The Walnut…

Here i am with another post, and I was going to take another break for a moment, then I realized that I should talk about the walnut high-speed experiment. I'm typing this just days before my birthday (and it will be posted after my birthday), so Happy Birthday to Me!
Anyway, this might be rather a short post actually, as I gathered the shots in a video which I will be posting below. Unfortunately, i didn't manage to take a shot of the settings, but maybe a drawing would do?

Before I heed, I'd like to announce that most of the images from this experiment are available already on my Canstockphoto. They were rejected mostly from other stocks I deal with (maybe accepting 1 or 2 only) but the majority (if not all) are available on Canstockphoto.

The Walnut

Well, first let me post the schematics or chart, or plan, whatever you like to call it, and sorry for the lousy drawing here; I'm not the best artist out there you know…

The working area: (1) Silver small car shade, (2) 430EXII with globe diffuser, (3) The working area, (4) A group of speedlites; 2x 580EXII and 1x 430EXII, (5) Camera with controlling 580EXII speedlite.

Impact's oval diffuser
which was fitted
on 430EXII

Worth noting that the shooting here was done with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens. Also, the car shade (1) was placed there in the beginning to reflect off the light coming from the speedlites at (4) but I realized it's not enough. The speedlites at (4) in the drawing are placed on the table but in reality they were beside the working table on stands. Anyway, since the reflection was weak, I've decided to place (2), a 430EXII speedlite with globe or oval diffuser on top, and I've made several test shots to gauge the power of the speedlite here; All work was done in HSS mode (or high-speed mode) of course.

Canon EF 100mm
f/2.8 USM Macro

The lens in use here was just about right for the perspective that I was aiming for. However, working with this lens in particular in LiveView mode is quite challenging for the change in the exposure in each test shot despite the fact that the powers of the speedlites were not changed. Finally, I've fitted a blocker on the eyepiece and it seemed to work fine but still some shots were off (probably this time related to the power of the flashes this time). Not sure why, but this problem doesn't happen often with other lenses when I work with them in LiveView; only this lens!

Initially, I started with f/16 for the aperture, but eventually raised it to f/22 (maximum for this lens). Strangely though, there was some apparent shallow depth (out of focus areas and sharp in-focus areas) in some shots despite this high f-number! It seems to me now that high-speed and macro are a No-No combination. All in all, there was of course a tweak in ISO and other things, and even the shutter speed was eventually raised to the maximum; 8000⁻¹s

Cokin's special
effect filter

Also, related to the lens in use, I've decided to place a special effect filter which I purchased from a friend (actually they belonged to his brother). These Cokin filters are apparently old and I don't have the needed adapter to fit them on the lens, but still I could hold them in front of the lens with the help of some paper clips. Before this time, I've never used these special effect filters in a shooting except for testing. You'll notice the flare in the image of the filter on the left here, and I made it that way intentionally to the show the texture of the surface, as they won't show in direct shot upfront. The filter added some touch to the images but not quite dramatic as I hoped actually.

 

The Sinking Walnut

Now coming to the actual experiment and work with the walnut shells. The main idea was to capture the impact of a water droplet on the water surface or just above the walnut shell. However, this proved to be challenging. First of all, I don't have the proper Gate gear to trigger the speedlites or the camera for that moment of impact, so I had to do all the work manually as usual, relying merely on my senses and coordination between eyes and fingers on the shutter release (using the cable remote here).
Another hurdle was the shells themselves, as I thought  they would sustain some water, and they did for some time, but eventually, started to sink, as it can be seen in The Sinking Walnut which was a test shot but I kept it just for that sparkle in the droplet (thanks to Cokin's filter here!). Apparently the walnut shells are porous naturally. Trying to keep some luster and reflection off water, I've exchanged the bowl of water with some can, put it upside down, and rely on the shallow edge to keep some water. I've also placed play clay (or whatever they call it) to stabilize the shells which proved a bit annoying in the editing phase later on, but it was a must.

Anyway, I will keep it short here and let the video do the talk. You can click the button to view it on a larger size. The whole process ended up with about 220 shots (mostly test shots of course and failed attempts) and sieved down to about 34 shots and finally, probably around 11 shots that were properly edited. Actually of the images is a composite of other shots that I deemed unusable; Not going to tell which!
I've realized during the work that I don't really have to shoot water (was using a head-less syringe for that), but at some point I've started to blow air from the syringe into the shell that had been filled with water just to make a turbulence and it worked just fine! So, a lesson to keep in mind when working in the future that the goal can be reached in more than one way, and some might sound a bit unconventional… I leave you with the video now.

In addition to these, I've created some extra pieces, just some artistic composition from one of the shots. Not sure why but I just felt like it really, but these pieces are not uploaded to the stocks like the rest. The two were saved as PNG to preserve the transparent background; So, even they are rendered as squares, but in reality they form a "X".

