Şaşırmış...

I can't help but say, it is one weird week that has just passed me by. Despite the fact that I've stopped my fasting, in hope to continue by the beginning of the month of Sha`ban, yet I did feel tired excessively with some weak body and dryness most of time - talk about acting as a sponge.
On the other hand I was able to work with my camera just a little bit. I've made up ideas already from brainstorming my mind with the help of some of the websites I've mentioned in the previous blog post, but not all of these ideas are technically available for the time being, or maybe too much time consuming with my hectic schedule in the meantime. Mom is still taking much of my week, and despite some previous talk from the doctors that the dialysis time might be reduced in the near future, I can't see any of that happening soon. With this load, some problems from home are added. They usually call them Domestic Problems but in my case I'd rather call them a Jungle Survival game by keeping my dignity in this house. I've already started picking Mom to and from the dialysis center (before that I used to pick her from there only) because Mom is not happy to go with my sister in the morning in the traffic jam rush. Thus, she decided to go with me from now on in very early hours in the morning to avoid the high blood pressure that my sister causes her on the way to there.

Die geltanische Sprache

I hope you don't mind the German subtitle for this topic here. I'm not a German speaker myself but probably this is how I would write the adjective geltanische if I was German!
However, during this week I didn't put much thoughts on paper with Geltani, but mostly it was some work of thoughts in the mind and having mental notes about some drawings of the characters. In the meantime I'm having problems assigning phonic values for some of the characters. I didn't go through the syllabary system all over again as I've promised myself I would do this week. The major change in the syllabary system is about some characters' drawings and not the phonic values given already.
The language do sound, at the current time, a mix of an Arabic base with an English flavor in terms of general aspects; mainly when it comes to the feminine and masculine cases. However, I do have to work on the phonic values for lot of the combination of characters together and the situation is even more critical when it comes to diphthongs, that is the combinations of 2 vowels, or we might even face cases of more than two!
I'm trying to systemize the combinations of phonetics but I'm not sure yet that this would work. The only thing that would prove the usefulness of such approach is the excessive trial and error, with a pen and paper!

Silhouette

In the past few weeks I was trying hard to take a silhouette shot of my brothers depicting the evening life in a typical weekend here. Yet, despite its simplicity, I had to abandon the idea mainly for the cooperative attitude from the family members (and please note the sarcasm here) and then the unavailability of some suitable background or backdrop to represent the idea of an evening gathering. Majorly, I was trying to use some features in the guests room but this was a bad idea because it did cast a shadow and that complicates the matter further raising the necessity of using two speedlites (or even more) rather than one as I was planning. With more speedlites, then you'd need more light modifiers, and in my case, I don't have plenty of those.

Silhouetted Mother I
Canon EF 50mm, f/11, 250^-1sec, ISO200.

Thus, just to keep up with the idea, I've decided to use Mom as a model! Yes, she's more flexible and the idea is simple enough and doesn't need much acting like I had in my mind when I was planning the silhouette shots with my brothers. It is just a profile or an outline of the head. To do this, I've simply placed Mom in front of a green curtain that's already there, and of course I had to use a green gel on my 580EX II speedlite, otherwise the color would get messed up; adding to that a reflector on the speedlite to spread the light to a larger area with a soft approach.

Silhouetted Mother II
Canon EF 50mm, f/18, 250^-1sec, ISO200.

I've taken here two shots (close up and further away) just in case (and I was thinking somehow in a marketing venue as such images can fit into the stock sites for specific topics). Communicating with my speedlite, however, had to be done remotely without a cable, which means I'm stuck with the sync speed (250^-1

sec). The speed was fine however as the lights in the room were not too strong and not so demanding to be killed out. The only change between the several shots was the aperture and this is how I controlled the intensity of the speedlite reflecting off the curtain. I don't quite remember why I've fixed the ISO to 200, but probably I've forgot it like that from the previous session! The noise level after all is not quite dramatic and was easy to smooth out, specially with such style of images not having so many colors.

Freeze Me!

Few days later after doing the silhouette shots of Mom, I headed to do another shot that I've been thinking of for some time and trust me if I say, I had to force myself and my mood to do so! The sole subject of this experiment was a glass vase brought to me as part of a bouquet by the group when Mom was still in the hospital back in March.

Pouring Down
Tamron 70-300mm @92mm,
f/16, 5000^-1sec,
ISO1000.

I have to say that the vase is really seductive for many experiment, but the preparations to do such experiments is really exhaustive to myself, specially when preparing the props. The fact that my older sister wanted this vase too, made me do something, anything, just before the vase is taken away!
I've placed the vase on a table which has a glass surface in the center and placed my 430EXII speedlite below the glass. In typical situation I would actually place the speedlite light on the sides but I just wanted to do this experiment here, specially with the hardships involved because light is refracted through the glass table before reaching the subject. I've placed a white screen as a backdrop and in the beginning I've placed 2 black boards on the side (to emphasize the edges of the glass in a bright scene), but then however I've realized they are not necessary.
If you see the info in Pouring Down, you can see that I've used a telephoto lens (Tamron) while the shutter speed is 5000^-1sec; quite faster than the sync speed. Thus, a cable is required to control the speedlite but with a telephoto lens, I need some distance away from the vase. In this case, I've used the Vello cable I have (which extends only 2 meters, hardly) and connected it to the 580EXII to control the 430EXII and enable me to use high shutter speeds above the sync speed. This is in case you were wondering why I did use 430EXII under the table in the first place and not the 580EXII. In the beginning, the master speedlite (580EXII) was turned off and it was set to control the 430EXII only, but then I've decided to turn it out and help me with the front little bit. It did make a little enhancement though and probably not a big deal, but I've kept it on.

