The King…

Well well well! Here I am after a little vacation away from blogging (and shooting!). Meanwhile, despite this vacation, which was supposed to help me calm down, I did have my own share of stressors away from the camera business; Work, house, personal life, you name it. Oh, mentioning work, I'm officially considered to be "working from home" though I'm not doing much really, but there is quite a mess in the management that leaves me wondering if everything is alright. Really; attendance record must be kept by my director (yes, though we are at home, don't ask me how or why) and other things.
On the other hand, I'm trying to get some "life" for myself. I'm processing old images in some new methods and techniques, I go reading in the morning in the yard to get some sun exposure (beside having some supplements as well with meals), I stroll through languages, and I water the plants almost daily as well; Well, though it's done under the harsh sun of 7:00 a.m. or so, still it has some refreshing feeling specially when you see those little buds grow bigger and bigger. On the side, I'm also having sleep as much as I can, almost whenever I want!
Meanwhile, I'm also wondering these days about the future of my Ayvarith conlang (which ironically this blog was supposed to be about it) after the Instagram account for it (@Ayvarith) had been hacked or simply stopped (just not sure what's going on there). Anyway I don't think I will be having another Instagram account just for Ayvarith, again. I'm done with this stupid platform. So, I'm wondering what's next on that plane.

The King

So, in this blog post (the first after some vacation here) I want to showcase some images that I've shot for a project that started by a coincidence, and ended (unfortunately) abruptly. I've talked about this little project in my previous post (or posts) I guess but didn't show anything from this series I guess. So, this post is for these images, which were done some months ago.

Quarantine Day 54
King of The Bathroom

The whole series started with an idea for a single shot back in the early days of quarantine (back in April). The idea struck me at the spur of the moment when I thought that maybe I should clean my bathroom after months of neglect (ahem). I had an eye for humor in this shot from the very beginning, so I was thinking of something artistic and funny away from the "contest culture" and the seriousness that I would usually work with, so I went on with shooting for HDR. The space in the bathroom was quite narrow so I had to take refuge in my Sigma DG 12-24mm lens (which proved to be one of my favorite lenses for shooting portraits!). I could have used my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens here which has a wider field of view and could have saved me here as well BUT such field of view will be problematic, as it will include so much from the surrounding area and eventually I would have to crop so much, and the image would become smaller and probably insignificant.

Quarantine Day 67

Soon, however, ideas from that single shot started to stem out and my mind started to create a story in fact. Ironically, a story that I've imagined its ending but not its progress so starting from this shot for Quarantine Day 67, I've actually started to fill the story gaps somewhat.The crown, the green robe, the toilet seat and the pipe all occurred to me as "trade mark" for this series starting from this shot. Also from this shot for Day 67, I've stopped giving titles, but rather captions right away. The caption for Quarantine Day 67 is: I don't get it, I should've been a superhero according to this...!

Just for the record: I didn't buy any astrology books in a long time. This book you see here is a gift from a friend.

Again, the shooting for Day 67 was done in a similar manner: HDR, Sigma DG 12-24mm, but the location this time is different. It was my brother's old bathroom (not used much and has less clutter and no bathtub).

Quarantine Day 73

 And so the story continues actually and another part of it was made, with Quarantine Day 73. By the way, in case you are wondering by now about the number of days here, I'm actually counting the days indeed (approximately) starting from February 25^th, 2020; around which the whole quarantine vacation started (and that was the National Day break). Now, Quarantine Day 73 was somewhat hard to do and I'm not quite satisfied with it as I think the ball with (my) face should have been clearer (and terrifying more). Anyway, the caption that went with this image was: I made a new friend. His name is Corna... Crona... something like that. He's nice.... I think?
Again, Day 73 shot was made in my bathroom and I did work quite some time to clone out stuff behind me and stuff on the ball itself and then add my face (which was shot separately in another shot and copied from there to the shot). I'm not including here the talk about the HDR rendering or tone-mapping as it is a basic process right now but worth noting that I do spend quite some time trying to find a tones that I like for each shot in this series; They are not tone-mapped under the same settings every time. Each one processed differently. In Day 73 shot specifically I've striven to tone-map the HDR slide in a way mimicking the ink sketches or comics as much as possible by brightening the tones and darkening the shadows while reducing the saturation of the skin tones a bit.