Vortex Pac-Man

Gluttonite

Finale

Now that I'm done with the walnut experiment post, I'm not sure what would my next post be about, but we'll see. For this reason I might even take a little vacation off from blogging until I do something significant with my camera, or maybe to put a little announcement here for some new photos uploaded to the stocks. Meanwhile, it seems that I'm already breaking with the resolution of making an Arabic post for my other blog once a month, as it is already August, and I literally don't have any idea what to post about there. About this same topic of this post? Maybe. Even though I wouldn't know how to render it up because that blog is dedicated mainly to beginners, so a lot of instructions and explanatory must be involved; Tedious, and might be overwhelming for a beginner. I've done such a post about high-speed photography before though, so this is another thing which makes me think what is the use of a new post about the same technique (almost).
Artistically speaking, I do a lot of editing for old photos but I'm not sure if i want to post them here since they don't have any specific category or theme, or belong to some project I'm working on. But I'll keep them on the side just in case…

Eagerness for traveling is back at me again even though I know that it is even harder than before with all the crazy world around me and me being the weight of Retinitis Pigmentosa. Those travels I used to do were the only reminder for me that I can survive and live alone, doing my own business, and above all, with some peace of mind. But that's something farfetched for the time being. I think no escape from facing these mood swings and coping with an environment that feels so strange to me as if I wasn't born and raised here.
Meanwhile, I've been thinking about placing some orders online, and among the things I wish to have is some soundproof panels or anything like that to give me some peace and quiet atmosphere in this house. But because of the bad postal services, I have to think it over, as ordering is not as easy as before when I used to order my camera gear all from stores in the US. Things had changed for me. For this reason, I'm planning to check if such panels are available locally here and again, I might need someone to pick me up to and from. Sounds pretty much like begging… and just to think that some people envied me for retiring early…

Sporadichiskiy…

I was reluctant to make this blog post. Honestly, I didn't feel like it. But here I am, trying hard to force myself. For nothing but to think of myself as being occupied.
You might be wondering about the title, well, I was going to put it as Sporadic but then I thought it would be so boring, so then I checked the translation in Russian and it was Спорадичиский, which is exactly what the title says but I didn't wish to put it in Cyrillic; Maybe in some other time, just for fun really.
The reason for this title for this post is that I'm going to talk a bit about various shots taken on different dates and not necessarily in chronological order but it's like a collection of quick-minded ideas that were done in a hurry without much preparations. 

Before I head on with the body of this post, I'd like to announce that I've uploaded some loads of images already (from 2021 and 2022 so far) and they are available on Canstockphoto, Dreamstime, and 123RF; However, one image might be in one place and not in the other because of the different criteria that each stock website uses to judge the images. Just in case one wishes to visit the profiles, they can click on the links above.

Pinhole

In my past post I've talked about creating some abstract art by intentional camera movement while having an infrared filter on the lens and shooting indoors. This activity somehow triggered me to think more of long exposures which I didn't do for a while. Naturally, using the pinhole was one of my first ideas. In the beginning, I wanted to keep it simple.

夜間孤獨
(nocturnal solitude)

To keep things simple, I headed out in the yard and decided to shoot the little palm tree we had (I've posted some shots from the same palm tree before on this blog) and my plan was to shoot a long exposure and convert the image into B&W. I've done this at night specifically to have a significant long exposure with the pinhole without the need to use any ND filters on a regular lens. However, I think I'll be defining the idea of bad luck, as my hopes for some motion in the image were just shuttered by the fact that (suddenly) not much breeze did accumulate or shake significant part of the palm leaves during the 13-minute exposure! However, I have to give due credits, as I didn't expect some colorful flare to appear (caused by the lights on the wall above the palm tree). For this reason, I've kept it in color and made another version in B&W (and posted both on YouPic).

Nocturnal Solitude (BW)

The B&W version is still interesting though, despite the fact that the flare doesn't appear colorful. The hardest part though was to gauge and control the tones in B&W (and because of the tiny details in the leaves, I disliked the idea of using layer masks). The final result, Nocturnal Solitude (BW), looked like some infrared shot done in daytime! Other work was needed though to keep the bottom of the image from being too dark and add a bit of details; Of course all of that was done in Photoshop (I don't convert to B&W in ACR often as I need more control). One particular thing that I've noticed or maybe I think I've noticed and my eyes are just playing tricks on me: The image, despite being taken with a pinhole, looks sharper than other pinhole images taken before (which were mostly in daytime). It's still blurry a bit (not because of the motion though) but I do notice that it is sharper in general, just a tiny bit. I did for sure apply some sharpening but this is now what I meant here of course. I meant the original shot. Not sure what to make out of it but maybe because the surrounding lighting was closer to the blue color? Or is it because a really long exposure? But the most strange thing of all… why did the breeze stop when I needed it to be there already?!!!

وَحيدْ
(lonely)

Another pinhole experiment (with a hope of some motion) was done 2 or 3 days later but this time it was indoors (after midnight) and including me personally. The idea of Lonely is not just having a selfie (away with the dramatic title already) but I was hoping to capture those tiny reflexes and breathing movement in a form of a "ghostly appearance" somewhat. The exposure took around 7 minutes and I remember doing it twice, and picking the best of the two. Probably the difference was in the pose itself. Anyway, the intention, again, was to convert it to B&W already and this also helped in covering up for the colorful and checkered blanket! Added some tone and vignette for some "vintage" feel to it. It was a nice shoot though; Somewhat a chance to relax and meditate while asleep! However, I'm not done with long exposures yet…

الأَغْبَرْ
(the dusty one)

I was still interesting in doing long exposure combining myself (because I have no model of course) to record the body movement. I've done one experiment in the yard using my 10-stop ND filter (which I used only once in Malta back in 2015!). The experiment in the yard somewhat failed and didn't like the overall looks. So, I moved indoors. This time I've set a challenge to myself, to stare into the camera for more than 8 minutes. I know this is not possible already (specially for a coffee-addict like me) but this is the goal of the whole thing after all.
In the processing phase, I tried to add some drama to the ghostly-shaped face somehow and made use of some dodge and burn. Well, wouldn't say I like it much but nevertheless I consider it as an achievement to stare into the camera for full 8 minutes! However, on the other hand, the linear version of this image came out really interesting!

