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…
 

Stroll IX…

Well, I think I can say it is officially summer here already, and I have to say goodbye to my plans for strolls in the morning. Fatigue and occupation with other issues at home are keeping me further away from the camera (and I was trying to get closer to it). Actually, I was going to cancel the post for this week but I'm going to try and finish it in time.
Meanwhile, I was busy typing a post for my Arabic blog about pinhole photography; Something I really need to do more (in some creative manner as much as possible).
Anyway, for this post, I'm going to talk about my stroll on April 26ᵗʰ, with my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens and Kodak's infrared filter (87B), which is somewhat like the second part of my previous stroll (Stroll VIII), where the previous one was to the Eastern side of the neighborhood (into another block) while this one was Westward around my neighborhood and in the same block where I live.

Stroll IX

Probably one of the easy aspects of using wide angle lenses is the capability of achieving hyperfocal distance, to have a reasonable depth of field in the image, without even needing to have some form of autofocus (on most occasions). So, for the most part of this stroll, I've fixed the lens on f/8. The hard part though, is to have the proper frame to shoot, but of course we have the crop option in Photoshop later on so it might not be a big deal, unless one is mindful for making use of every pixel in the frame! Anyway, I'm not such a person.

حَيْ
(alive)

As the routine goes by now, I've made some shots just outside my house to test the exposure range and see the quality of the images on LCD. Alive was actually composed of 2 shots and I was lucky to have the light on the pole on in one shot (while off in the other). It was strange also to see such amount of change in shadows between the 2 shots even though they were successive with few seconds separating them. This called for merging the two shots to see what kind of shadows pattern that Photoshop would produce (and also to merge the different perspectives of the 2 images somewhat). 

ساطِع
(bright)

While my destination was westward from home, but at some point I would need to go southward, and that's where I shot Bright facing eastward. Actually this shot was processed at a later time after a number of images in this series. As i worked on it, I started to unravel some details like those lines around the flare. My guess is that such lines are actually caused by the scratches on the gel filter at the back of the lens. One thing I'm surprised to find at the time of typing this blog is the fact that I've shot 2 shots for this scene; one is dark and the other is light and I've processed only the light one. Probably I should try later merging these 2 to have somewhat an average lighting, somewhat like HDR or fake-HDR image. I've spent considerable time as well to lessen the fisheye or barrel distortion for this image, but it wasn't as successful as it would have been done with DxO. Maybe I should work more on such a skill.

The House

Again, I had to visit the infamous (haunted-like) house, well, if it wasn't haunted indeed, but this time with the bucket in front of it being moved from the last time I shot it (with B+W 092 infrared filter!). I wouldn't say there is anything special about this shot except that it looks more haunted in a monochromatic infrared image. Yet, it was a good target to practice rectifying a fisheye image. The curvatures around the center were reduced a bit but I had to crop the image into a square. If this was to be rectified in DxO, the image would be stretched, somewhat with proportions similar to 16:9 or about that. I'm not sure if Photoshop can do something about that, but some tools in Photoshop needs the image to be in 8-bit format instead of 16-bit (where I do most of the work) and hence my only option in the first phase of editing is using Lens Correction option. Maybe newer versions of PS upgraded such option, but I'm not sure.

ظُلْمَةٌ وَنورْ
(darkness and lightness)

Just next to the "haunted house" there was another "haunted" place (pardon me for using the word "haunted" here but this is just my impression). The thing is that such house was like "absent" for me despite the many times I've passed through that path trying to hunt for photos. I'm not sure how come I didn't notice such a house. Anyway, I've taken several shots and combine them in a single one, and probably because of the infrared effect here, the house appeared to be half lit and half dark! I didn't try out my luck with rectifying the distortion here (I got tired I guess), so anyway, I've decided to just crop the image into a square to remove some excess of "data" or unneeded info in the image, while keeping the door centered.

بَـصـيـصْ
(glimmer)

Had a turn then to that "mystic" tree which I've shot before with B+W 092 filter to see how it would show up with such a wide angle lens and such high-threshold infrared filter. Honestly, Glimmer didn't amuse me much like Rubble before, but the walls I guess add some depth to it which was somewhat lacking in Rubble (which was shot with 50mm lens then). Maybe I've made a mistake here for swapping the channels and turning the image into yellowish tint; Probably blue adds more to the mystery. I think that old palm leaf is adding somewhat of a leading or guiding line, though faint. The irony is that it was there when I shot the same scene weeks before that time with B+W 092 filter, but it just didn't show because the lens was 50mm.
Around the end of this little corridor there is a discarded old tire and I did take some shots of that one too but turned out they were shaken. Even though I've made a 3D anaglyph image out of some of them but probably it's not worth posting about here.

جَنوبْ
(south)

The last shot(s) in this series was taken on my way home after wandering about trying to find something interesting (it was still morning time during Ramadhan and so quiet). I didn't find anything interesting so I started to shoot randomly at some light pole with a sign. I can't remember what I was thinking but when I got back home I've realized that these shots can be tried for stitching; and so it was!
Now, because of the extreme distortion on the edges and non-coherent shooting (they were taken at random, and handheld) there was some stitching errors that I've tried to fix. However, the real hurdle was trying to adjust some of the perspective here (specially the tilt in the light poles) for which I used the wrap tool as well as the puppet wrap tool, and the image had to be cropped several times for various reasons (but mainly to remove the flaring sun). I have to thank the flares here that made me interested in creating this shot after all because I was really going to just forget about them. 

