Well, it's been such a cold weekend, or whole week actually, and I kind of feel something is wasted for not going out to shoot in such weather like in the old days. Alas, I have to accept the reality and satisfy myself with cozy warm room, long sleep as much as I can, and songs from the 1990s when something called "Romance" did exist, at least in songs.
It seems that I've already finished talking about my activities in December 2022, so I'm supposed to hop into what I've been up to lately in 2023, where I've done 3 strolls (sort of). However, since it is February, Retinitis Pigmentosa Awareness Month, I've decided to post about my single experiment (so far) to shoot something for this occasion. I'm not sure if I can shoot something else in this narrow time gap till the end of February but anyway it shouldn't be such a limitation in case any new ideas came about later on.

RP 2023

As usual, the beginning was hard. Ideas simply didn't come about however I tried. I've tried brainstorming using some websites to create random thoughts and hence random ideas in relation to the topic of Retinitis Pigmentosa, but all the trials just failed.
The idea (and only one so far, at the time of typing this) didn't come about till the family here wished to do some grilling outside!

Grilling Night

I shot Grilling Night from the balcony with my Huawei phone. It did take some considerable time to rectify the image as much as possible but I guess there are still some tilted lines in it. Anyway, this shot is not that important (though I really like it!), but it was about the beginning of the inspiration when I saw that sack of coal lying around. 

The black color just triggered many things inside my head, and not just in relation to my Retinitis Pigmentosa. Thus, I've set my aim to do something with that coal. Luckily, I do have an acrylic transparent board which I keep for such "photographic missions" whenever I need it. The initial thought was to take a picture of my eye, looking through the darkness, in a symbolic gesture for coping with the loss of peripheral vision. However, talking about it proved to be WAY easier than doing it. 

Roundflash Softbox

I decided first to work outside in the yard (the one seen in Grilling Night above) and it was just my luck that rains started to pour down on and off for about 3 days. To add more to my troubles, coal proved to be hard to break and I didn't have proper tools and preparations (gloves and towels and other stuff) to work. The least to say about the situation is that it was a miserable one! All these conditions, beside lacking the means to let the coal really stick to the acrylic board (I'm not ready to sacrifice it and I need to wash it afterward) - all of these issues made me realize that probably I should put "authenticity" aside and just do the whole thing as a graphic design, combining two images; one for the coal, and the other for my eye.

The other issue was with the lighting. In the beginning, I've wanted to use speedlites on the side of the coal to give out some texture but then changed my mind in order to work faster (because I'd need to make a setup for the speedlite on the side) and decided to use the Roundflash softbox which is something I didn't use in ages. It is ironic how it is now publicized as a "softbox"; When I got this item years ago, it was supposed to be a cheap macro photography solution, which proved to be an awkward claim and it was completely impractical for such a field. It is still impractical here in this situation too because of the size and the bulkiness, and using my 50mm lens made it hard to stabilize this whole item on the camera and speedlite (it requires a somewhat longer lens to fit in the middle). Anyway, with all these hurdles, this tool still had its nice effect on the eye when shooting portraiture.

The final coal layer on the acrylic board

Now, there was another problem for using this Roundflash to shoot the coal, and specifically directly from above almost at 90°, which didn't yield much details for the texture. I have to admit though at this moment I was reliant on my capabilities with editing RAW files and doing other tricks in Photoshop; Something that a photographer shouldn't just take for granted when working on projects because bad surprises are, well, abundant in that category of work. Anyhow, I've decided to shoot 10 images (actually didn't count them it was just random) and I was moving the coal pieces around the acrylic board to create some textures with the hope that one image from all of this mess would be the "one". Later on in Photoshop though, I've realized that I could stack all these images and merge them into one smart object and set a specific mode for stacking. After trying several ones, I've settled with median (and mean mode was also good). 

The eye layer

Now I though working with the Roundflash would be an easy task with the camera on the tripod but I was completely wrong; It was even more cumbersome than when the camera is handheld, because of the tripod legs which obstructed the Roundflash which had a somewhat large diameter. Anyway, I've managed to work with it anyhow despite the Roundflash not being completely straight and round. It was hard to shoot my own eye in that manner so I had to use the help of my brother to check the location of my head using the LiveView and also I had to use 12mm extension tube with the 50mm lens to get as close as possible to the lens. In fact, I was going to get even closer and use other tubes but as I got closer, it was hard for the Roundflash to light my eye, so I had to satisfy myself with this and rely, again, on post-processing to focus on the eye. I had also to use larger f-number (I think it was around f/13) to ensure the sharpness (or the depth of field that is).