Quarantine Day 80

Then comes the only shot in the series where I used mt Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens. I was forced because of the angle I wanted to use as well as adding a dramatic look, and of course the narrow space. I should have used my brother's bathroom again here but for some reason I can't remember right now, I didn't. At this stage, I've already broke many taboos: Editing in Photoshop, HDR unreasonable tone-mapping, and more. So, I've set my thought on doing a collage between two shots showing myself being sick of myself. The caption that went with this shot was: The whole kingdom went into total lock-down. Sitting by myself reflecting trying to find solutions, but apparently myself is... sick of myself.
The blend of the two images was not easy as well and actually I almost wanted to abandon the whole idea altogether or shoot again (and in the back of my mind I did envision this shot differently actually). But with a lengthy work with layer masks and cloning, I think I've kind of pinned it down, even though I wished for two separate heads sharing a neck (go ahead and imagine that!). Worth noting that it is at this image that I've decided to stop my Instagram account. Actually I've posted the image and barely received any likes for about 24 hours, so I realized that I'm really wasting my time with the so-called Instagram's Algorithm and trying to expose my work to others. Thus, I've completely abandoned the idea of posting to that platform altogether.

Quarantine Day 92

Despite stopping Instagram posts, I've still had some more ideas to work with this project, as I had somewhat a story going on in my head. The phase now is at the king is escaping his enemies. For this, I've made Quarantine Day 92 that you see here with a caption that goes: Escaping the enemy with the kingdom in total lock-down drove me to some unprecedented measures. Thank goodness, I kept some water supply.
This photo included more work than the previous 2 shots here. Two shots combined, and a lot of work with the wrap and puppet warp tool in Photoshop to fit my body inside the fridge (and adding some shadows to make it as realistic as possible). But probably the real struggle was to cut the head and lower it down without much artifacts. In fact, on a close inspection some motion blue is prevalent because shooting HDRs in such position is not something... I want to try again. A shaky body was inevitable. Another struggle here was matching the lighting conditions (to approximate the looks, I've shot myself in front of a window so the light would hit my back like the light inside the fridge). The rest was a work of toning and adjusting contrast. 

At this point, the series ended abruptly. I had more ideas, but I didn't have the power to pursue them further. I wanted to continue the story with the king escaping through various locations around the house (had an eye for the washing machine), but all that I had to stop as I didn't have more power to do all of that, specially that I'm working all alone. The mood swings and the conditions at home all had their toll on me that I seriously needed some peace of mind. In fact, as I'm typing these words, I didn't touch my camera seriously all that time except for few shots just days before I start typing these words, doing some macro shots in the yard, just out of curiosity. 

Finale

Nostalgia

Now, this is the series that I've talked about in previous posts. On the side, there are a lot of old images that had been re-edited, some of them were neglected and completely forgotten (and deemed useless), but suddenly with me learning new techniques and ideas in editing, I've started to check for possible chances, going back in time as far as 2011, like this Nostalgia shot taken on my way to work back then. Anyway, I don't want to proceed further or I might go on and talk about many past images that have undergone a re-make!
Work-wise, I'm considered "at work" as I'm working from home, supposedly. But not much to be done really (like in normal situation anyway). But I had to go to work for mundane tasks that, as I deem, just plain stupid and unnecessary since we are not going back to our offices any time soon. The tasks involved, simply, opening doors for the janitor to clean (in the beginning I thought that there would be a professional disinfection and sterilization process). I was asked to go again to run a test on some device which for some reason I was not told about when I was there, which made me mad and I've refused to go all the way just to do a 30 minutes work.
Strangely, during such a lock-down and being at home most of the time, and the recent incident, all that made me feel sick of work even further even though I'm not going to it. I've realized as well that there are some people who can be quite annoying when they are not around more than when they are around in fact. Strange how life works. 
Meanwhile, my feelings of isolation are growing; That is, inner isolation and not being connected to anyone, or anything (well, almost). The idea of having my own home where I can live as I like, without annoying or being annoyed by any, had been occupying my mind for almost every passing single day. Yet, I'm not sure how this is to be done specially in a place like this. Would it be that my dream cannot be here and elsewhere, away. If so, I just don't know how this is done either, nor how my finances would sustain such a leap… in God, I trust.
 

Projectoid…

Hectic weeks, and winter is finally here! I'm trying to absorb every single atom of this cold weather into my skin, as much as I can, before the arrival of the not-to-be-mentioned. Meanwhile, I was hanging on the tails of some of the last projects I was going on with, but I have to say the results are not what I've exactly expected; sort of disappointing. Thu, probably this would be a quick wrap about the latest. I didn't post anything last week since I was busy preparing and article for my other Arabic blog, so things here are a bit old stuff already that I didn't get the chance to post last week.

Heartoid

First of all, I wanted to redo the whole idea of essay photography (or photo story); just the first series of shots taken on the staircase. However, for some reason, things went erratic with my speedlite flashes beside having problems in positioning and managing the speedlite, while the location itself was not helping much really. The idea for redoing this was to stabilize the camera tilt and apply some of the notes after a critique from the founder and tutor (of the photo story workshop). I had to give up at the end, and rather quickly this time, because I had other plans in my head and also because of the frustration for working in this limited space! Needless to say, I had to return some of the items I've borrowed for long just for this project.