Technically, this was the last shot in this stroll. There were few others but I was "playing" and fooling around with my camera, but unlike South, I don't think they were quite interesting to process and post here. I'll check them out later maybe!

Finale

So, this seems to be the last stroll in the list and I'm not sure what to post about next. I do have plenty of images here and there, scattered around and don't belong to a specific series or project (which I should think of doing any time now). For this, I might be absent for more than a week; who knows.
I've merely made it in time for my Arabic blog and posted an article about pinhole photography before the end of May. Now I'm not sure if I can do something for the month of June! I need to scan for interesting topics (at least for beginners) to post about. Otherwise, I will (again) break my resolution of posting at least one post per month in that blog.

Last week I've ran into a serious problem with my modified Canon 7D when I tried to clean the sensor (after spotting many spots in the images). One particular particle didn't move with the usual brushes that I use to clean the sensor. I thought then maybe I should use the swab cleaning kit (which I didn't use in ages) and that's when the disaster occurred, as the swab was apparently expired and should not have been used, and the whole thing deteriorated over the sensor. My trials to clean the sensor further created even worse smudges. Fast forward: All is OK, and the sensor has been cleaned and the camera is working fine.
This issue though made me under somewhat a mental pressure till the moment of typing these words. After the incidence, I've called a camera shot to see if they offer cleaning services, which they do. The center is nearby but the place is quite miserable. Seeing that no one is there to pick me up and I was in a hurry, so I had to drive to there myself. It's a long adventure for me with such eyes but I have to say it delivered such a mental shock and quite lowered my self-esteem with all the fuss that I had to endure. My family "begged" me not to try this again. The next day, my brother picked me to the shop to pick the camera up. My driving limits for the time being is barely to the nearby supermarket to get supplies for the house, and driving to such a busy and narrow place and struggling to find a parking place in that ant-colony was quite a mind straining experience. Now, I can't imagine myself even driving after midnight to do some night photography, which I ever loved to do but didn't do for quite long time by now. 

It all seems like one long nightmare, and I just wish I can wake up at any minute now. My life choices seems to decrease rather drastically on many fronts right now. Recently, all I could think of is to sleep non-stop if I can, whenever I can. I'm losing the taste for it all…

Stroll VII, VIII…

Well, back again with my struggles with the fatigue and guess what? I think my strolling days are over already. Since the last time I've posted here where I thought I would be doing more strolls, the weather here continued to be nothing but miserable. From dust storms and waves and increasing heat (and turbulent sleep); all that just left me no choice at the moment. It seems to be a time for my usual roll back to the oldies and re-editing some photos. And as it seems it's not only the strolls that I'm breaking off with, but with my promises to myself to post at least one Arabic post in my other blog!

You might be wondering about the title and why I'm merging 2 strolls into a single post here. The reason is that the 7ᵗʰ stroll was quite a short one and quite not interesting that I thought it wouldn't fit for a single post on its own. It was a stroll done using my pinhole lens and actually the images taken are not that interesting that I didn't process any of them till weeks have passed already! So, just to keep the track, I thought maybe I should include the few shots in the blog here.

Stroll VII

So, as I said, this stroll was done using my regular Canon 7D camera and the pinhole cap which I didn't use in such a long time on April 8ᵗʰ. Using calculations, I've discovered that there are many problems with this pinhole since a long time ago, and in fact I've considered getting one of these new Thingify pinhole lenses which have some flexibility but I've neglected the idea. Nonetheless, shooting with such a weird apparatus or tool (and an ancient one) is somewhat fun at times. However, my stroll here was a quick one for some factors, and of course done without a tripod and hence I had to use a high ISO to shoot handheld. The images in general are not impressive and I had to end the stroll quickly because of the flies!

Hills and Dunes of Decemania

It is a general belief from my side that pinhole images do look better in B&W. It is not the first time I do shoot with this pinhole lens but it is the first time I do it handheld. Thus, I was expecting much here. Remarkably though, the images might look better when seen from a distance (or at a smaller size) and some details start to appear better to the naked eye rather than at close up where everything is blurry (unless of course the blur is a motion blur, which I prefer in such images).
Still though the story is not ended here and the rest is left to the post-processing to "enhance" the image a bit and extract some textures and details out of it despite the fuzzy view. The issue was somewhat even more sensitive in Hills and Dunes of Decemania because there is a large area of black (originally black even in the colored version) with all these heaps of sand and tar or asphalt. 

Дом и Дверь
(a house and a door)

As I said already, I didn't quite take interesting images in this short stroll and in fact I still check the images now and then in hope that I get inspired by something. One of the ideas I have already (but didn't work on yet) is combining several pinhole images or maybe a pinhole image and a regular one in some way. Anyway, A House and A Door is a later comer to the collection here and I remember that I liked this house and its green door (ironically, forgot where it was located exactly) and I kind of shot it at hip level at this point. Anyway, as with all pinhole images that I take, I had to convert the image into B&W and discard the green (which I like). 