Through The Darkness

I won't go through the post-processing mess to create Through The Darkness here, but probably you have noticed how the coal layer turned green-ish. It was even greener but I've reduced the saturation and I really wanted to turn it to black and gray, but seeing how the green helped a bit in giving a texture, and also kind of balances the red tones in the eye layer (which of course underwent many post-processing techniques), I've decided then to just let it be green but with lesser saturation (as it is supposed to be the "darkness"). There was some resizing involved as well to let the gap narrower, and to make things a bit "realistic" to some extent, I've decided to add a touch of shadow to the coal layer. 

With this, my work for the main image for RP 2023 had ended and so far, at the time of typing this, I didn't quite think of any more ideas to do regarding this topic. I might use these test images for other projects though; I think they'll be useful somehow in the future. The shot got "relatively" higher number of likes on IG which makes me somehow satisfied about the results even though my perfectionist side is still nagging deep inside of me for not doing things in-camera. 

Finale

Some storms are calming down, and I'm hoping not temporarily. My sleeping schedule had been screwed up again just like the sweet old times, where I stay awake all night and sleep most of the day. I guess it's just my natural defense against the hurdles of life and the way i seek quiet and calm atmosphere in this house.
I've left myself with the question "What's next?" but as usual, I can't find an answer to this question. People talk about traveling here and there but I really don't know how would they think about such a thing under the current crazy situation worldwide. One might say "just travel to near by countries to change scenery"; Easy said than done. This region is just out of question (and order) and I really would need a place to escape my reality, for a bit.

On the other hand, I'm still thinking as well about my next move with the camera and what ideas I might try work with. There are many old stuff crossing my mind at the moment (like finding a way to capture a 3D anaglyph video using DSLRs or phone cameras) but I do feel some kind of pressure for doing something concerning photography in the first place. So far, I've been out strolling and trying to capture images from the neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods twice, and I might make it for a third and fourth time as well, but all I can do is to hope. In addition to that, I still have the issue of my Arabic blog which I didn't post anything in for months (already breaking my resolution so hard).

As for now, I think I'll just waste some of my days listening to some memories-sparking music from 1990s…

Linearity…

Well, I'm typing this a little bit late so I hope I can finish this post in time to be posted. Thus, I think I will keep it short.
Been some busy week(s) lately. Last week I was busy preparing an Arabic blog post explaining a technique that I've been using lately to make some linear art out of some of my images, and I think I'll talk about it here. On the other hand, my mood swings been severe lately as well as periods of fatigue. And, of course, work is there which occupied my time for nothing else but frustration as well as exhaustion from driving to and from the workplace.
All that made me postpone creating this post and I was almost going to skip the post for this week actually but I changed my mind then and thought: Well, maybe I can make it short with few samples of what images I've been editing lately.

Editing

I'm still not active much with my camera (ahem, planning to), but on the other side, as usual, I've been editing old photos. Recently, also, I've been using a technique that I've developed myself and I've used it in one of the images uploaded to Mostphotos, but I didn't do much about it back then. Now, though, I'm exploring more about it. This is exactly the same technique which my Arabic post for the last week was about. Anyway, since my Arabic blog is dedicated to beginners, I had to do it in details (with illustrations) there. Here, I guess, it would be enough just to say that the whole technique involves stacking images and changing their blends to Difference and then nudging each layer few pixels in a specific direction. This would create some sort of a colorful line-art. Of course, more editing is required to enhance the image.

The Shining Kisser

The Shining Kisser (Line art)

I'm still experimenting with this technique actually, and apparently not any image can produce such a neat result; So, one has to be picky about what to convert into linear art like this. Along the way, I'm already planning to do a collection of such images and upload it to the stocks and see if they attract something. Apparently my bubbles series which I've uploaded months ago is not doing much lying there *pout*.