There were many shots to test the light first and settle down with a certain type of lighting. I've made some light patterns because of the refraction that would look nice otherwise, except that I needed a plain background in this situation. After all is set, I added some dishes soap inside (you would think it's beer!) and set up the motion trigger. This is my first time to use the motion trigger. I have to say here that it is bulky and not quite the easy-to-handle thing. The motion sensor (with a long cable from the trigger body to the vase) was not easy to be placed to track the motion of water that I was going to pour down. How ironic it was when it triggers my body movement when I was going to the vase, but as I move my hand to pour down the water into the vase the trigger, sometimes, wouldn't respond. After some trial and error, I've finally made something right.

One of the failed trials at 1000^-1sec.
Notice the movement blur.
Click to enlarge.

You might think about the high ISO here? Well, as I was trying to pour water down I did capture some amazing water texture and movement, but unfortunately, most of them were blurry. I've realized then that 1000^-1sec shutter speed was not enough, and/or the depth of field is not deep enough. For this reason, I've poured down the water out of the vase (which was full after some trials) and filled it again with soap, and then worked again on fixing the light and this time with 2500^-1sec shutter speed, but I've changed my mind quickly and made it 5000^-1sec to ensure the freeze in motion. If I have more speedlites, I might as well have gone further than that speed! However, because of this change in aperture and shutter speed, I've realized that I must raise the ISO as well. The subject is here is not complicated and I thought that cleaning the noise in post-processing won't be such a hard task to do (specially that the experiment took a place in a cold environment and excessive chromatic sensor noise is unlikely).

Thoughts

After my experiment with the glass vase in Pouring Down, I think I've realized why I used to run away from using flashes or studio equipments in general and loved the free life of an architecture photographer, along side with doing abstracts and landscapes. Setting up a specific set, be it a tabletop or some studio is really an exhaustive process for me and by the time I sit behind the camera I think most of my power is gone already. More over, the fact that in architecture or landscape I deal usually with a light that is already there and all I have to do is control how it looks to my camera - this is quite easily done compared to the completely controlled environments of tabletop photography or studios in general where you have to imagine everything almost and do a lot of test shots before doing the actual work.
There is probably another problem that I have to put up with, but this time it is all inside my mind. This problem revolves around the processes in my mind and how my mind works in general when it comes to space orientation and organization. I'm not sure if this is a serious problem or not, or if it is somehow linked to a psychological problems as well or not, but I do have hard time setting up some configuration from scratch without having any clue about where to begin. Suppose you provide me with an empty room and some pieces of furniture and just ask me to arrange it for you freely - this is something that would be so hard to do from my side because I, simply, can't recognize what freely means in this context. I have to start up with something to build on my hypothesis of the space and how it should be arranged; say for example, how the sun rays get into the room from the window, if there is any, and how I would imagine some furniture pieces against such rays and then try to imagine a specific purpose or relation between the sun rays and the furniture pieces, and then and only then, my mind would start to arrange the objects.
Now, I reflect on such thoughts and how my processing goes with my photography projects and workflow. It seems it is pretty much the same, specially when it comes to tabletop and studio environments. I just can't make up my mind out of a free point in the space. Working with architecture is much easier when all I have to do is frame a previously configured set rather than do the whole thing by myself!

Finale

Source: Amazon

I'm still on reading my Lens Design book which far way too complicated than I thought and it is probably not so practical if I keep reading this without a practical trials or at least some visual aids to help me understand the mathematical formulations inside the book which describe many aspects about the lens (mainly the errors and aberrations aspects).
In the meantime, I've been active for a while on Instagram with all its hassle, but I'm lurking trying to catch photos of people (ahem, females) to edit. I didn't do such activities in a really long time now. Some people might thing that photoshopping or editing the photos is some kind of cheating, specially when it involves fixes. Well, I deal with art. Not all my edits are fixes in fact. Lot of them are simply artistic retouch and somehow a sway from reality at times. I feel the need to do such edits just because it endows my eyes with some beauty that I've been missing for a long time around me. One of the problems though in editing such images is that most of them are taken with phone camera (naturally) and the nature of the color space and the noise level is very questionable and vary significantly. I've seen great faces and great poses, with great facial features (mainly the eyes, I'm fond of those) but unfortunately, the low quality disturbs most of those, second comes the background or the nature of the light in the scene.
There are some ideas of ordering some new toys, but not sure what they will be exactly, but I'm still consulting my budget about this matter. Probably more details in next week's post, hopefully!

Strangely, I've been lately moved around following some foreign music, from Greek, to Uyghur, to Turkish and it keeps on rolling! I think I'm compensating for my inability to have a vacation and travel by listening to foreign music and dream; daydream, that is. Just like how it was in the old days when I was a kid, when my family used to visit only specific places, while I kept dreaming of the big world and couldn't see some of it until I reached 29 years old.
I'm living day to day, without really knowing what will happen the next day or what are my plans. Pressing hard to work my mind on photography projects yet the efforts are humble so far. Makes me ask myself more often, do people still got portions of their feelings, and does anyone out there who would really feel what burden I carry on my shoulders. Most likely, the answer is well-known and no need to state it. Einsamkeit ist ein Killer. Aber mit jemandem nicht versteht zu sein, das ist ein ewiger Folter.

Tatiana

 

Webbology...

Another week now without any success with my camera. But hey! at least I've tried my best with it! Well, maybe I will explain a bit about it later. In the meantime, I'm still coping with my disturbed sleeping schedule which drives me to more naps in the office (yes, in the office). On the other hand, I had my own trials with Geltani a bit, but I'm wondering when it is the proper time to publish this work?