There are few images (maybe 2 more) that I've processed already from this stroll but I don't think they are worth posting still. Composition and contrast are probably the two most important factors (if not the only) when it comes to pinhole photography; This is my own opinion though and I'm not stating this as a fact. But this is how it feels to me. I'm thinking even further of enhancing this pinhole lens in some way, after doing some calculations and realizing that the "stated" pinhole diameter is quite small. So, maybe if I just make it bigger a tiny bit, I would be able to enhance the sharpness in some way. I'm thinking of passing a needle into the aperture to see if I can enlarge it a bit as I think, but let's hope it doesn't get ruined!

Stroll VIII

Days passed since that pinhole stroll on April 8th, and I was literally out of ideas, up until I remember the old trick that I was fascinated by in early 2010s when I worked largely with my then-new lens, Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens. Since the lens is completely manual, I was mainly fascinated with the idea to let it work with various filters, firstly ND filters, then at a later time, infrared gel filter. Thus, I've decided to revive this old fascination and go out in a stroll (two in fact) and fix an infrared gel filter at the back of the lens, on April 23ʳᵈ.

Turmoil

This stroll, with Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens and a Kodak gel filter (of threshold of about 820nm) was dedicated to the Eastern zone from home (and honestly, I see more chances of me taking shots there rather than in the Western side). Anyway, a western stroll was done later. As a starter, and as usual (in some way of a ritual form by now) I took test shots just outside home pointing to the sky. Such test shots are somewhat important to get my camera into the initial settings (which I try hard not to change them as I go on). For my surprise, the test shot was also a "nice" shot where the clouds in infrared showed up (but not to the naked eyes).

Белый
(white)

From the point of leaving the house and up to the neighborhoods of the Eastern zone (the next block to me), I've been taking some shots here and there and some of them are not processed yet at the time of typing this. However, I'm not going to post them all but I'm going to jump right to the ones that I think are "keys", like White.
I did like the original scene because of some details in the sky and the branches but I've found myself drawn more to crop it anyway to add focus at some point in the image (which I didn't plan really, it was a shot in the dark!). This won't be the only one to be cropped. Anyway, even though it might be such a waste of pixels to take such an extremely wide angle shot and then crop it, but the main target here is the field curvature that such lenses provide and the distortion in the perspective as well; So, it's not all to waste!
I've spent quite some time with White trying to darken the image to a reasonable amount to hide unwanted details (specially in the wall at the background) and focusing more on the flower (and in fact it was just a bunch of leaves and not a flower!). In a nutshell, I was trying to create something out of nothing, sort of. Worth noting here that I've shot many images for this scene at slightly different angles and at some angle there showed some nice flare but unfortunately none of the pots did show as well so I had to neglect this shot (but I still keep it just in case!).

Рост
(growth)

Not far from White I've then encountered a lonely growing plant against the wall of some house. Knowing that in infrared such green leaves would turn white, I thought that this is a good contrast to be documented! So, I've approached the plant and shot it as various distances and even almost got myself lying on the ground. Still though, in the final image, I had to crop a big portion of the image to remove the edges of the house and the sky; Actually, I wouldn't mind the sky if not for the edges of the wall which disturbed the harmony. I think I wished that I would shoot this at 50mm at that moment, but oh well, it's like an adventure after all and one has to manage and "improvise".
Composition-wise, I was trying to fit the plant on the left side of the image but because of the structure of the wall I was forced to let it be on the right side. It's probably not much of a critical factor but probably for people who are used to read from left to right, the position might look a bit "awkward" but for people (like me) who read from right to left, the image might look going well to the eye direction. Anyway, in the process and after converting to B&W, some strange white spots or "zones" in the image appeared and I can't quite tell what are those. Maybe some marks on the wall that appear on infrared only? Because I'm positive that there was nothing on the wall when I was there. There is a faint plant on the left of the main subject but I'm talking here about the general halo-like look, and that I don't understand yet!

تَـنْـويـرْ
(enlightenment)

Circling around and in between the houses after shooting Growth, I've came about to the main space or "square" where one can go to various directions at this point (and where I shot some images months ago, like The Army using H-alpha filter). Actually, the image Enlightenment is a late comer and it wasn't processed till a day or two before typing this blog post and not right after it was shot. I shot several images at this location and I was wondering if I can make anything interesting out of them. The most interesting thing here was the flare in some images (I think 2 of them), so decided to merge them and had some crop to remove the bright spot of the sun. It seems fares are just pretty fun and easy to create with this lens! The subject of Enlightenment though is not quite popping I guess, and the main body of the image seems to be the flare itself and in some way the flare do act as a guiding line here leading to the mosque. I have to add here that that mosque is also a favorite destination right now!

Down Under

Now, the bougainvillea branch dangling out of the fence of that mosque has been an attraction to me and I've shot many images here (that I'm still visiting till now and still processing some of them). I've also created some 3D anaglyphs but anyway I guess I will keep it short and post only those important or impressive shots (to me at least). 

Tilt

However, one of the fun images I've worked with lately with this series of shots from the fence, is Tilt (which is saved as a PNG to keep the transparency of the background). As can be seen, the image was indeed tilted to straighten the column, and instead of cropping the image here as I would usually do under normal conditions, I've just tilted the image and kept the transparent background.
There was actually a time when I was interested in creating such images with unconventional dimensions to break down the monotony of the rectangular limitation, and typically such images have to be saved as PNGs to keep the transparent background. However, not many websites would welcome such transparency and would fill the space with black or white upon upload.