Plastered Man

Now, I don't know how it occurred in that way but the whole thing seems to be formed by layers of skin on top of each other with holes for the eyes sockets! I really like the "linear" version more than the original. It looks like a surreal painting in some way (not sure what genre it would roll under though). Scary a bit though, isn't it?

So, at this point, I think the first part of the sporadic shooting ends (even though it's not all about pinhole). But still another part remains which I think I should include here as well. 

Frowning

I think I've mentioned somewhere in my previous post that I've done some experiments with high-speed shooting involving water and shells (walnut shells to be specific). The fact, actually, is that I've been collecting a lot of walnut shells. I've been buying those lately as Mom likes them and me too (and some times I put some of it in my coffee!). For some reason that I can't really explain or understand myself, I've got fascinated by the shells and started collecting them in hope that I would do some photography projects later on with them (which I did to some extent). My collection of them is getting quite large though and I need to find proper storage!
Anyway, I will keep the talk about that high-speed experiment for another post, but now I'm going to talk about a simple (and might be strange) quick selfie experiment which I've done with these shells. I've called the series: The Frowning.

عَبوسْ
(frowning)

The aim here wasn't really just to do something with the shells (which I'm fascinated with by the way!) but also to work and go crazy a bit with HDR tone-mapping; It has been a really long time since I worked with HDR images. I'm talking here about a span of years. But as it will be shown, normal processing wasn't bad as well (and somewhat preferable too). In fact, from the series of shots I've done with these shells, I ended up with only one or two shots that were the base of all the versions that I'm about to show now. The only difference here is the processing.

عَبوسْ 2
(frowning 2)

The shooting was done using my lovely 50mm, and at f/1.8. Even though I could've gone lower to f/1.4 but I wanted to add a slight depth to the front. I've headed out under the sun to shoot it just to ensure a quick shutter speed, as I didn't want to complicate things with such a "crazy" quick shoot and use speedlites. From the series that had been shot, as mentioned above, only 1 or 2 that were somewhat proper (with some cropping) as they had a good depth as I want it. Shooting selfies with such a shallow depth of field on your own is surely a mission for superman! 

عَبوسْ 3
(frowning 3)

All through the Frowning versions, I think each one of them has a specific visual impact and personally I couldn't really say which one is better than the other. Frowning for example, which was tone-mapped from HDR, has this look as if some nuclear explosion just happened in front of me! Moreover, I like it for the grungy look and the details in the hair (upper right) which don't appear quite much in other versions. Nevertheless, Frowning 2, which was processed from RAW (with additions from Photoshop itself of course), does have this dramatic (dark) look that probably adds more emotions to the overall look. Meanwhile, Frowning 3 (which is based off Frowning 2) has even a darker mood I guess. Worth noting that when converted to B&W, I've added a slight "titanium" tone (Hex: #B6AFA9); Honestly, I think I like this tone pretty much and will be using a lot when converting to B&W (or monochrome that is).

The Frownies

Frowning (linear)

Afterward, and just for fun and comparison, I've worked on manually blending the three versions of this shot and put them all in one image; The Frownies. Probably I can say it serves as an optical illusion, just a bit! I think it needs a bit more brushing though. Moreover, probably you could tell by now that this "linear" technique is becoming a trend for me already and I've been trying it on many images, old and new, and Frowning was no exception.
The base for working out the "linear" version is the RAW version of the shot. I still call it "linear" technique because of the basic look but maybe I should change the name at some point because for images like Frowning it doesn't quite look like linear because of the heavy texture of the skin and other things here. The technique is based on merging various layers blended with Difference blending mode, so I might as well call it the "difference technique". I think I've talked about it in this blog before, as well as in my Arabic blog. All in all, I do like the "linear" version as well for its strange dramatic look; Actually, I can imagine it being printed on a t-shirt or something like that (my mind is working on some ideas now).

Finale

So, this is some of the sporadic stuff that I've been doing in the past 2 or 3 months, and actually I'm still going on with it. There are many other stuff actually but I wouldn't put them here since they are re-makes or so of old photos, specially with that "linear" technique I've talked about already.
I do have some plans at the back of my head and I'm not sure if I can even try those or not. Meanwhile, I've just remembered some old projects that I've simply forgotten about, and I might as well try to revive those or something. All I have here is to wish myself good luck.

Recently, I've gone back to my obsession with Solitaire (the classical card game) on my phone. I didn't play it for a long time but now I'm just back at it and I could wipe half of the phone charge just playing it. It feels soothing for some reason, but I'm not sure what exactly. Is it a sign of hidden desires to gamble (I don't)? Or is it the order and structure in the game (which I lack in real life)? Whatever the reason is, I just feel it leaks away my stress. I play it the Vegas style (only one round of the deck is allowed). On the same line, I've realized that I didn't play any PC games in such a long time (even before my official retirement in October 2021). Maybe if I can find time back for this activity my stress (and depression) would be lowered down? 

They say no Man is an island, but apparently I became an island myself with my social circle. I had bursts of urge to chat, to talk, to say something, to anyone, but there is no one to talk to. Not even on the so-called "social media", which made me think why do they call this stupid thing "social" in the first place; All there is to see is trolls, ads, and people who made it their job just to correct you. Even those in fact, there was none for me in the past few days to just say anything with. I've been sleeping a lot, skipping meals a lot, and I'm just not sure where I'm heading with this, nor what's the meaning of it. All that I know is that my body is alive, but my mind is…

Mind = Chaos.