Emergency

The family had to face some hard time last Thursday when Mom is said to have low blood pressure and shortly went into coma, or she might just have slept as she said, during the dialysis process. The doctors wanted her to be transported to the hospital ASAP but she told them that her son (me) is waiting outside. Thus, I had to drive her myself to there amid some crazy traffic. They got her into the observation room for a while and it wasn't till my sister arrived that I could leave the place. Later on, my sister called and said that everything is alright and they wanted to check her in for 2 or 3 more days but Mom and my sister refused and they got back home that same day. Talk about exhaustion all day and not being able to think of something to do. In fact, I tried to sleep most of that day, while headache stroke me later at night. Wondering how to even enjoy my weekend amid this turbulence.
The load had increased even more, with Mom preferring me to drive her to the dialysis center in an early time instead of my (freak) sister who used to go out late into the traffic jam and drives Mom's nerves into a panic status. And of course, I'm the one who picks her later from the dialysis center 4 to 5 hours later. I do have a family that I can depend on as it seems. Then everyone is wondering: why do you like to do things alone?

Dine-In

Saturday, it was the time for the dinner invitation that I've set up for the group members and some friends.  I can't hide my surprise and disappointment here, for the 19 guests who were initially invited, only 7 showed up. Imagine booking a whole restaurant for that night, to find yourself with such small number of people. I did take some photos but they are less than 10 probably and I didn't even bother processing them.
The invitation of ladies into this was another comical matter. Despite the fact that we used to gather in meetings and occasional gatherings in specific events (like the last week before Ramadhan), yet they found it embarrassing to gather with the guys in a restaurant to have dinner, even though it was possible (and I did) to separate the seats to accommodate males and females separately. When she heard the story, the owner of the restaurant laughed and wondered about such a strange mentality.

Lingua Geltani

On the Geltani front I've decided to change the previous statement for occupations from (-ji) and (-jin) suffices to something a bit far away from Japanese. The masculine occupation title would be (-árí) wile the feminine would be (-ází). The Geltani character is the same still but for the feminine title it would be flipped upside down.

-árí

-ází

Been working some time as well on the possessive articles (my, our, ...etc), and they were a bit tricky for me actually and in the end I had to formulate special characters and wording with loose connection to the original pronouns. At this point, found myself changing the plural as well (which was a repetition of the last syllable). Possessive articles come at the end of the words just like in Arabic (and a bunch of other languages as well), but their characters are not related to the transformation from Arabic orthography as I've planned Geltani in general.

Click to Enlarge

As for the reformulation of the plural, it is generally looked up again because of the fact that some words would up with nasalization and it might be hard a bit to repeat a nasal sound at the end, thus I thought it might be better just to stick to the regular method: adding a fixed suffix, with special rule for words with nasalized ends:

• If the word ends with consonant (without counting the regular schwa) or if the word ends with a vowel, then the plural is -(a)no.
• If the word ends with a nasal, then the plural is -wo. 

And these were the basic rules that actually affected the make of possessive pronouns in the beginning. The character for plurals is not changed and it is the same for both cases, as it is supposed to be a logographic script and has nothing or let's say just a bit of connection to the spoken sounds. How ironic that I'm doing all of this without even fixing the final vocal values for syllables! I think this is a mistake, and probably a big one, but my work pace is slow and nothing to published so far. Thus, I have the freedom to change anything for the time being. All the news about Geltani come from this blog, I presume. On the other hand, I shall work a bit more on syllables for foreign words as I've stated before because some characters and their strokes seem to be not suitable or misleading (for me). Shall see about that later.

Laser Point

I've finally got me a laser pointer to do some experiments with the trigger. My initial happiness with the toy was not complete when I, out of curiosity, scrolled open the pointer to see what type of batteries it uses. BANG! Two out of three batteries jumped out of their place and got lost under the car's cushion. Took me some days to find a replacement in some watches stores (yes, I was that busy and that much tired).
I've looked up settings for laser triggers on the internet and they seem quite easy like what I had in my mind. However, doing the setup for my own simple idea, was not something simple at all!
I didn't take pictures for the setting I was trying to use, but generally my idea was to catch a flying sugar cube over a mug. Thus, the pointed (after some really hard work here) was fixed pointing to the trigger, with the laser line passing over the mug. The good news? The set did work indeed and the laser pointer with the trigger did indeed trigger the camera. Bad news? Here we go:

• I've used a paper clip to press the button of the pointer and keep the laser beam on at all times. Later, however, seems it is either the battery or maybe for the sake of safety, the beam became fainter and fainter, till finally switched off. To turn it on again I had to remove the clip and wait for some time and put it back again (and adjust the position of the pointer all over again to fall on the trigger's sensor). 
• All my trials didn't catch a flying cube. I've changed the height of the laser beam and made it higher but to no avail. Not sure if the problem was the high shutter speed (reached 8000^-1sec) or is it the delay in triggering. I have to add here that because of the long wire connecting the trigger to the camera, it probably does propose a significant delay in the process when the signal has to travel.
• The place was hot and I was sweating waterfalls!
• Lighting from the speedlites were just enough and I didn't want that type of lighting actually but this is the best I could do. It is such situation that makes me wish for a 3^rd speedlite.

On the other hand, I was still struggling with the make of a silhouette image for my brothers. Despite the fact the Redbull contest is over already, but I had the idea alive in my mind still. I was planning to take pictures of different poses and all in silhouettes. Yet, working with family members is always something I don't like because no one is really reliant. Well, I guess I have to forget about the idea and just do something else more (useful) for the time being. Probably make a silhouette profile of Mom? Just an idea.