Playing With Shadows

Leaving the vicinity of the mosque, after loads of images taken there at various angles, I've started to gaze around as I walked back home, trying to find something worthwhile for shooting. I didn't find much though (or I think I did but didn't like the idea of taking pictures of private premises). So as a result, I've found myself playing with my shadow as can be seen in Playing With Shadows. It would have been better though if someone else did take the picture so that I can pose as I want to but anyway it's nothing serious after all. A little bit of fun wouldn't harm I guess!

بَـقـايـا
(remains)

And not far off from that shadow shot, I've reached a pass between two houses made by bushes from both gardens (sometimes one just wishes to live in such homes but alas). Worth noting, again, that the sky here was completely plain to the naked eyes, and all the clouds details in it appeared only when shooting in infrared. I shot this image in portrait and landscape but seeing that the nature of the elements kind of point upward (and using a fisheye lens which would include unneeded objects from the sides), I went on to process the portrait version. It wasn't until the processing phase when I noticed the remains of leaves or branches on the asphalt (I didn't see them when I shot this). I've literally placed the camera on the ground (padded with my hand) and I just didn't see these in front of the camera! However, it was a pleasant addition and surprise; Not complaining here! One thing in Remains that I'm still struggling with somehow is the tilt. I'm sure that I've straightened the image but yet it looks somewhat tilted. Anyway, I don't think I will be focusing more on this image after all. Unless for some heavenly reason it has to be displayed maybe!

يَـقْـدُمْ
(it comes)

The last shot in the series (not really the last but I consider it so) was shot in a narrow corridor (probably less than 2 meters wide, and 2 meters long). At the end of the corridor, there was a car parked there, and gracefully since it was Ramadhan and it's just after 7 in the morning, it was quiet and I thought not many would notice what I'm doing. The car here was blocking the corridor a bit and I had to squeeze myself to get past and return to my block; Not a pleasant feeling!
Anyway, thanks to the fisheye lens, the shot looks spacious and wide. One thing though I don't like is the nonparallel wall lines which broke the symmetry in some unpleasant way really. In processing this shot, I've used tone-splitting techniques which I seldom use with infrared images. But I thought, since infrared filters with such high threshold do yield essentially a monochromatic image after all, maybe I should consider using tone-splitting to add some life to the image. I guess this is a decision that I did NOT regret at all! Many people liked it actually. My typical tones to be used by now are yellow and blue (with mostly emphasized blue). I surely look forward to use tone-splitting with such infrared images in the future (and I did already with few images by now at the time of typing this).

ِAt this point, the stroll was over and I reached home. I did take some shots inside the house just for fun but I don't think they are interesting much. I have to say that the images taken in this stroll are still being scrutinized to get the most of them, specially to see for possibilities to make 3D anaglyph images.

Finale

At this point, and under such weather, it seems that strolling days are behind me now. This post is the first part of using the fisheye lens with Kodak's infrared filter. There is another one, hopefully coming in 2 weeks time from now, where I picked the same combination of lens and filter and strolled westward from home. Probably not much of a scenery as these I've shot in the eastern side.
At the time of typing this, we've been already under dust for 3 days (or even 4). I was thinking of picking one of my lenses and my ND1000 filter (10 stops) to do some long exposures somewhere, but the conditions are changing quite fast and I didn't and couldn't come up with any new ideas to use such a combination (in addition, I would definitely need a tripod and a shutter remote). Looking back, I think I've used this filter only once, back in 2015 in Malta! I need to experiment more with it.
Meanwhile, I will be trying to prepare an article (post) for my Arabic blog, talking about pinhole photography. I do have a bit a problem there with the lack of material but anyway I'll try to circumvent that in some way. I just hope it will be ready for next week though. I'm having a new keyboard here and I think I'm still having issues typing with it and it gives me a considerable headache sometime!

On the other hand, I think things calmed down a bit with my mood swings lately. I just need to figure out a way to overcome the almost continuous fatigue which renders me "almost" useless. I have a plan to try out a number of herbs if possible and see if they are better than coffee in giving me the "zing". Lately, I've been feeling quite sleepy after having a mug of coffee. My daily dose of coffee had been 2 mugs a day, on average, with having one extra sometimes on occasions. Herbs on my list include cinnamon (which I do drink occasionally), lemon balm, and few others with some weird names which I need to re-check and try to find! I just hope one or some of these would help out with my fatigue problem. 

Άγνωστος
(unknown)

Rolled…

I was really reluctant to type this blog post and I was going to let it be an off-week again, but then I thought maybe I should talk a bit about some of the old images made anew with new processing techniques. But then, I've realized that there is just a tiny pocket of new images that had been taken in the past 2 or 3 months that I've never posted anything about.
I have to admit that I've been lazy with my camera; No motivation whatsoever to even touch it. Anyway, from time to time I would just pick the camera and take a "snap" shot here and there, just because. So, some of the images that will be posted in here don't have any big story behind them, mostly, but merely snap shots and a story of processing…

Roll

So, in case you read my previous post, you did probably see the "king series". During the make of this series which took a span of several days of course (depending on the influx of ideas into my head), there had been some snap shots here and there as I was trying to grease my mood and appetite for photography, again and again.