Maybe for the lack of people who push me up or encourage me, or simply say something nice (I say lack, I'm not saying there is none), or maybe because my... ego... is too much to bear with, I've been fluctuating over some tests here and there; partially to know myself better, and partially to feel better about myself. This time, I was in fact looking after something called the Raven test. I was informed in the beginning that it is some test related to autistic features, but later with little googling, I've found out it is also another IQ test depending majorly on shapes and patterns (no numbers, no calculations, only drawings). I had to pay a little to get this result! Typical...

Result

---

TJ
Your IQ is: 131Your age adjusted IQ score is 131 and the average score for all test takers is 98.4.
Your Grade ** Gifted **
Anyone with a general IQ this high is considered to be gifted. You have the ability to think critically, conceptualize ideas and form your own conclusions. Your ability to think in patterns and to produce order out of chaos enables you to handle complexities and see logic in everything. Needless to say you are self-aware of your abilities and have the brains for all known occupations. If you think of intelligence as the ability to adapt easily to new situations then you are at the top of the charts.






IQ Chart

IQ Range	Classification
Above 145	Genius or near genius
130-145	Very superior
115-130	Superior
100-115	Above average
85-100	Below average
70-85	Dullness
Below 70	Borderline deficiency

The question is, am I supposed to be happy for the result or concerned? Am I really gifted or my mental power is not what it should be? I hate to draw myself back to this circle after some friends (who know what they are doing) told me already that it's impossible for me to be having Asperger's. In the meantime, my daydreaming doesn't make it any brighter. Frequently switching between dreams and reality makes my brain trip and lose connection; needless to say the feeling of disappointment.... My mind is so scattered that on Tuesday, and after finishing my work, I've left my work place forgetting my camera's battery on its charger in the office and my wallet. I couldn't retrieve them back of course until the next day. I don't think this is a memory loss, but it is simply an effect of a busy mind I'd say. I'm hoping...

Been surfing through some websites trying to figure out what I need for the next phase with my camera here. Books, lens, tools; all on the list, scattered in my mind. One of the "tools" that I'm planning to get is a teleconverter. It is an attachment that expands the focal length for more zooming power supposedly. Combining this with my 70-300mm Tamron, I can probably increase the focal length to 600mm (as the specs say).

Vivitar Teleconverter for Canon EOS
x2 (Source: B&H)

I wonder though if I can connect two of those together to give me a x4 power! I'm sure that such tools won't be a match to the REAL zooming lenses, but for someone like me, who takes pictures for far objects occasionally (like birds), this solution seems fine. Also, I'm trying to find out some suitable "sound trigger", which is a tool widely used in the field of High Speed photography. The idea is to trigger the flash unit and make it work for a very short period of time (lesser than a second) just by a pulse of sound. Still searching through the net, because there are some news that such sound triggering systems don't work with my flash unit (Canon EX580 II). Makes me think of some other ways to achieve the same effect, but no results so far!

On the books list there might be around 3 books that I'd love to read as soon as I can, providing that I finish the book I'm reading now, the playful brain. One difference though is, the playful brain book is majorly read when I'm in the office, at work, while for photography books, I tend to read them whenever possible even at home. This is mainly because I feel they are instant and a must to develop myself with my camera. Yet, I have to make sure that I finish those games on my queue list first!

3 books that I think I must have by now...

Camera, games, books... you can tell what a mess I'm living, but not necessarily enjoying it all the way! All of this mess and I'm rarely looking at my Ayvarith project and creating a website for it. Not only that, but also, out of boredom, and because I didn't try to take any panoramas for some time now (full spherical panoramas that is) I've went on doing a little experimenting with my 3-legged monopod, and done a panorama for my own bathroom! Yes, my bathroom. Why? Don't ask me please. There are shaky images, as the monopod was extended to a higher level than my head and thus, it was hard to keep it stable (it is shaky already even on shorter heights). Total weight of the camera and the VR-head is around 3kg (~6.6 lb). It was an experiment and I'm already having problems with the panorama as I'm typing these words. I've deleted the images already because of the wrong way I did take these images and many HDR merging problems! I might take it again at another time. One of the challenges, however, in this bathroom panorama is, I couldn't decide what White Balance (WB) should I choose. For the time being, I shot it with Tungsten to balance the great yellowish glow from the 2 bulbs in the bathroom, but that made the pinkish walls go yellowish in a dull way, removing all the heat (or should I say, action) from the walls. However, this hopefully can be adjusted later when I tone-map the HDR finalized version (if the stitching problems are resolved). Another challenge was the height, which I had problems with when trying to adjust the tilt of the camera upward or downward, and going for 30 degrees up and down was not a good bet I'd say. Must have done it with 45 degrees up and down or 30 degrees twice in each direction.

I've been shopping now and buying "flood lights" in various colors. Right now I do have a neutral (yellowish), blue, green and red. I like these lights because of their "flowing". I can imagine them as water of light pouring down on the subject. One of the features I like about these lights also is, they don't appear to be intense when ambient light (in my room) is on, but when the room is dark they show bright. Now having the basic RGB colors of flood lights, this inspires me for few more experiments. 

Philips 80W red flood light
(Source)

Beside those lights there are some tools on the side, like light bulb bases and some other things to store these tools because my stuff are scattered all over the floor. I need double my room size (which is already a couple's room) to store everything I need I suppose. Thinking about that even gives me a shiver for the cleaning I'd be needing to do for such a room!
However, one of the tools or kits I got was storage pockets that can be hung on the wall or the door. I'll be using these to store the light bulbs and (some of the) lighting kit. These pockets were wrapped up around some hard paper, almost like a wood in fact, thus I decided to use this in some way. There are two of them, thus I picked one and drilled in the middle of it to make it as a stand for future use when I need to use the light-holders whose bases are in the form of a clip.