Webbology

With me being like a grounded boy now and not having the ability to work much around my camera, beside of course the empty mind and the flying ideas out of this head because, as it seems, my brain has lost its field of gravity - because of all these matters, I've had the internet to look for solutions and inspirations as the only thing that might spark something in me.
I've found some plenty of websites with tips and so on, typical, but few of them did really help me through and just loved to share them here.

1. Creativity Games: This website will be used a lot in the near future. It has a random word generator and some other stuff related to words (and I think it expands further than just words, but I didn't go deeper). From time to time I would seek this website for some random words (8 to 12 words usually) and just stare them and try to make some connection between few words which, hopefully, later would be translated as an idea to photograph. There was some old website that I used long time to write poetry but unfortunately it's not available anymore and in that old website you would type some words and in some way by some algorithm the computer makes you connect words together. Anyway, this new website is completely automatic if I should say and the words are completely random. Beside the single word generator, many words can be produced at once (up to 8 words a time) and there are plenty of creativity games (duh! hence the website's name!) that ask you to force a connection between some words. Quite useful for writing processes I presume, or maybe for business as well.

Screen Shot (with the damn ads pixelized!)
Click to Enlarge

2. RANDOM.ORG: This website offers many random things. However, my interest was in random numbers. Why? These random numbers in combination with random words from the above mentioned website, makes me reduce the range of thoughts into some specific words only and from there I try to imagine some photographic project. For example, if I collected 12 random words from the website mentioned above, I would write them down in a specific pattern (let's say in 4 rows with 3 words in each), then ask RANDOM.ORG to give me random digits from 1 to 12. After collecting 3 random numbers (of course this is my choice, otherwise it's free!) I would go on the words from the list with these orders (the order can be vertically arranged or horizontally as well) and jot down these words and try to make up something out of them. I'm not expecting success in every session of course yet it is some way to start and to break the boredom around!

Screen Shot with the generator on the right side
Click to Enlarge

Brainstorming trial with the help of Random.org and CreativityGames.com
Click to Enlarge

3. LightingDiagrams: Generally, I was looking for something that would help me imagine the effect of lighting on location. Anyway, this website was cool enough to provide the ability to make a diagram (but without the effect of lighting on subjects). From there, after making the essential diagram, it can be exported then to some formats like JPG or PNG. Quite useful! And I was doing it all by myself in Photoshop!

Screen Shot
Click to Enlarge

Finale

Trying to break the routine around me and force myself into things I want and like to do, despite the limitations in my physical status. All of that is driving me to even lesser sleeping time and more exhaustion. It feels like if my world is falling apart and I, myself, am the only thing standing. Many people I had to stop thinking of depending on even. Partner and Love? That was forgotten long time ago and I guess no back to that anymore...
As for now, all what I'm going to do is rest a bit, and listen to some Greek Music, and keep dreaming of some vacation...

Is Cuma Liom.

Irritation. A general theme of this week. Every single day of it sounded like endless for one reason or another. I thought my sleeping pattern is scrambled because of the fasting I'm doing right now (when fasting you need to sleep to rest), but then, last Monday, I didn't fast, and yet I woke up 4:30 a.m., and I've remained awake up till 1:00 a.m. the next day! More than 12 hours, and I did not sleep in the afternoons.
I feel uneasy in my own skin. I just wish to escape everything, and my mind is the first of them all.
This week was hectic in terms of time management, and I was not able to do much with my vocalization project for Alexander's story. But I didn't leave it all anyway and few progress was made. I'm getting closer to finishing the whole thing. Just think of the plenty of time I would have when this is all over!

Business-wise, if I can call it so, I've been writing up a proposal letter for the Heritage Village in Failaka island, and I'm still polishing the letter. Some say it is good, and some suggested some editing, however, I've given the letter to my photography teacher to see how worthy is it.

Danach (After that)
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/22, 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, and just trying to give my life a bit of meaning via working with the camera, I had a trial for a long exposure. I was planning for this long exposure trial for some time since I didn't do them since winter time is over. However, I've met many setbacks and the only trial I could do is not to my own liking.
The beach area where the elevated place lies, and where I was planning to take the long exposure from, was a crowded place in the weekend. I had to go to that place twice in fact. When I saw the place was so crowded at 2 a.m. I've decided to cancel, but then I went on to check again after 4 a.m., around one hour before the sunrise. The place was fine, but some (annoying) people were still there. As you can see from the picture (large one, I didn't minimize it) the people left a ghosting effect on the beach's sand.
Not many trails were recorded as it was in the other areas in winter time, but merely two lines (probably one of them is Saturn).

Technology
Canon 100mm f/32 1/500

On the other hand, I keep my eyes wide open for any chances of anything of "meaning" around me. That's when I've glanced a chance for some silhouette just in front of me when I was waiting in my car, when I parked around the place where my flash workshop takes place. In fact, the first thing that made me notice this chance is the clouds. Clouds in summer? in Kuwait? It's either a dream, or a joke, but a reality, and in front of me? It can't be! Needless to say that this area is not on the seaside where I usually shoot for the clouds. The sun was bright and harsh, and I've shot several shots of different speeds, in portrait and landscape, this is mainly to see the best speed for dark foreground and relatively bright or not-so-dark sky. The LCD is not a good tool to judge, so I decided to take several shots of different speeds. There had been a change in the WB too. Of course there were some editing for the RAW as well.

Communications

Going Crazy:

Well, it is not something new in fact (being a crazy already), but this time I've decided to take some extra mile. I've been fascinated, for a while, about the bathroom in my work place. Mainly, this is because of the checkered tiles (specially when the bathroom is cleaned and shiny!).

My Life!