سُجودْ
(prostration)

Not surprisingly, many of such ideas occur at or after midnight when everything goes quiet in this house. My sleeping pattern during the COVID-19 crisis had been up and down; Once regular, and many times out of sync. Because of coffee abuse I literally drink one mug and just fall asleep right away. Anyway, in one of those nights, I thought of shooting سَجودْ, Arabic for prostration. This kind of shots is not new really, but I'll talk about the story behind this in a bit. It was shot with my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens, and as you might have guessed already, there was a lot of crop that had been done beside "coloring" or burning parts in the background to hide them. The reason for picking this lens and not any other wide angle lens (e.g. Voigtländer 20mm f/3.5) is the type of distortion that I wanted to apply here, and also the size of the lens so I can place the camera between my legs as I prostrate (my Sigma DG 12-24mm is bulky for such a job!). Despite being somewhat stable, I was actually planning for some tiny movements and that's why I did lengthen the exposure a bit (by adding +2EV) but anyway, with a fisheye lens, movements can be barely visible and this is natural with most wide angle lenses (talking about small movements or shakes here). The rest of the job is, of course, just a story of processing and converting to B&W, and rotating the image upside down. Controlling the light and dark areas was a delicate matter here.

تَسْبيحْ
(glorification)

The shot above, سُجودْ, is in fact a result of pondering at an older shot, تِسْبيحْ (glorification), which was shot with my Huawei Mate 9 phone. It was a long exposure shot, and in my Huawei there are a number of options that would stylize such a long exposure, besides it's light to use and quick (just needed my mini-tripod to put it in front of me). The resolution of the shot, of course, is not comparable to that of a DSLR, specially that the image is done in JPEG and not RAW. Anyway, some user on YouPic noted that "he" can take that photo with DSLR and started to list his gear and whatever that is. Tried to make him understand that I do indeed have the gear required, but it's something done in a whim; Not everything should be professional and done with hi-tech gear. Well, seems he didn't get the idea anyway. But that actually sparked in me the idea of shooting another shot of a similar type. Still, though, I didn't use ND filters with سُجودْ (as he suggested).

Perspective

Then, there was this shot which was done… in the sink of my bathroom. The situation was shaky, I admit; I feared any water drops from the faucet onto the lens, but miraculously, it didn't. Again, Rokinon 8mm fisheye came to the rescue, and again, of course, the final image needed some crop to remove the unneeded edges here. I've placed the camera on a towel at the base of the sink and I've used that to pull it left and right and shoot. It was hard to put that one image that covers my face perfectly, so I kept on shooting and pulls the towel to one direction just a bit and shoot again, and so on. All shots were bracketed for HDR merging later on, so the one you see here, Perspective, is tone-mapped from a HDR slide in fact. In tone-mapping I tried to be moderate as much as possible and still give that grungy (dramatic) look to the image without going crazy with the sliders! I thought also that the blue tint would give it that "medical" or hospital-atmosphere that I usually see in horror movies (I don't watch movies anyway so I might be wrong here). Anyway, the blue tint serves the mood better here more than a warm tone would. Later on, I've even created some anaglyphs out of the shots.

The fun continued (in some other day) and AGAIN, with my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens. I guess you can tell already how much I love this lens despite my fail in adapting it to some of my landscape shots when I used to travel! Nevertheless, the distortion it provides, does add such a dramatic tension to the image (well, if used correctly and thoughtfully).
So, I picked this lens again and went on trying to find some interesting venture to shoot, and i decided to do some camera motion (again).

So, nothing really special about these shots except for the abstract and I'm actually thinking now to upload them to some stocks. All what was needed here is to fix the exposure time to 1 or 2 seconds, just enough to rotate the camera in my hand for a full circle. As for the colors here (despite shooting the same subject under the same lighting conditions), this is just a change of the white balance (probably when processing the RAW files). More work was done to fix the exposure actually as the images were originally brighter than this (and softer).

Infrared Craze

Been months now with the lock-down (it's easing now but my schedule didn't really change much here) and I got into the habit of going out in the yard to read a book under the sun in the early morning before it gets scorching hot. I also water the plants and all of that; A daily routine (almost). Anyway, there was a time when I wanted to write a post for my Arabic blog about infrared (part 2) and just needed some infrared shots to explain some aspects about this art. So, after doing the "innocent" stuff for that blog post, I've found myself roaming and playing around with these infrared selfies, and I kind of created a path or a style for me here that I might try on other images (portraits and other).

The general aspects of this style are:

• Raise the brightness (by exposure or brightness sliders or even Fill) but without going off the histogram.
• Raise the blacks just to show outlines (or until it kisses the left side of the histogram).
• Maybe just lower the saturation to near B&W. 
• Outside the RAW editing window, the pupils are kept as black as possible with selective (layer masks) editing techniques.

The rest, then, is just a work of contrast (which I would probably set before doing the above adjustments), beside fixing the white balance and other color issues. So in a sense, it is kind of a synthetic high-key done after the fact instead of with speedlites or strobes in a studio. It is important though to realize that the less shadows are there, the better. I've tried this technique already with some older shots done indoors, and the results were not up to the level, but I'll keep trying anyway and see!