The board mounted on my monopod

Close up for the drilled hole with the monopod's bolt going through it

I've had some ideas to take some pictures in the bathroom (nope not a panorama), but this time for a flowing water. Unfortunately, it didn't work alright to post it in this blog still. Hopefully I will work on that in the future. Caution(s) needed here, since I was trying to bring my light (simple) equipment and a wire extension to the bathroom near the basin to light the flowing water. One drop and everything can be bye-bye...

Nevertheless, I've been working on other days on some catches from seashells. Flood lights here played a crucial rule in "pouring" on the color of the shel. Originally, the shell was greenish, and I've fixed it under a neutral flood light (which gives out a yellow beam). The shot was intended for HDR (i.e. bracketed shot, from -2 to 2) and the WB was Tungsten (to neutralize the heat of the color of the light beam). However, with tone-mapping, and even with Tungsten WB, the heat persisted, thus I had two choices here, to keep up the warm look, or to adjust the temperature slider in Photomatix to the maximum left to cool the colors down. I decided to go on both ways (and change some other settings as well to achieve certain look).

Spiral Shell
with Temperature down

Drama Shell
with Temperature slider slightly above zero point
Someone commented on it saying it's like a rolled up chameleon!

These two shots, however, was an aim to perform a focus-stacking, where several shots are taken on different depth of field (DOF) and then combined by layering the shots and blending them together to get a sharp macro shot. I tried it on these shots but the change in DOF was not to be mentioned here. I think this is because the subject here is not elongated along the camera's view, but more like a flat disk (in some way) and lies almost in one plane of view with respect to the camera.
Also this week, I went on trying the peeling effect again, this time on my censer. Actually, the shots were taken around two weeks ago, but I didn't go on doing this until last week.

Peeled Censer

Take it from me: the more regular and geometric the shape is, the harder it is to do the peeling effect. Why? This is mainly related to the eyes and how sharp your viewer is. In an irregular shape, like the seashell done before (below), the irregularity helps on tricking the eye and you won't have much hard time blending (manually) the different layers together, because the mind already perceives such shape as irregular. In more regular shapes like the censer above, things tend to be harder, and more harder with a light source concentrated in some unique direction. You have to blend carefully trying the best you can to eliminate any "errors" that can be obvious to the naked eyes. In the censer here I wasn't so good at blending and I had to do lot of cloning out, and still the image is not so good, to me.

Peeled Shell

I think I will stop playing around with this trend of tricks and try to work more on some expressional photography, where I would make something out of my mind completely to express some thought or emotion, or simply try to be innovative with my lights here. I still have problems though with those light holders!

Video-wise now, well, I'm not a videographer, but always had and still have fun recording from inside my car, and I still have this idea to record a video in Failaka island. However, I'm in the process of converting all those .MOV files into .MPG (NTSC) and delete the original MOV. This also would help me to cut out some portions of the files easily, as I discovered that lot of programs I have do not deal with MOV or got problems reading such files, and of course helps me to save some space. This conversion almost reduces the file size by 50%.

This is my life now; a total chaos. I need someone to organize my time for me, and I don't stop stuffing my mind up with stuff I think I need to do, and still they push more on my time. I'm trying to get back to exercising little bit, not for a diet or anything (I'm still having bad eating habits) but just to train my body on enduring some aggressive conditions, and maybe, just maybe, I would just feel refreshed and out of my mind's troubles. If only I can get rid of the damn traffic jam...

Fortunati...

Had been a weird week sort of. Flew away so fast and, weird weather too. Just on Wednesday you would see the world in a yellowish cover from the dust and the visibility, I presume, was lesser than 500 meters (~1500 ft) if not lesser than 100 meters  (~300 ft) even! I had to go to work anyway but later on I've been told that the employees and admins left the place already! But I stayed until 1:00 p.m. (I finish at 2) and wow, wish if the streets are like that everyday, minus the dust of course.

Taken from my mobile that day, this short video just to show the dusty weather we had on Wednesday. 

Notice that the meteorology department says "we have fresh air"  (???)

Just when you don't take your camera with you and take videos or pictures wherever you go, all the opportunities seem to be showing up in your face wherever you go and you feel paralyzed. However, after this weather we had a "nice" weather back. Literally nice weather with 17°C (62.6F), like some sweet morning in November here. Our weather does not need a meteorologist, but a fortuneteller.

At home, I haven't been doing much, but only taking pictures of the seashells I've collected in the past few weeks, and working on my own project of "peeling" objects (those are shells from the time being). However, I've worked with some pictures from my visit to the Scientific Center a bit and worked on singular shots for my seashells as well.

Leopard Whipray

Unfortunately, those images from the Scientific Center that were taken at maximum ISO (12800) were so hard to clean and somehow were not so appealing. Even the dedicated profiles for Canon EOS 7D that were made ready for NeatImage at this ISO, were not enough to clean the noise. Mostly, they would clean the luminance grain noise, yet there is a hard-to-remove chrominance noise (color spots) that were desaturated a bit, but not removed completely. Beside, the image looks so soft with lot of details lost.

To over come the chrominance noise in this shark shot, which strangely were mostly concentrated on the outside of the shark's body, I've decided to turn everything into Black and White and keep and shark in color. ProPhoto space seem to push such noise type further and cause a problem for any filtration effort!