After finishing up with that project, I turned back to an old project which I've stopped temporary for the sake of the photo story project. That was about shooting transparent hearts and color them using Popsicle sticks.

Qtar 4

After successfully capturing some droplets from corn syrup with colored sticks reflected off it, I decided to work on a more meaningful idea instead of spreading droplets in a random way. Typically, for me, the object was a heart-shape; a transparent heart. I've tried hard to "draw" hearts using corn syrup itself, but that was not stable and could not be done technically. Then, tried ice (using heart-shaped molds for ice), but that way too fast to melt down. Freezing the corn syrup itself too was not good at all (it didn't freeze at all). Later, I tried mixing water with corn syrup and freeze the mix, which was a bit resistant to melting but still the mix was white and transparency was not enough. Finally, I've managed to work with gelatin and I have to admit that I made a little mistake here for freezing it after it was completely hardened, but the white layer on top was easy to break down with my finger and pushed away to get a relatively transparent heart but with some yellowish shade. This last solution was exactly what I need, since gelatin doesn't melt fast under room temperature. The problem with gelatin was its softness and it needs extra care to be extracted from the mold.

Single heart made by mixing water and corn syrup then frozen.

Instead of using one heart, I thought it is meaningful more to use two. Thus, I've completed a series of 6 shots for two hearts, each with a different color. I have to say though that some surplus on the sides of the hearts made it a bit awkward, but I didn't try to remove these additional parts in Photoshop (except for the purple hearts).

Two hearts made of gelatin. The red tones here are more flexible when suppressing the highlights reflections, unlike the water+corn syrup combination.

The purple hearts were cleaned on the left side removing some of the unnecessary parts on far left.

The final "product" was a cropped and cleaned (also darkened the background) hearts. For some reason I'm not sure of yet, it seems that the double gelatin hearts were stuck together even though each heart was a piece on its own! Anyway, all were uploaded to various stock sites, but to add some flavor to the process, I've made a collage of the 6 shots in a smaller size and uploaded to Canstockphoto website, only. Unfortunately, the status for all these images is pending for review. Things were faster on Canstockphoto. Some other stock sites, however, such as Dubistock (which is relatively new for me) did accept the series of hearts, but I didn't upload the collage there yet.

Hearts Collage

Mandaloid

I've been following some trend for mandala art on Instagram lately and I have to say that my love for symmetry (and probably my OCD-ish tendencies) pretty much like such art and shapes. It needs serious patience I suppose; something I disastrously lack. However, I tried my luck with such patterns digitally, once by converting some planet panoramas into line art (with specific technique) and once by working with typography, or doing art by letters. There is also one idea that I still didn't try yet which is drawing shapes by hand, scan them, and then repeating them in geometrical shapes digitally.

One of the doodles
turned into a vector

Scanning sketches and turning them into vectors is something I used to do from time to time, as I surprised myself for some of the doodles I used to do almost unconsciously in boring meetings and classes. Some of these are uploaded already to Canstockphoto (the only stock site up to which I upload vectors).

JOHN

The whole thing started when I was doodling in fact, and noticed how I can draw a heart by merging 2 J's, tip to tip. From that moment, I started to work digitally in Photoshop on combining letters, which later became full names combined in a complicated texture. The name "John" was first, then "Jesus." Well, I was thinking in advance here since Christmas season is coming and such vector might catch the eye and become trendy. Who knows! Finally, a whole complex design with the letter "J" alone. However, my real wish is to do an arabesque design some day, all out of geometry, just like that!

J
colors inversed

As for the time being, I'll try to think of more designs of that sort, with different names probably. All of the previous designs are converted to EPS, which should support vectors; it is the only format accepted by stock sites usually. Still, though, I think I'm doing something wrong here and I do need to re-check the processing of such files. I have to consider to if I should upload these vectors elsewhere, since Canstockphoto exclusive option had been removed, i.e. no special consideration or pricing for exclusive images, it seems.

Finale

I'm trying to push myself further with my camera now, trying different things other than my tendencies for panoramas, which, truth be said, I miss so much. Meanwhile, I still feel there is so much to be done with the music and songs of Sabah Fakhry (صباح فخري) and I keep having visits of thoughts and ideas by the lyrics of his songs, but the lot of them would be hard for me to do, specially those that might need a model. The only model I feel comfortable to work with, so far, is me. As for now, and finishing the experiments with gelatin, I've packed up my stuff which annoyed some people a lot for being there in the guest room spreading all over the place. Until I get another trend of thought and an idea to work, I might as well get my stuff down again... but I'll try to do it first in the small space available in my condensed room.
As days pass by, the mention of travels comes in my face wherever I go and head. People talk about it, even my horoscope talks about it, as well as tarot cards. Where to? Can I afford it really? Would I be able to manage things with Mom and the family before I go? Many things to think about before giving a concrete answer.

JESUS