It was indeed a challenge to have a panorama from that tiny place. The challenge was not only in the area (1x1 meter) that I have to work in, but also the fact that the shiny tiles can reflect my image in any direction. I thought, however, that it is best to work while keeping my body low. Another challenge was the timing to do this (and I surely needed more time than the regular panorama!).
For this panorama, I've decided to take some metering reading with my new light meter. Using the incident light method, I've started to point at my camera from different angles. I think I've made a mistake with this type of metering mainly because we have two light sources in the scene: the bathroom's light on top, and the outside light through the window. The difference between the two is great and the problems showed later on when merging into HDR and stitching the panorama together. It is one of the rare times when I try to work completely on (M)anual mode. I'm trying to adapt to this workflow slowly and to make my own decisions based on this method, because, simply, it gives complete control over the camera; provided that a good metering is done in the first place!

Toilette

The first flat version of the panorama was done just to check the erratic zones in the panorama (beside the nadir point of course which passed through several adjustments). Because of the metering problem mentioned above, a big portion of the wall on the right was technically bleached out and without any texture and patterns. With some change in the blending priority in PTGui, the effect was reduced, but not completely removed. It is a mistake to learn from anyway, and I can say the challenge was passed successfully; that is to work in such a small place like this!

Hello World!

There were several stitches (and a tunnel view that went wrong), however, I think I'm satisfied so far with what I've done. I was thinking of doing a QTVR out of the flat version, but up till writing this post, I didn't feel like doing it. The nadir point here got an extra challenge added: not much place for a logo! However, you can see there is some dark patch on the ground after a hard work of cloning.

The titles are kind of sarcastic. Call it a reflection on my own life and how things are turning around for me. I'm truly living a mess, and it looks like swimming against the current trying to settle everything down. It is a phase in my life where I don't feel a thing in the world in fact; no politics, no bullshit, not even a care for other people's feelings. I simply want to leave everyone, 'cause I know no one cares already...

Gushing and Jamming...

Not much in this week, except that I'm trying to somehow put down my camera for a while and have a bit of fun. Fun that is needed. The gene of traveling is hitting on my nerves again and I wish right now if I was somewhere on some tropical island with exotic scenery. I do miss Ireland so much.

I've been working on a regular pace with my vocalization project doing 4 verses everyday. The process is now going smoothly and fast rhymed. In the beginning there is something like a fear from the mic, but after few trials, everything becomes normal and the engine goes fast with vocalizing and editing. Hoping to increase the amount of verses done per day from 4 to 6. With such a pace, probably I would be over with this project before the end of June! If no sickness occurs that is, like last Monday. The recent portion done expands from 433 to 1008. Such a gap in one week that makes me... optimistic.

I've been working on some images from the the Scientific Center the past few days and trying to prepare a sort of a digital portfolio to show the management of the gift shop. Anyway, after some phone calls, seems they are not interested even before they see what I've got; all what was there is a promise of a phone call, and I know this usually means "back off".
As I was working on some of images, I've noticed some images in sequences that, with a little movement between one image and the next, inspired me to try out and do a 3D images out of them. They are included in the CD portfolio as well.

Chlidonias hybrida (?)

You can see the depth of the image for yourself, that is if you own a 3D glasses, by staring at the point where the legs of the bird meet the rock surface upon which it is standing. The first image encouraged me to look further for other sequences I've taken. I think the best sequence was for this bird, and it was unintentional of course. However, another chance somehow showed up with a shot of a fish (which I don't know its exact name).

3D Fish

This anaglyph (i.e. 3D image) is not as good as the previous one though, for some reasons. In the making of the 3D image, two images are needed with a slight tilt in the viewing angle, and the two images are then aligned at a certain point that would be the center of the focus. In the fish's image, this point was the head, which is not in center of the image. It gives some good depth when looking at the end, but a strong ghosting occurs at the tail because of the wide angle movement between the two slides.
These two images were enough to spark my hunger for more 3D images and experiments. I just need the proper environment for now.

Nirvana Penguin

There were some images that I did adjust some aspects for, like the Nirvana Penguin, where I added an additional blur to the penguin of the right, to make the eye concentrate more on the other penguin.
But there are other disappointments; some big ones. The panorama that was supposed to be a major one, that is the one for the main tank in the Scientific Center, did not turn well with lot of smudging points. Such smudging points usually occur because of some high differences in exposures between various areas under the stitch. However, this panorama is a single-shot panorama (i.e. not a HDR one) and probably, adding to this reason, the movement in some scenes added to the confusion. Trying to fix it in the stitcher itself failed, and definitely not a good idea to fix it in Photoshop.
 On the other hand, there was a good, to some extent, panorama that I had some hopes for.

Corridor Silhouette

I was hesitating as whether I should stitch single shots, or do it in HDR. However, after mingling a bit with the single-shot panorama, I've decided to go on with the HDR option since it gives more control over the light. I had some portions cropped from the left and right to centralize the silhouette (I hope the lady won't mind me taking her picture!). Many adjustment layers were added to emphasize the silhouette (which was lighter) and add some contrast and enhance the level of other lights in the scene. Another area benefited from the HDR technique is the topmost portion (the ceiling) which was completely black with no details showing.

Greenhouse (LP)

Beside the images above, I've added some projections of the same panorama of the Greenhouse (as I call it so) and other panoramas for the outside portion of the Scientific Center. However, up till this post is written, not all images (single shots that is) that were taken that day were explored still.
Maybe one of the significant discoveries if I should say is the interesting look made up by the Full-Frame projection for the panorama of the outside portion. This projection is seldom used, and I've realized now that it just mimics the effect of an extreme wide angle lens (say, sunnex lens) on a full-frame sensor. I can say it is a new artistic consideration to be considered now whenever I do panoramas.