Nevertheless, there are some points even with ISO12800 where I worked out some HDR images just for fun. They are bad enough with all the noise, thus I didn't care much about how I tone-map them, so I worked less on giving a realistic look for such an image...

The Aquarium of the Scientific Center
People didn't like this image because of the effect or the high noise level, yet what I believe, noise level should not stop you from using your image in any way possible.

 On the shells side now, I've began using my new self-made turntable mounted on the base of the Manfrotto SPH303. Giving some trials still on how to achieve the peeling look for my shells; trying various shells for now. Unfortunately, the process is tiresome. My first trial was with a shell of highly irregular conical shape (unfortunately I don't have a picture at hand at the moment) that comes with spikes. The first trial was set on 20 degrees for each shot (and the lighting provided was on onside). Because of the spiral conical shape, seems that the peeling process (adding layers with layer masks; eliminating the unneeded parts) was going in a wrong way. Probably for such shapes the peeling must go in circles around the center and not sideways! However, I stopped working with this project and moved to taking pictures of single shells:

My current settings after moving from one side of the room (to my right here) to this position where I stuck Velcro on the wall and on the white board to ease putting on and removing. The desk lamp is used to eliminate the object from the top giving some hard shadow on the turntable but at this point it's not so important. With a macro lens and flash unit, and setting WB: tungsten or fluorescent to balance the hot yellow color of the flood light from the desk lamp, the background looks blue rather than white. Probably, I should stick the turntable to the white board next time.

Ringed shell. I wonder if these rings tell the age of the shell itself?

As you can see, I've been using the turntable itself as a stand post for such shots without using the softbox that I've made at home. The softbox makes soft shadows for your objects and you can surround it majorly with 4 light sources (sides, top and front) and it would give a nice white background. I don't mind the hard shadow here though since it's at the bottom of the object. I fix my objects standing like that with a little piece of children playing clay (maybe you can see a bit of it in the image above at the bottom right side under the shell).

One problem here as well, is the center of the circle which I have to appoint precisely. Common problem I've been facing now while rotating my object is having the object at offset from the center relative to the camera's lens. In macro shots, everything becomes so so sensitive! Too many things to take care for, and shots are better be taken with Live-View on (to avoid the mirror flipping and shaking the camera) and of course, a remote (wireless) is a must. 

Later, I've picked another small conical shell but not spiral this time, and more regular in shape (horizontal-wise at least), and this time I've set the base to rotate at 10 degrees instead of 20, which means 36 shots for a complete circle. Done this already (in RAW format) with flash unit and flood light on top, and it was a tiresome process as it is. The flash unit (580EX II) got tired of me and needed a change of battery (but I didn't change the battery as I preferred to wait longer for the recharge than change anything in the configuration). The process now is on the go and started it already, but as I said, it is a long process and a tiresome one, and the picture is not ready as I'm typing this. My panorama programs didn't help much in identifying the type of movement here so I have to do everything manually. With 36 shots for the whole body, minus the top and bottom), the transition of rotating shell was smoother (you can see that by moving through the images quickly and you will see the shell as if it is rotating), and also I've dedicated 18 shots to be "welded" on the right of the basic starting image, and 17 on its left, making the starting point in the center. Although the shots are in RAW (18MP) but I preferred to reduce the resolution and work with TIFF-16bit instead. It is slow already like that, so imagine working with 36 RAW files stacked as layers, as they are 18MP!!!

Ayvarith-wise now. I have to admit I was lazy and awkward toward this project but it was for the sake of working with my camera! Anyway, I've removed the "private" status from the Ayvarith transliteration of Alexander's story in WDC. I was planning to remove this status when I add the vocal sample for a narration in Ayvarith for the whole set, but I think this can be done later, as the transliteration is almost ready and the preface is ready with vocal samples to show how some letters are pronounced. You can check it for yourself here. The Ayvarith transliteration is dedicated as a folder by itself. I'm trying to find some time to record the narration, but with this weather and these jams, my body has a swing of moods...

I'm going to post this now and get back to my Italian music session. It's nice to get away from the English a bit now and then...

3D Hunting...

Been a lazy week on one frontier and a busy one on the other. Lazy in the sense of my own projects, and sort of my photography, and busy with my work place somehow. I've been roaming around looking for chances to get a scholarship, again. I stopped looking for some time because many events took place and I was not in the mind for it but I'm in again and trying to find my way around. Still, there are many places to ask in. All of that gave me no time to write a poem, which is annoying really because I do have a sort of a wave of feelings, but yet, I can't write them down for the lack of words. A line or two and that's it. Also, been looking around for some other host to build my Ayvarith page, since the discovery I've made, which is: Fortunecity, sucks. I can barely upload some images there; no audio, no clips, no MOV files and probably no SWF (flash) files as well? The thing is that publishing the Ayvarith transliteration of Alexander's story online via WDC is on hold, because I need to add these vocal samples, which I need to dumb online first. I'm still looking and didn't make a decision yet. There are lot of webpage-building websites with ready-made templates, but those don't suit my needs.

Grabbing my backpack wherever I go, trying to get my eyes on anything I can catch, but with not much to be done. I'm trying to get back to the 3D realm, that time when I used to take pictures and convert them into 3D anaglyph (red-blue) images, but so far, I couldn't find good subjects. Only once though, with that scene from the beach...