Finale

Well, I guess I better make this short at this point. There are some few shots that I did want to talk about but probably I'll keep them for later for now - along with a probable discussion for another style of editing. We'll see if I get the time to do that post in the future!
On a side note, it seems I've totally forgot to mention this item of news, and that is two of my images had been accepted in 16th PSAChina international exhibition of photography, and I've received some emails to provide the original images for display in the exhibition. That does not mean that I've won any award, but simply that these images did pass the judgement or critique and deemed worthy of display. I didn't get involved in any contest for a long time and probably I will not do so in a long time as well, but this display do give me a bit of spark.

The two accepted images: (left) Anxiety, (right) Houdini.
Worth noting that Houdini was marked as inspirational on YouPic as well.

It seems that, at this point, that YouPic can be somewhat an aid for me to judge my images in the future and see what to submit to contests, though I know this approach is not quite accurate, simply because professional photographic circles do not work in that manner, and YouPic is still, after all, a social media website and not a circle of professional photographers whose job is to critique. You can critique on YouPic but I doubt people there would welcome that anyway specially if not asked for it.
Anyway, after receiving the email about the pick, I was asked to submit the originals (for printing I suppose) plus a personal photo. I did all of that, but now, I'm not sure what's next. Would I receive an online catalog (like most contests)? Are my images considered or classified as Honorary Mention? I'm not sure, but we'll see. I might receive some other email containing the catalog. It's funny though to know that both of these images are actually selfies or self-portraits!
On the other hand, there had been some few incidents with my workplace that I didn't talk about before probably but amazingly I'm discovering new things about my life and the whole thing called "work" at this point and this stage. I've realized that some people are simply annoying or causing problems even more when they are further away (and work online)! i kind of feel sicker of my workplace at the moment despite the fact that I didn't go there for months (except for 2 days back in July). This calls my brain again to find a substitute, but as always, most probably the search end up with nothing and be in vain.
As I'm getting closer and closer to 40 (in less than 2 weeks time), I'm looking back at what I've achieved and what not. Some say I've done a lot, yet I don't really see it. They say that 40 is a new time or a new age, and it's like opening a new page of life, and again, I don't see that coming. Maybe I don't want to see? Maybe. However, I'm trying to keep it as real as possible. One of my simplest dreams was to have my own family and stay away from this problematic house and build myself up as I like, yet, all my attempts failed miserably. And reaching 40 does not make the process or the thought of it any better. In fact, I've already abandoned such an idea already and I think I better be on my own. All what I need for now is a home; A place I can call home.

Mirrotrait!

Here we are, back to the old rhythm and the troubles with sleep and work; But to be honest, my sleeping problems are a bit down for the time being, but I often do find myself going to work without sleep and somewhat I'm OK with it! Schools didn't start yet here so, traffic jams are still lurking.
Anyway, for this post this week, I'm going to talk a bit about 2 shots I've taken some weeks ago. I was supposed to put them together with the previous post but I think that post became too long so I decided to cut it out at that and make a separate post now for these 2 shots specifically. What's so special about these two? Nothing special really; They are just portraiture shots taken at a focal length of 800mm. Yes, eight hundred millimeters.

Mirrotrait

As part of my effort of getting used to, and getting some work done, with my mirror lens, the Rokinon 800mm f/8, I've decided to put it into use for taking portraits. The design is that of a telescope and probably if I was in some other dimension or some other world with better capabilities I would be using that lens for some astrophotography indeed, or maybe for some wildlife photography. Anyway, not my luck, and I hated to see this lens just lying around being idle.

Rokinon 800mm f/8
Mirror Lens
(this one here for Nikon it seems?)

One of the "creative" tools that a photographer can (and encouraged to) use, is using lenses out of their "typical" purpose or perspective; e.g. shooting portraits with a wide angle lens which is typically used for landscape photography, or even shooting landscape with a lens which is typically used for portraiture. I, for one, been doing that for quite some time and in fact I've never believed in this "typical" purposes or dedications for lenses. Because in my mind, all I think of when I see or think of a lens is the magnification, distortion, proximity to subject and so on. This is why many of my selfies were shot using 20mm lens or wider (20mm being almost equivalent to 30mm on my APS-C camera).

Sample of donut bokeh
Source

Anyway, one of the key features of these Mirror Lenses is that they make up some weird bokeh shape. A bokeh in the shape of a donut, and this is exactly what I was after but, as the progress will go on, you will see how I've actually failed in achieving that donut, so far! Nevertheless, working with such a lens for portraiture is still an interesting experiment, despite the hardships with it. In fact, with such hardships, I'm amazed by those specs listed by manufacturers or sellers who state something similar to "for wildlife" or something like "cheap telephoto lens". The truth is, despite its focal length, I don't personally really classify it as a "telephoto" lens and absolutely not suitable for wildlife or birding; This is unless you really get the hang of it and master its controls, AND come up with some ways or innovate something for quick shooting and proper focusing. Maybe if I list these difficulties as points the image would be clearer:

• The lens is manual (of course).
• The focusing ring is bulky. In fact, it is not a focusing ring as much as it is a focusing "barrel".
• No collar, and with such long focal length, putting vibrations under control is a headache.
• Fixed aperture; F/8.
• During the shoot, I got some errors and I stopped shooting but then things gone normal again and I'm guessing the weight of the lens is the reason.
• Just forget about using filters. There are specific rear filters for this kind of lenses, but I don't have any, and the front thread is 105mm (and I have a ring for it and barely fits for fitting the solar gel filter on it).