Outside (Full-Frame)

Another discovery is that, what I used to call a Wide-View projection and spend few minutes adjusting the angles for a proper view (starting out from Little Planet projection), it is called, simply, the Stereo projection which is implemented in the software itself already. However, that doesn't mean we should leave it at that, but certainly there are some changes in the viewing angle after all. It is such an expansion in the viewing horizon for any panorama that I would do in the future that makes a gush of feeling and a mix up of emotions; think of it: Every projection yields a specific feeling!!!

However, the Outside panorama gave me some hard time with the nadir as usual and the patching or cloning process was not to my liking but I guess it is the best I can do for now; and no there was no chance I would use other techniques to capture the nadir point. The nadir point in the previous panorama, The Greenhouse, was relatively easy to be fixed for the nature of the ground itself which was almost plain.
Ironically, despite all these troubles with the nadir, more or less, the stitching and linking the images together went smoothly and very well. I seldom stitch such easily-done panoramas! This anyway encouraged me to do a QTVR though I didn't have any plans for it.

QTVRs

Sometimes, doing QTVRs is just about what kind of convention we have in mind prior to the beginning of the work. I did spend some time thinking about it myself and I've asked: Why would someone want to look to the ground? What's so interesting about it? Is it really worthwhile to take all this hardships to snap a shot for the nadir point in whatever method?
After all, I've realized that only in rare occasions, the nadir point is that important. In most cases, just like the coming two QTVRs below, the nadir points are not that important and do not add a significant texture to the whole scene; since they resemble the ground itself which is viewable from different points of view. Only in rare occasions as I've mentioned above, the nadir point is important, like when the tripod is placed on top if a textured tiles cluster and the design is important because it has a significant look and view.

Some logo can be added to the QTVR process in the place of the nadir point, in case of authenticity is required of course, but if that is not even required, the QTVR can be simply done with limiting the vertical viewing angle. If you think about it, it is not only more practical, but also more reasonable and realistic! People do not walk and stare at their feet while they walk all the time, do they? This said, however, it is better to stitch a nadir slide because it has some portions of the background on the sides of the tripod head that would show up. After that, we can limit the view while making the QTVR. The resulting image would be a small circle at -90 that don't add much to the whole wonder of the QTVR viewing, thus it is removed by limiting the vertical viewing angle. In my case, the vertical range would be typically set from +90 degrees down to -60 to -80 degrees.






The quality in the small versions are not quite good as it is in the large versions of course. In the previous QTVR I've converted a whole panorama with the nadir point being cloned out. Since the original image was also intended to be shown, it has my watermark as it is.
In my second QTVR, however, the nadir point was more critical and hence I've limited the tilt (vertical view) to the range of +90 to -70. The QTVR is smaller because there were issued with the clarity of the pixels, but such problem is not an issue with the original large version.






Well, it has been a busy week for now and I'm thinking of having some rest and play some games while continuing my vocalization. After my last phone call with KSC, and after being forgotten by the Marina Mall directors, I feel so tired of trying out to pronounce my name. I know it is not easy to start such a business trend specially in such a place where I live, but I need to gather myself little bit and have some fun. A fun that I didn't catch up with for a really long time....

Alexander 6, V120.

Feeling numb again. So numb that I can't do anything except of being idle in my best suit. Now I wish I did pack up some electronic books about photography into my flash memory and brought it with me here to read after finishing several books now, but thinking about a bit, even that wouldn't work for me today. I was out of work for like 3 hours for my car service and also checking my watch for repair. I needed to finish everything just before Ramadhan begins because it's going to be somehow a sluggish time to do the many things I need to do. With this weather, fasting in Ramadhan is indeed a big challenge, and even though I've used to fast alone for around 2 months in the past few months but Ramadhan and the change of times for almost everything (work, shops ...etc), makes it a big deal to go through it all. The feel of hunger or thirst is nothing really; not to me. People are the big problem in Ramadhan, and specially if they are smokers and out of their nerves.

Been working yesterday again with my beach panorama and, thanks to my absent mind, I've lost the file that I've already created when I saved a small version of the file over the same name. Hence, I had to do the job all over again with the original HDR file which didn't go exactly the same, specially with the cropped portion.

First Version

Second Version

Well, after all I believe the second version is better than the first. The cropping is more organized in the second and also I tried my best not to oversaturate the blues and yet keep them interesting as much as possible. After all is done wuth the hue and saturation layers and fixing the blues and the reds (and/or magenta as well), I worked on dodging the sky little bit to make it smoother and going well together. As you can see from the first version which was to be worked upon again, the sky has dark areas in the middle caused by difference of lights as I was doing the panorama, and the sun rising high faster than my pace. The dodging, though, should not be simply smooth so much, or as I think, it's going to be dull and not so interesting. That's why there are thin dark lines in between that I didn't work on removing them even though I can; to add more motion to it.

It's humid now AGAIN which gets on my nerves, but I've noticed that in the early morning, the sky is having a weird composition; clear sky, no clouds at all, except where the sun is where you can the sun light pass through the clouds. Like if the sun was a magnet for clouds. Interesting view that I've been observing for 2 days now, but I wish I can settle my mind on some location to shoot that view. With my work pace and time, it's hard to be done almost any where, except in the busy streets (which are empty a bit busy at the time I go to work). I don't want any more troubles with cops just now. I have my own load.

I received some positive reviews (well, not completely positive of course) for my poem (or lyrics) 1945. I'm happy that I got my feelings through it, even though I didn't live that era. Being idle today made me think of writing something indeed, but my strength was leaking like water through mesh because of the heat outside and all that time I spent outside. There was no time to concentrate on my feelings, but rather I spent the rest of the time thinking how can I get myself cooler!
And now it feels like no one understands...