3D Infinitum

I'm on the look for more appropriate subjects, and taking my backpack of cameras and lenses and the tripod wherever I go almost, even to work. At home too, trying to come up with something, but the trials aren't always successful. Not successful in the means of having my own satisfaction with it. You can tell I spend so much time alone and have nothing to do, yet my mind is in turmoil and barely able to do anything. It's like being paralyzed "ethically". However, doing more trials with my Tamron 70-300mm telephoto macro lens, I remembered that I do have an old collection of seashells that I've collected from the nearby shore, and it was a thought, long time ago, to take a close-up for some of them. I had to settle it down somehow (and it hard, because I didn't want to use glues) and went on shooting (with brackets of course)...

Seashell

I had to stay away from my self-made softbox for about one meter or so (~3 ft), and I think the zooming factor is good, having in mind that the shell is actually the size of my thumbnail (or less). One of the hardest things in the image above to settle down, was the White Balance (WB). With HDR tone-mapping you can change the WB as you wish but also the original WB used plays a role, and I think the original was Daylight WB. I figured that Daylight WB is more flexible to change when doing tone-mapping after doing HDR. Having Tungsten or Fluorescent WBs (i.e. cool temperatures for the images) makes the original images bluish and when tone-mapped and changing the WB to something close to "hot colors," usually the images end up with a violet or purple hue that, most of the time, won't be suitable for the general mood of the image. However, doing this, will still require some extra work for boosting the contrast and tweaking the general temperature or fixing the color balance, and all done after tone-mapping in Photoshop. I tried to do some 3D effects here but, unfortunately, the fact that the subject is in a softbox and not much of an interesting background makes it really dull and useless to do it in a 3D anaglyph image.

How to do a 3D Anaglyph? 

Just some steps that you might want to try out to make these things, but remember it doesn't work all the time because it all depends on the composition of the image and also depends on the visual capabilities of the viewers themselves. Have in mind that you will need some editing software like Photoshop. I believe some other freeware stuff can do. So, here we go:

1. In this process you will need to take 2 images of the scene to mimic the human vision; one left-eye image and one right-eye image. You can do this by 2 cameras if you like, but for me I always go with one camera and after the first shot I would pan the camera (or rotate it around its body axis) for few (not much). This distance in few degrees is just to mimic the distance between the two eyes. You can as well simply, while standing in the same position and being stable, move the camera's viewfinder (if you are using it) from your left or right eye to the other eye and focus on the same subject. Remember, there should be one object at least that is the center of the focus in the image, because this point of focus is important for later process. Having this idea in mind, you can go around with your tripod if you like for more stability, if you like.
2. Now processing. You got your images correctly hopefully (and maybe you'd better be shooting in JPEG rather than RAW but the choice is yours). In Photoshop (or any other software) you should open your images and layer them one upon the other. You should mark carefully which one is for the right-eye and which one is for the left-eye. You can check for yourself easily as you notice the relation between the focus point and the background; things tend to shift to the right when viewing with the left-eye, and vice versa. Put the right image on top.
3. Reduce the transparency of the top (right-eye) layer to 50%, or to whatever suits your level of vision, and now drag your layer around to make the focus point coincide with the focus point in the lower layer. Remember, it is not necessary to make it 100% perfect, as there might be some difficulties coinciding the two foci. The major idea here is to make the distance between the two images as minimum in that particular area of the image (parallax error?), while neglecting (somehow) the rest of the image for the time being. Once this is done, get the transparency back to normal (100%).
4. Now, the setting is Right on top, and Left is below. Now take the Right image and suppress the RED component (I'm supposing you are working in RGB color system). This can be done in Photoshop by pressing Ctrl-L (or by using the menus to get to Levels command, or by adding an adjustment layer of Levels over the Right image). Once you get the dialogue box of "Levels", change the drop down menu from "RGB" to "Red". Now, move the White arrow at the bottom (not the one below the histogram which corresponds to highlights, but the lowest one) to the far left (or simply put "0" in the number box). Thus, you will have the black and white arrows all together in one place and your image will look bluish. Make a mind connection here: Right <=> Red channel. For me, I got the habit of using adjustment layers and I don't edit the images directly, thus whenever I use them in this case, I make sure I use the clipping (right click the adjustment layer itself and it's there). This will make sure that this effect will affect the layer just below the adjustment layer and nothing else. Just in case.
5. As you did with the Right image, you will do with the Left image below, but this time you have to suppress the Green and Blue channels, and your image will look reddish.
6. Change the blend mode of the topmost layer (Right image) to Screen. You image now should look something similar to what I've done above. Crop the excess on the sides as you wish, though I prefer you do it with respect to the aspect ratio between the height and width. To crop with respect to the aspect ratio of the image itself, pick up the crop tool and mark the whole area of the image. Then, move the corners as you wish but while pressing the SHIFT on your keyboard to ensure that the ratio is preserved.
7. After cropping and everything, your 3D image should be ready. Try it out and view it through the special glasses if you have any. Remember, you might want to try it more often to get some satisfaction and not every scene is capable of producing some astonishing results. To my experience, I think spherical objects have the potential of giving out great 3D view.

 On the beach still, trying to go out there specially in the times of low tide to fish for some chances. I was lucky one time which kind of sparked my mind on another purchase on the list of my endless dreams...

The Observing Heron

I was working on my monopod (because the tripod was fixed inside the car to take some videos while driving) and it was sort of flexible with me, with its 3 mini-legs expanded. The monopod was collapsed o its minimum height and using the full zoom of Tamron 70-300mm and switching to Macro focusing as well, I had some how a nice shot of this fella. I took so many images (of course not bracketed) trying to get everything i can from his own movement over the surface just before he flies away, and then I would sort them out back home. The weather was dusty and didn't help much in this, but at home I picked one image and did the "magic" to eliminate the yellowish hue and enlighten the body of the heron. Herons by the way are immigrants, but by time they somehow settled down in Kuwait. This is what I've been told by someone in the know. Despite the dust that day, HDR imaging somehow improved some images as well...