Needless to say, with such a focal length one would need quite a space, and for this reason I've shot the portraits outside in the neighborhood just in front of my house. One technique I've adapted here is to fix my camera and tripod in position, and ask my brother to move accordingly to get him where I wanted in the frame. All I could do here with my brother is 2 shots mainly (because of the problems mentioned above) and for each one of these 2 I've approached processing in a different manner. Unfortunately, I was supposed to make some shots at night in hope that I would show the donut bokeh clearly this time because of the point light sources from cars or the houses around the neighborhood, but that didn't happen yet as I'm typing this post.

First shot
Original

First shot
After cropping

First shot probably with
a better crop using the
Golden Ratio rule.
But the image size is
drastically small.

 Generally speaking, images from this lens are "dull," if I can call them so. They lack contrast. Thus, there is some extra work to be done in post-processing phase. In the first shot, the background seemed fine, but of course no donut shapes because it was done afternoons and no pointy light sources were there. The pose itself was probably a mere coincidence, as I didn't ask my brother to make the pose and I was kind of busy doing the work with the settings when I looked up to the LiveView to see that he was there looking up so I snapped that. Moreover, in the post-processing phase, I had to crop the image but unfortunately, I didn't seem to follow any specific rule here, not even the rule of thirds. I think I've used the Diagonal Method here for cropping but I'm not sure it is quite suitable here, specially with the logo on the shirt showing. But no use now I guess since the photo has been already published on some social media platforms. The image's quality is "fine" but I wouldn't say "good" though. I had quite a struggle to put things in focus here, so there is a chance of human error I believe when it comes to some softness on the edges. Things had to be fixed later with my arsenal of sharpening tools in Photoshop.

Second shot
original
You can see how dark
is the skin here.

 
In the second shot, here I've already asked my brother to do a specific pose for me. But to shoot this one I had quite a struggle because of some malfunctioning, which I've mentioned above already, and maybe it was because of the weight of the lens, because when I've placed the camera back to landscape orientation it started to work properly. After that, I've flipped it back to portrait orientation and it kept working - and I had to snap my shot quickly to avoid any mishap.

Second shot
After crop and
fixing the tilt
Tried to lighten
the overall look.

Second shot with
probably a better crop
using the Golden Ratio

While processing the second shot, the image appeared to be quite washed out, and in order to enhance the contrast a bit, I had to play a bit with the exposure slider a bit, just to find out that there are indeed some details in the background that could be retrieved; The area was quite white! The thing, though, was that the front (my brother) got quite dark. For this reason, I've produced two versions of this shot as if I've bracketed my shots: One with dark background for the details, and one with proper exposure for the front. It was a great deal of work in Photoshop to merge the two and produce and acceptable image and still though I don't think I've made it. My brother looks darker than he should be I think. Here, too, the cropping seems to be made randomly, unfortunately.

After these 2 shots, there were supposed to be night shots as I've mentioned but nothing happened, for various reasons. Mainly because my brother is a busy man. I seriously thought of shooting a selfie of myself though (with the help of Case Air wireless tethering tool), but with such lens and such a focal length, the situation is quite cumbersome. Still an idea though which I might perform at any time. Speaking of shooting at night, that would definitely need some usage of speedlites I presume. A complicated process that already cooks in my head without doing much about it. I do have other things to do but just waiting for the right moment, and power, to do so.

Finale

Well, this is my little post for this week and hopefully I'll be having more to post 2 weeks after. I'm seriously thinking now for some topic for my Arabic blog since I didn't post there for some time, but I'm not sure what to post about. Maybe another photo story? Not sure.
Meanwhile, I'm doing some more experiments on specular lighting. Didn't get the chance to do much so far but I'm trying so let's hope I do get away with some nice shots. Just to note, that "specular" lighting is when the light direct and hard without any diffusion. In fact, there are other ideas I'm just waiting to implement.
Away from camera, mood swings had been frequent visitors lately; More than usual I'd presume. I'm trying hard to forget my pains, set backs, and the damn mood swings, by working as much as possible with the camera but the thing is, such swings make me powerless, and as usual, procrastinating. Add driving to and from work to the recipe and here we have a tasty dish of misery. If you are reading this, trust me, it was not an easy task to type this blog post over a span of 3 or 4 days and trying to finish it just before Thursday. Those moments where I would stand and look around me to see who would support me or anything like that are frequent as well; I just realized, I'm all alone. Not even those whom I'd consider friends would help me to make me feel not being ignored. I don't blame them anyway. I guess I'm just a boring person after all, who leads a boring life, and doing boring stuff just to let himself feel alive while being single at almost 40. Rant over.

Ave…

The weather is getting colder here, as well as my heart along the way I presume. It would have been such good news and feeling, if not for the passing of a dear online friend that suffered from a long battle against diabetes. Though we never met really, but we still shared all the jokes and laughter together and she was quite fond of my photos. She dreamed that one day we might meet up in Ireland and even do some photography in front of her. She made me feel as if my photos from Ireland made her re-discover her homeland; As if she was not Irish already, living her final days in the US.