__________

2857. Alexander fell on his knees to the ground with no power
2858. the melancholy attacked him severely for the deeds of his men
2859. Agdalán passed his hand over his head like a father does
2860. and this he said to Alexander: raise up O dear, you did it
2861. Alexander looked up to Agdalán with heavy eyes and said
2862. "all what I did is mischief across the lands and wars,
2863. I wandered this world to let people know God,
2864. but then I found out that my loyals did not know Him"
2865. Agdalán smiled and said: but you did the commands already,
2866. you should be proud for you happen to do what none done,
2867. if people are to be judged for the mistakes of other people,
2868. or if the son should be judged for the sin of his father,
2869. and the daughter would be stoned for a sin from her mother,
2870. if all of that was to hold true and a law for life,
2871. then who shall be living on Daynur, or Uhir Daynur?
2872. Alexander then stood up again with hard movement
2873. he felt no power in his body to do anything he desires
2874. then Agdalán said: go and take care of your Cadid,
2875. we will talk about some of the matters later on dear
2876. thus Alexander went to check his Cadid who got better
2877. he passed his hand over the head of the horned Cadid
2878. and while doing so, he sang a song he learned from his mother
2879. then this he said: now my friend, no one is out there,
2880. but a tired man like me, and a loyal Cadid like you

Alexander 6, V119.

Well, finished almost all the books at hand now, and nothing to pass my day with except of surfing, music and thinking of something to do with my webpage. I thought of adding one my photos into the webpage design but changed my mind. There is a logo already for Ayvarith and I will put it as a background. The thing that stops me from proceeding now is my ambition to include voice clips in between the webpages to let people hear how Ayvarith sounds, but in the same time I want the design to be plain and simple. This is why I wanted to avoid doing it by Flash in the first place. Flash is a time-consuming venture for someone like me who needs to read tutorials just to go through and experiment several times to do exactly what is needed.

My trials now to print some photos on the newly-purchased glossy papers had sort of failed, because the ink in my printer was over, and the prints I've made (4 photos on 2 pages) sounded more like smudged. I have a spare ink cartridges, but I'm afraid that this smudge effect was not because of the ink level being low, but mainly because of the paper quality itself. I'm not so sure how to solve this problem, but the least I can do so far is just to replace the cartridges and try my luck out. The images were large as well, with 2 images being in one A4 paper, thus I think I will shrink them to fit in 4 images in just one page. I think this is more reasonable that way.

Been working a little with the panorama I took back last Friday again and trying to figure out a way to over come the many glitches in it. Finally, I came up with some solution that sort of solved a major problem concerning the light difference on the scene caused by the sun raising so fast while my workflow was so slow.

The Beach Silhouette (Unfinished)

As you can see it is another silhouette image, and I tried hard to make it that way. Because the trees and branches made really no interesting colors or ventures in the image itself. The main problem was in the sands; some of it were dark (to the left) and the rest was light (to the right), and despite my effort to neglect the HDR approach and stitch several single brackets together of difference exposures just to balance the scene, but all was to fail. Also, I tried to manipulate the HDR file by using Exposure adjustment layer and darkening the light part of the scene on the right, but it was hard to be done and time-consuming as well (and sight consuming too!) because of the many delicate corners. Finally, I've figured out that since the image is almost in a square shape (not perfectly square anyway) maybe it is better to crop the lower part (and sacrificing the base of the shed on the right) to remove a big portion of that light sand. Also, that got me rid of the trash and stones that were under and around the shed. There is some difference in luminance in the sky, but I'm reluctant to fix this and make it all under one exposure (with dodge tool) or just keep it like that as a matter of color play. I can't decide yet. 

Despite the fact that it was an HDR image, I really didn't feel the need to "tone-map" it within the typical way. The file was simply manipulated by adjustment layers in 32-bit status and then converted to 16-bit with minimum manual tone-mapping as possible (some exposure and gamma manipulation without using the adaptive approach). I saved a version of this image as TIFF-16bit for later work of course, since it is not finished yet and needs some cleaning and some sharpening, and to remove some unwanted objects still. Here, I think it is important to know what we want from an image. In many occasions in fact, I would just open this image up in photomatix and go on playing with my sliders until I have to kind of impressive effect. But here the situation was different. I wanted a silhouette effect with a colorful sunrise sky, and that's it. This approach only, saved me time on tone-mapping like endlessly arriving to some satisfaction.

Speaking again now about TIFF 16-bit format, and after reading Alain Briot's book Mastering Photographic Composition, Creativity, and Personal Style, it seems that I've been doing something wrong all that time. Alain opened my eyes to the fact that I must "document" or keep and archive of my images. That is, finalized images after processing.

The story stems from my typical workflow; load RAW files, combine HDRs, convert to 16bit with tone-mapping, add little adjustments then convert to 8bit and save as JPGs (large and small if necessary). I think this flow is wrong. I should keep a single TIFF 16-bit file and FROM that file, I should be producing many versions in many formats (usually lower 8bit JPEGs) as I wish. Because TIFF 16-bit are the higher in resolution and color quality (naturally!), thus, they must be the base. Before this time I used to (frequently) clean my harddisk of the TIFF files that I've used in the middle of my workflow. This was mainly because of my aim to produce JPEGs rather than TIFFs with higher resolution, to upload into stock sites for sale. They don't accept TIFFs and some of them accept other 16-bit formats (such as PNG or PSD) but for vector images only. HDR and OpenEXR files I do delete from time to time but not as frequent. Sometimes I just keep them specially if they were part of a panorama. The question now is, what shall I do with JPEG files? Shall I keep them like that to take space, or delete them after uploading (which doesn't sound good either)? I can't decide yet. Most probably, I'm going to keep all.