Infinitum II

Processing the previous image was not an easy task for the level of noise that was present with tone-mapping. This is one awkward point in doing HDRs. You have to develop some strategy to overcome this somehow and after all, several ways might not work at all. Been receiving some attacks on HDR images and that it is not a real photography, and I'm tired of explaining myself that my goal is doing something beautiful and HDR is merely a technique for me to extract as much details as possible out of the scene. Strangely, in the last image, I did things unconsciously. After I got back home I remembered the advice of Alain Briot in his book, when he talked about capturing interesting lines and shapes, and specially the S-curved lines.

Also, this short trip to the seashore in the last weekend made me find out a fact about the Tamron lens I have; it has a tendency to show some strong chromatic aberrations. Now, this is somehow contradicting my own belief that wide lenses are the ones that exhibits such phenomena the most. I've read somewhere that it's a common feature for wide lenses and fisheye lenses to have chromatic aberrations specially if the object is back-lit. You would find some thin lines of red (or magenta), blue, cyan and yellow around the edges of the object. This is exactly what showed up in some of the images I've taken with this lens. Fixing it should not be hard task but when HDR technique is involved, it is worse than solving an equation in physics. HDR, and because you are combining several exposures, tends to somehow intensify the effect of the aberration and adding some contrast. Hence, it's hard sometimes to remove it with the usual "lens correction" procedures provided in Photoshop or any other software. I did go around it sometimes, but still it is not a practical mean nor successful all the time. One of these procedures is using the Hue/Saturation adjustment layers to suppress the magenta or cyan channels and confine these changes to the edges of subjects in the image. Photomatix, my favorite so far, got an option to remove chromatic aberrations from the RAW files as it combines them into HDR, but this option seems not quite the useful one here. It doesn't work most of the times. Maybe the best thing is to give up the RAW (and the stored dynamic range in them) and fix these aberrations in RAW then convert the images to TIFF16 format, and start the HDR from that point. One of the ways to go around this, is what I did with this image. Simply, converted to Black and White:

Terra Algae

The sun reflection from the water surface was strong even in a dusty haze, making all kind of aberrations around the edges of the rocks on the ground. Final solution I had in my mind is to give up colors and go Black and White! So much green in the image anyway and it sort of lost its magic in my eyes.

Currently, I've been worried about my tendency to be an "addict" to chocolate. Now with my life style like a single guy trying to do his own food most of the time, I do tend to eat some snacks rather than "real" food, and most of the time, it is chocolate. Well, I do change to candies but that's seldom. It's chocolate all the way. To be more specific in fact, it's only one brand that brings me joy: Kinder Bueno! Can't have my enough of that!

I do cook sometimes, say thanks to the microwave. The guy who invented the microwave got to be

a single guy as well. Turkey sausage wrapped in egg (stuffed with cheese, tartar sauce and cucumber with some spices). 

All done in microwave.

Majorly now, all what I have in a day is one meal, and the rest is just bits of this and that and some snacks. In fact, once I get back home I don't feel like eating (probably because I've already filled myself with chocolate and candies in my work place). Most of the time this one meal is a dinner; be it a simple corn flakes dish, or some cooking I do when I have the mood for it, or simply and order or a take-away.

It's Thursday now, TGIT. Hopefully, I will try to take a second try on shooting the Chinese restaurant from the inside as I was planning. Few days ago I was there as early as 7 P.m. just to reserve that corner of the restaurant for my work but unfortunately, there were already some people there in that specific corner. Maybe I should work late, despite the fact that the owner wanted to show the dishes on the table to add "life" to the image. However, that night I got several shot from several angles for the restaurant from outside, but none was what I aimed for. The long exposure time and the large f-number (small aperture) made it hard all the way.

Golden Chopsticks

Although I used somehow a small aperture to make a star effect as you see, but seems my choice was wrong. I think the star shine effect is not good in such a scene, or maybe it was way too hard on the scene. As you can see, the cars didn't spare me here. Some of them even had the mind to come forth and then go on reverse in front of te camera (the big white beam on the left). Unintentionally, the speed-lights covered the number plates of the cars in some nice effect. I don't want to expose these numbers to the public!

I took images with my 15mm fisheye and 18-55mm, but this one was the most appealing to me so far despite all the wrong-doing in it. It's taken with the fisheye, as you can tell from the edges of the image. The WB here is set to Tungsten, but the scene didn't go bluish in an ugly way. I should memorize this lesson now as I might as well use it for shooting inside, which has a reddish atmosphere as well. The WB here emphasized the bluish trend for the spot lights at the top while keeping the main building within its hot colors atmosphere (reducing the red a bit of course). Next time, I will try using a larger aperture (small f-number) for fast shutter speed, and to avoid the star shine effect which is not appealing here. I hope I can do this tonight.

I leave you now, with two videos. First one is one of my trials with time-lapse photography, with me going back home from work. The camera was programmed to take a shot every 2 seconds, and to minimize sizes and make sure that the memory card will take it all, I've changed the settings to shooting in medium sized JPEGs only. In the traffic jam who knows when will you be reaching home!?

The FPS (frames per second) here is 10, and I made several versions to check for the speed, and probably this is the best one. At the end it gets fussy because of turning around like a bee trying to reach home from the other end of the street. However, the generally quality is reduced of course for web purposes.

Secondly, I leave you with something I got addicted to at the moment. Old stuff (relatively), but addiction-trigger, to me...