One of the images that didn't work out well I guess with this technique

Anyway, beside all this editing, I'm trying to use my phone from time to time though it is limited in choices and techniques but it has some cool features that I would struggle to achieve with a DSLR camera (e.g. long exposures with trails); Thanks to the AI in these phones (and my phone is considered old by now: Huawei Mate 9). Despite that, though, when it comes to shooting RAW images, things can be a bit awkward. 

Birds and Bird
Processed from phone RAW

Shooting RAW on Huawei Mate 9 disables the capability of zooming. I think that proves that in other modes in the camera where zooming is allowed, it is all done digitally. There are apps to edit RAW on phone of course but, as always, I usually prefer editing those on my PC with ACR and then Photoshop. The lens being about 4mm or so in focal length and not changeable of course would require me to crop a lot sometimes. Of course there are accessories for such phones to change the focal length but they are not in my mind right now. I'm still not giving up on my DSLR! Besides, it is better to be creative as much as possible with whatever is available at hand.
Aside from these difficulties, it seems also that the dynamic range for such sensors is still quite low; At least in my case as I worked with Birds and Bird (and few images in the past). When working with the phone's RAW files on ACR, the choice of colors seem to be limited somehow and not vivid enough despite working, as usual, in ProPhoto color space. Anyway, away with the RAW capabilities of the phone, it is a good catch for some crazy ideas to be done in a whim, like the other day when I thought of doing a selfie at work while rotating the phone, and picked the long exposure/water trail option for that task. All editing was done in-camera.

 

Finale

I'm typing this blog post mostly at work. Despite the "vacuum" in this place, yet it stresses me out. I'm waiting for some official documents to be issued from the Agency of Special Needs here to specify, officially, what is the level of my handicap (i.e. Retinitis Pigmentosa and sight level). It's been 2 weeks already now and no news is coming over. Which means I must be going to check with them again. I need this paper so bad right now to get started with my retirement process. Every second I spend in this place is like a ticking bomb. With my more-experienced colleague out of the place, the load now is pretty heavy on my shoulders and I can't bear with it further. Needless to say, moving to the new campus which is further away from home and in an area which I've never been to before at all (with bad planned roads as I heard) makes my feelings about it even worse. I lay it all in God's hands.

With that, I'm already racing my mind through and thinking about the future and what I could be doing after I get my "rest" from all of this. I think I would have no excuses to work further with my camera! I must! That brings also some thoughts for conlangs that I've forgotten about already. On a side note, I'm getting some reasonable positive feedback from some readers about my own writings and poems on Writing.com, which kind of sparkles some ideas; Some of which have been delayed since 2020 actually. 

It all sounds but like pink-tinted dreams and views of life for the time being, but surely I'll be able to breathe once I'm over with that place. Or so I hope, and pray…

Retinol…

Busy busy busy! Been a while since I've posted here, and (hopefully) for a good reason. After putting on my last post some 2 or 3 weeks ago, which was a little advertising to my own work on Mostphotos, I've decided to go on and also do an Arabic post in my Arabic blog for the same purpose, and I've spent the past few weeks sharing and spreading the word. Fingers crossed!

That, however, is not all the matter. It is February already, and I guess I've mentioned already in some of my previous posts that I'll be getting ready to prepare some shots related to Retinitis Pigmentosa in this month, since it is the awareness month for this disease and I got into the habit of making related photos since 2016. What happened, though, is that I got into another weekly activity which somewhat ignited my imagination a bit and I really loved to participate, and that is #Kikasphotochallenge.

The #Kikasphotochallenge is a weekly photo challenge (to span over 12 weeks), with a theme proposed for every week. The theme is announced every Thursday on Kotuvakika's YouTube's channel. At the moment of typing these words, it is already week #3. At the time of posting it (Thursday), then we will be already into week #4, supposedly.

I've been trying on both ends, shooting for Retinitis Pigmentosa, and for #Kikasphotochallenge, and for that matter I've already participated in all 3 weeks with images (posted on Instagram of course). However, to keep things short and not to put all my eggs in one basket, I'll go slow and gradual by posting and talking about one image from each side of the stick; The RP project, and Kika's challenge!