I leave you now with one song, and I just like it so...

__________

2833. Alexander stared at the mirror curiously and carefully
2834. then Agdalán touched the mirror gently with his fingers
2835. and the image on the mirror changed slowly and faded
2836. then new images started to come over the mirror slowly
2837. fierce, violence, blood, all was fast in the eyes of Alexander
2838. he raised his voice and asked Agdalán: what is that?!
2839. Agdalán remained silent and did not answer directly
2840. the images continued to show up and massacres appeared
2841. old people, children, women, all are the same under the sword
2842. Alexander then yelled: AGDALÁN! what is going on?!
2843. Agdalán answered slowly: what you see is Daynur now,
2844. this is what has been happening since you left them,
2845. one hundred years of scattering and painful memories,
2846. your generals divided the lands among themselves,
2847. then fought against each other to take up more and more,
2848. and no one to take care of these people now as you see,
2849. you can see that the human greed has no limitations
2850. Alexander then shouted: and Hoshea? what about it?!
2851. Agdalán touched the mirror again and the image changed
2852. it shows now the image of Hoshea after he left his men there
2853. destruction, massacres, and the great wall is knocked down
2854. all are done by the hands of his one hundred loyal followers
2855. thus Alexander struck his forehead so hard with his palm
2856. and this he said: woe to you, O mischievous Alexander!

Alexander 6, V109.

Well, it's a Monday, but I don't know how it will pass still. It sounds idle even though I spent the time working in the lab and reading the books I have here. Hope it remains "idle" till I get back home.
At home on the other hand, my camera had been idle since I've been working still with images taken from Ireland last year. Trying everything from Black and White and Sepia to the low saturation techniques, and trying to avoid HDR as much as possible. Yet still, I do use HDR in some images that I didn't add before.

The Ash Forks

Supposedly, these are ash trees going up higher than the rest of the trees. The original image was in pale blue hue in fact and I worked it out in that way after tone-mapping from HDR. As you can see here, there are some halos around the trees that I couldn't remove and I didn't want to use the heal brush tool or else, everything would be a mess. Tone-mapping (in Photomatix) is a fascinating tool, but there are things you would really need to control, and it is hard to so. Exposure Fusion technique on the other hand is nice and simple and avoids such halos, but sometimes it is hard to give out such vivid colors and control over light conditions. The image above was cropped to centralize the trees.

Another image, which I'm so pleased about, is what I consider my first silhuoette, or should I say, faux silhuoette.

The Crows Tree

This scene was taken in the very early hours of the morning, after listening to some crows in the air and looking left and right trying to spot them, I've found some of them hanging around this tree which was out of the backyard of the house where I stayed, The Waterfront. The sky was cloudy and bluish but not exactly in that manner. The heavy processing was mainly in the RAW converter before the image is out into Photoshop for the rest of the operations. The image was also cropped to centralize the tree. The hardest part maybe was to neutralize the green color in the leaves of the tree. I had to adjust the hue, luminance and saturation for the greens in the RAW converter to make it less apparent, and then with some contrast in Photoshop the effect was strengethened. What really bothers me is the "noisy" bulk of branches at the bottom which I couldn't crop with the rest. The image size won't help if I have done so.

Been somehow busy after all these editions. Uploading and today I was writing down the information for these images in stock sites. There had been other pictures other than the two mentioned above. The silhouette image though reminded me of one of my doodles that I used to do out of boredom. I think I need to get back to these doodles as they help out to release some stress I believe. I've been so concerned of my habits at work. Always shaking my leg even though I'm not in a hurry or even stressed about something! What does that mean? Why I'm doing this? I tried even to mke myself busy with something else just to stop this leg shake, but no use.

Bird from Hell. One of my doodles.

My hand is getting better now and my thumb is movable in some directions, but not completely of course. I keep on taking this medicine that makes me drowsy and need to sleep most of the time. In fact I feel it now at this moment while writing this. I will keep putting creams and taking this pill even after removing the bandage by now, until I don't know when!
I had/have the urge to listen to some of the old music today, and it made me feel a bit old, doesn't it do the same with you? Well, it does to me, specially that some of these songs were there back when I was 17 years old, and now I'm almost hitting 30...



__________

2593. the Cadid then climbed up the mount with a heavy body
2594. his body was injured severely by the claws of the creature
2595. but with hard moves the Cadid reached the top of the mount
2596. and he lied on the ground moaning and groaning with pain
2597. Alexander then started to try to cure his injuries
2598. he cut some pieces of his garments and tied the injuries
2599. then he got out a vessel and made the Cadid drink water
2600. it was dark and Alexander could hardly see around him
2601. except of some cave with yellowish flame out of it
2602. Alexander approached the cave trying to seek help
2603. after some steps forward he heard something at his back
2604. he looked back to see an old man with a long beard
2605. he was standing over the Cadid and covering his head
2606. his face was not obvious by the hood but only his beard
2607. he stood beside the head of the Cadid and stared at him
2608. then knelt down on his body while Alexander was watching
2609. the old man then started to pass his hands over the Cadid
2610. and the cuts into the Cadid's body started to weld completely
2611. Alexander with a slow and calm voice did say then
2612. "the Hermit?" he said
2613. the old man said: yes, O good man, and who are you?
2614. no man visited me in this deserted place for centuries
2615. Alexander replied: I am Alexander, the king of Caqobia
2616. and the man remained still staring closely at Alexander