800mm but with a fixed aperture of f/8. A catastrophe even with high ISO. But I like to imagine how the situation would be if I would be using a tracker with this lens? Then I would be able to shoot for a longer time and would for sure collect more data and more light!

Trial at 100mm on April 23^rd with Hα filter. Unfortunately,
I couldn't work out what constellations are present here. I've spent hours trying to check
star maps! If you can help, please feel free to comment below.

My trials in the beginning were always at 300mm with Hα filter to suppress the light pollution. However, reading more about the topic, I've realized that most professionals would shoot normal, without such a filter, even in untracked astrophotography like what I'm doing right here, and shoot Hα to collect more data in that region of the spectrum and merge it with the normal images. It's easy to be done digitally, complicated to be done in practice! However, I've shot with the filter and processed some images and some of them yielded some good results with Deep Sky Stacker (DSS). Seeing how things are hard with 300mm, I've decided to go all the way to the beginning; Shooting with 50mm, then 100mm and then maybe 200mm and 300mm. My trials are still going on while typing these words actually but I've stopped for some time to do other photography projects on the side!
This experience in shooting astrophotography, despite its failures, as I think, did teach a number of things and opened my eyes to another venue. I like to organize my thoughts in points here:

• Shooting with high ISO: I'm not afraid to crank the ISO to its highest point. Not only in astrophotography but it could be in other genres as well. A number of things had changed when it comes to dealing with such images and such noise.
• RawTherapee: It turns out, beside DSS, that this open source editor would be (and is) the best friend one can have away from Photoshop! The noise reduction algorithms and the capabilities of adding a dark frame and a flat frame to the algorithm of noise reduction and image correction makes it ideal. This is beside the "demosaicing" algorithms, of which two are dedicated to high ISO images. I'm thinking seriously of visiting some of the old images I've taken (specially those from 2015 from the Monodrama festival back then) and try to reduce the noise with RawTherapee. Some professionals, as I've read in some articles, make a point that it's bad that RawTherapee does not allow the addition of more than one dark frame to take the average for noise reduction (like DSS does) but I think this is something specific to DSS and the nature of astrophotography, and RawTherapee is a general editor of some sort and should not necessarily go on the same path as DSS. Another good point for RawTherapee is the ability to work with 32-bit images as well (HDRs), and in various algorithms as it seems (linear and rational).
• Ball Heads: I never imagined that my worst enemy in shooting would one day be my best friend in shooting! When I started my trials with astrophotography, I used a panning head; My preferred head to work with ease. I've neglected all the advice I've read about using ball heads in those online articles from professionals. I was wrong, completely. Ball heads in this situation IS the real and the only candidate for shooting the sky. Thinking about it, I might even consider integrating such a head in my usual workflow (but not in panorama making for sure of course).

Probably these are the major points that changed or added to my knowledge about photography and my usual workflow in processing images after shooting. At this time, I'm still trying to cope and enhance my practical workflow when shooting the sky but I have to admit that I didn't achieve much progress in that arena. Here are some of the problems that I'm still trying to find solutions to:

• Focusing: Having a good focus to a completely dark sky with unseen stars (until the images are processed) is quite a struggle. I've been even taking test shots just to notice and see if there are any bright stars in the image and move the focusing ring accordingly. Reading articles online about this matter did not help much, and applying the principle of the hyperfocal distance is not achievable somewhat (specially when the f-number is quite low). Probably the most significant advice I've seen online is to focus at some light source or a subject which is around 100m away or so, and that is not possible to do in my case (I don't have such a space as I'm shooting at home).
• Locating: Currently, I've been using an app on my Huawei android phone called Sky Map, and probably this is the best I could find. The app is fine, but the problem is in matching the field of view on the phone with that of the lens (i.e. what does the lens see). The lens' field of view is a measurable angle (according to the sensor size), but on the app there is no scale for that. I tried to check for a better app but seems this is the best I could get so far. 
• Pointing: With the problem of locating, comes the other problem of pointing in the right direction into the dark sky. A cumbersome method I've came up with is to hold my phone against the LCD of my camera (as if it is the LCD itself) and look at the map on the phone to know what stars are in view. This is not an accurate method of course but maybe a good approximation. Moving the camera cannot be done while holding the phone against the LCD, unless with some help (but I'm working alone here, as usual).
• Tracking: The method of "untracked astrophotography" depends on moving the camera manually and follow up the movement of the object in the sky. But the sky is dark already and I'm not sure how would I follow up an object that cannot be seen even on LCD when the shots are taken! For this, I depend on some visible clues like a glittering little star and check its movement before changing the orientation of the camera. However, maybe this star is not anywhere near my original aim in the sky!
• Gear: Not talking about a tracker mount (which is favorable actually), but a good lens would do wonders. In the images above, shot at 50mm and 100mm, all were actually taken with my Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens, with just the addition of a 2x teleconverter to reach 100mm (and adding another one to reach 200mm even). Teleconverters double the focal lengths AND the aperture. Thus, f/1.4 would naturally go up to f/2.8 (and surprisingly stops at this value even when adding another teleconverter). Most of the articles I've read online talk about Canon's 70-200mm lenses with f/2.8 and adding a teleconverter to that to reach 400mm to shoot nebulae and galaxies. Makes me really wonder whether my Sigma 70-300mm is any good to the task with its f/4 at 70mm and f/5.6 at 300mm (and adding a teleconverter would raise that up to f/11 at 600mm!). Baseline: f/4 is not good enough. But anyway, I'm willing to try my best still with what I have.

Those are, probably, the most dominant problems in my work with the sky so far. I'm willing to try and try again. For the time being, I'm just having a break to type this blog post and also to work on side projects (which, again, starts with chasing my gear around and locating lost items). I was hoping though to get some decent results for a galaxy or a nebula, and start typing an Arabic blog post about my experience with it. Guess this has to wait till I get concrete results. I am aiming also to take wide angle shots and try to catch the milky way in such light-polluted area, so I might leave the comfort of my home or try to reach the roof. We'll see about that.

Finale

Summer is arriving here and the weather is getting hotter and hotter. It's such a mess in my workplace right now, and such a mess in my brain right now. The idea of just resigning and leaving everything behind me really tickles my brain from time to time. I really need some kind of eternal rest, from useless routines and work, and people as well. Is that a result of not traveling for such a long time? Maybe. Not sure if I will travel this year though despite having some ideas already. The laws here, also, are getting up to some ridiculous degree, and around me I see many people and instances of people trying to survive in this turmoil of a thing that is supposed to be a homeland.
Meanwhile, I'm looking at my poetry writing and I feel sorry for myself for not being able to write down anything or do anything about it for months now. It feels if my soul, rather than my body, that is so tired deep inside. Tired of everything. Tired of even pinning a smile on my face wherever I go and keeping my cool temper. All that is blocking my way of expression, verbally, and in writing. All I'm wishing for right now is to have the mood and power to work with my camera as much as possible and trying to put my mind off the problems that hover around me…

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...