Retina I

So, for starters, I'll talk first about the first image I've created for or about Retinitis Pigmentosa. First of all, I actually had to sit and pin down some ideas and also roam Pinterest a bit to gain some insights. One particular thing I've noticed about myself in this process is that I tend to gain more insight from quotes and text rather than from images.
I've pinned some ideas in my note and as I'm typing this right now, I have to say that I did filter some; I've canceled some or reformed some and changed the idea of some. Anyway, that's another story for another day. One of the posts that grabbed my attention on Pinterest is stating some facts about the glasses that we, people with Retinitis Pigmentosa wear and how or what they do (the fact is: Nothing. Glasses don't fix RP). And that was the topic of my first shot.

Visual Un-Aid

I have a confession to make here though. I was/am lazy to get my speedlite gear our (and still). Thus, I had to twist my brain around and try to find some interesting light to shoot in (and that mostly means that I would be shooting during daytime). So, my first shot here (or two shots as I'll explain) was done in, ahem, the bathroom. My bathroom's window casts interesting light in the morning and I admit, sometimes I just go there and switch of the lights just to gaze into that light (without taking any photos though). 

Anyway, as I've stated above, Visual Un-Aid is actually a composition of two shots (apparently). Using 50mm, I've tried my best not to move and to focus properly (using a cable remote of course) and shooting 2 frames, one with glasses and one without. There was a little shake between the two frames of course (tyyyypical) but Photoshop did some good job in aligning them. The rest is, of course, some game of masking to merge two and show the glasses on one side of the face. I won't go into the details of RAW editing; I really don't find any use in that. The trick, though, was to keep the shadows down but not without details still. The moral of the shot is that: With or without glasses, It's almost the same; It's dark. 

Kika I

Well, I've mentioned Kika and her challenges up above so I guess no need to list the whole thing all over again, but let's delve into the first challenge that Kika proposed for the first week: Childhood.
Again, my laziness here really got the best of me (concerning working with my speedlites), but also I really was not quite sure how to represent my childhood. Honestly, I was not that social and at this age I wouldn't be able to mimic the things I used to do with my siblings (like jumping off a cabinet and hitting my head against the chandelier, for example). Thus, I consider my trial quite mediocre, to say the least. 

Childhood Memories

Quercetti's Pallino
My most precious pastime
game during my childhood.

I looked and dug into my memorabilia (which other people in this house consider just pieces of junk) and I really wanted to use one specific toy for the shoot but I didn't find it (apparently lost to time), but I've found my Kinder Surprise toys box. Collected those around the ages of 9 to 10 (just a while before the invasion in 1990). I picked random toys here and I have to say, nothing was quite to my liking in terms of the composition.
For shooting, I've decided (naturally) to choose the sunlight for the task. I've shot bracketed and I did make a comparison between processing HDR and editing a single RAW file. Eventually, I've picked the HDR version but the two images were quite similar. However, HDR has more luster in the eyes and on the hair even though I almost wanted to discard it because of the luster on the skin which I didn't quite like. The perspective is weird a bit, I know. This is because I was actually lying on the ground in quite uncomfortable pose. Adding to my hurdles, the changing angle of the sun as it was rising made the sun beams change direction and strength as they were seeping through the balcony door. I had to work as fast as possible before it would have been blocked by the houses. Converting that image to B&W, though, did produce a remarkable "horrifying" image… which I liked.

Childhood Memories (B&W)

The B&W version though was not posted on Instagram; Only the colored version. Converting to B&W was also somewhat a lengthy process of blending and controlling highlights and shadows as much as possible and in various ways.
At this level I really wanted to stop and not think about doing any further work with this theme, as I was also working with my Retinitis Pigmentosa project. Other themes, though, were somewhat flexible with my creative juices, but that I will keep for other posts in the future.

Finale

In a time when I really thought I should just leave the thing called "Instagram" for a 3^rd time, suddenly things changed with Kika's challenge. Now, I don't know what will be happening after these 12-week challenge are over, but I kind of got into a small community within Instagram, away from the general… stupidity (sorry, couldn't find a better word) of Instagram; With all these posts that show on the exploring page having 1k+ likes and comments, I find myself digging into the lives of people that are closer to me in some way. They watch on YouTube what I watch, interested in what I think is interesting, and on the other hand we have people who suffer like I suffer with Retinitis Pigmentosa and share their exprience. My posts also, specially those about Retinitis Pigmentosa, do attract people and make them interact. To be honest, all I wanted is some Like after all. That was enough to show appreciation. This said, I don't know what or how would I be standing in relation to this platform (which I already despise greatly if not for few users). So it feels like a small bubble floating on the surface of a rampant sea, or rather a murky swamp.