Rest In Peace, Paula Doak

Mearcair

Last week the news were out about a transit of Mercury over the disk of the sun. Not a rare event but it definitely is not the average event that would happen every year. I think the next transit for Mercury of this sort might take place in 2032 or sometime around that if I'm not mistaken, and I'm not sure even if it would still be visible in the sky here. Rarely even more than Mercury, are Venus transits. I think the next transit won't be happening in my life time at all!
Anyway, the adventure was set on Tuesday. I had a very limited time to prepare for the shoot as the transit would occur only at about 3:30 p.m. local time, and then in about one hour the sunset would officially start. To gain some time, I've actually prepared my gear the day before and made everything ready, so all I had to do is pick up the gear and head to the roof of my house. I still had some fears back then that some objects would block the view as the sun goes down in the sky but luckily none of that happened. So, in a nutshell, my gear was composed of:

• My modified Canon EOS 7D.
• Solar filter.
• Rokinon 800mm Mirror Lens (fixed at f/8).
• Flexible cable (will explain why below).
• Cable remote.
• Tripod of course, with ball head for easy and quick movement.

I had to refer back to my old tripod which I didn't use quite a while mainly because it extends quite high compared to my other most-used tripod, without needing to raise the central column or the neck.

The gear I used and you can see the cable around the mirror lens,
while the clips hold the solar filter over the lens front.
The shot was out of focus because the flies were really, really, really annoying.
Yes, that much annoying that I couldn't focus properly with my phone.

I was reluctant to use my old mirror lens with its cumbersome control mechanism; Just a complete manual lens with a primitive telescopic design crammed in a small volume. However, knowing that Mercury will be such a small dot over the sun disk, I've realized (and I've done my own research as well) that I do need a very long focal length, and here I had two choices. Either:

1. Use my Sigma 70-300mm with teleconverters, OR,
2. Use my Rokinon 800mm Mirror Lens.

Rokinon 800mm Mirror Lens f/8

Comparing the two, the scale tilts towards the Mirror Lens further. Because using teleconverters would reduce the light quality further (beside using a solar filter here) and this might not be such a good idea and the overall size of the whole lens/teleconverter combination would be too long and I'm sure it would give me some hard time in movement (specially with my external telephoto lens sleeve which is not quite as flexible as a regular sleeve on a real telephoto lens). Adding one teleconverter to my Sigma lens at 300mm would extend the focal length to 600mm. Adding another one would make this jump to 1200mm. Juicy! However, my previous experiences in shooting the sun with such a long focal length were quite cumbersome specially when it comes to moving tiny amounts of degrees to follow the sun (remember: the more you zoom in, the faster the celestial body will virtually move). So, imagine here that I'm jumping to 800mm with a single lens only and without much light quality loss; As simple as that.
Now, we come to the story of the cable. Since the focusing with such long focal length and cumbersome mechanism would prove to be a challenge, I got myself these multi-purpose bending cables or wires long time ago solely for this purpose; To wrap them around the focusing ring of the mirror lens and use it as a level to move the focusing ring gently. It didn't stop the shake though but it was quite useful nevertheless.

Mercury, after processing the image (cropped).
The lower right line is just some dirt.

Anyway, my main aim was to shoot a series of shots of Mercury crossing the sun disk but unfortunately after one hour of shooting or so, I just got plenty of images with the position of Mercury almost not moving. After being attacked by flies and sweating waterfalls I had to get inside and stop the whole thing (at that point it was past 4 p.m., and still didn't have lunch then!). So, technically, despite the many many images I've shot, I didn't quite get a serial sequence after all. Probably one of the mistakes that I've committed here is that I've focus on the sun (by checking the edges of the circle on LiveView of course) thinking that because of the great distance between Earth and the sun, Mercury would virtually be in focus as well. This seems to be not the case here though! When I've edited the images, Mercury was not quite that sharp dot on the disk of the sun, but more like a blot of ink!

100% Crop of one of the images. Mercury is the small black dot,
which I think it could have been more in focus. In some images, Mercury
completely disappears.
(click to enlarge)

What amazed though is the presence of dirt and other artifacts. I thought first that those are only on the solar filter from the outside but it turned out to be they are sensor artifacts. This is despite cleaning the gear (lens and camera) the day before and making sure all are clean (and using the loupe to check the sensor specifically). I'm not sure how this got in, but definitely I need to check and clean it later. Didn't have time to do so yet.
At this point, my little "silly" adventure with Mercury transit was over and I'm still checking the images Ivé shot (counted more than 2400 images) to see if I can do anything artistic about them! We'll see.

Finale

The departure of a friend, an online friend, is not in any way less drastic than a real physical friend's departure; Whether met or not. This departure was sudden to me, because she was supposed to be coping well with her new condition after amputating one of her legs because of some blood problems. Such a drastic and sudden change of events.
All these feelings actually are pushing me to write emotionally from the first moment I've heard the news, and typing an eulogy on her feed on Facebook. Now, I feel the urge and the necessity to really focus to write one poem at least for her sake.
All these ideas seem to clash now in my head though. I do have other tasks and other ideas of photography that I want to work on. One might consider typing or writing a poem is easy but that's not really the case at all. It needs dedication and time, and foremost, an immersion into your own feelings. Now my feelings are there hovering in the air as well as my words, but I have to turn my mind into a lens to focus these into proper and rhyming words on paper (or monitor that is). Goodbye Paula. May we see each other one more time, in peace…