I know what you might think at this point if you are reading this already. "this man is just a snob", but I'm really not. Instagram stopped me from giving Likes twice or thrice some years back because of all the Likes I used to give (thinking I'm just a bot), but honestly, I didn't find anything in return (specially from "friends" in real life that I worked on supporting them) and eventually that lead me to believe that it is just a waste of time. Compared to YouPic's community, Instagram is next to nothing. Saying this while I'm still using my free account there and not being a paying member (which limits me to post every 12 hours).
Another venue to rant about is the fact that hashtags on Instagram are literally useless except for searching for a specific tag; They have no role in spreading your post over the platform or getting it into the Explore page or even to give it a specific order on anyone's feed (if they are followers). This I've found out by experimenting. Unlike YouPic, Instagram does not have a regular or a systematic way of archiving or display new posts that one can explore, regardless of the number of followers the user has or anything else. For this reason, on YouPic, any user has a potential to attract new followers and viewers with every new post regardless of their content/feed and regardless of the (useless) hashtags within the post, and regardless of them being new comers or not. All are equal. This leaves Instagram being just a platform dedicated to businesses of all sorts (and often times users rank up via other methods outside of Instagram itself), and don't get me started with all the Story, IGTV (and the square format). Meanwhile, YouPic is indeed dedicated to photography and photographers WITH the capability of turning it into a business.

Note: I'm not advertising for YouPic nor was paid to do any review. This is purely my own sincere and honest point of view and comparison between the two platforms.

I do have some issues with YouPic myself, like the thing with the nudity content and the blocking mechanism, but nonetheless, the community (generally speaking) is more lenient and into the art of photography. So, if you are reading this and into photography and still roaming Instagram, try finding a place on YouPic and see.

I've talked before in my previous posts about preparing another batch of images to upload to the stocks as well as new panoramas to be offered exclusively on MostPhotos. The work is still ongoing with that but I'm lagging a bit because of all the projects (RP and Kika's) and the challenges that I'm taking the opportunity of to squeeze more juice out of my head. This is beside, ahem, playing some games. I've made a list already of all the files that I will try to upload to the stocks and I will do this on batches (probably 10 images each) and hopefully I will post about them here once they are up.

On the other hand, I've received an email from Trierenberg Circuit (or as we typically call it here: Austria's International Photocontest) inviting me to participate. I didn't participate in 2019 and seems that year the contest was canceled because of COVID (every year the contest start on September and ends on March the next year). Anyway, been thinking about it and I think I will be uploading some of my selfies done with the stroboscopic flash and some of these new panoramas that I've uploaded into MostPhotos already (well, they are not new but processed in a new method so to say). 

Despite not being on the go with my work but things seems to add up and I find myself forced to face the monitor for long hours indeed. Not complaining though. Things are busy this month and I'm hoping that would be a comforting agent to my ever-lasting mood swings…

Swinging

Yet another idle week here. I don't have much to add in this blog for this week. My photography projects and linguistic endeavors are all on stand-by. This week I've been doing some eyes check-up examinations and consequently, I didn't have much time to work with my camera or think of something to do with my camera (just a little). After applying the eye-drops before the examination, it hinders my vision. Thus, most of the day for me would be to relax, and sleep.
Initially, the primary check-up doesn't give a good indication of a good health. There is a chance for Retinitis Pigmentosa, which is a hereditary condition that runs in the family. My eldest brother, and one of my older sisters are already suffering from this condition, and it leaves them helpless, specially with no ability to drive the car. With the responsibilities on my shoulders in this house and taking care of Mom, such news leaves me hanging in the mid-air in between moods fluctuations, in a time that I'm already suffering from those swings (and that's why I didn't post last week).
All what I want to do for the time being is play games, games and more games, trying to vent the bad thoughts out as much as possible...