Mentis Abstractivus...

Partially busy week. And I mean busy by sense of being busy at work itself. I'm conducting an experiment with my director (boss) in the field of gamma rays detection. Despite the simplicity of the experiment, but it takes so much time (around one hour and a half in good conditions). The first phase, for now, is supposed to take around 9 days, and I've done 5 already so far. Beside other things to do, I barely have some time to keep on reading. However, I'm almost finished with these books.

Fasting for more than two weeks now leaves my time restricted. I can't resist the afternoon's nap until the time to break the fast, and doing some work-out in hope to increase the vitality of my body, all of that leaves no time for some of my projects. Yes, my Ayvarith recording is still on hold as I don't know what are the problems I'm facing. I think I do have some mic-phobia too!
In a desperate move, however, I've been taking my camera with me to work for some days, and also tried to do some work with my sound trigger (that I've tried only once). Found myself, or should I say my brain, works more into the shapes. I really don't know if this is the effect of reading after George Barr or simply it is what you can find in modern architecture, but simply this is the catch of my eyes. I have to say I'm sort of glad for some of the catch.
One of those catches, again, got affective if I can say simply by cropping some portions of it. I said before that one of the illusions to make is to crop some areas that send the message of spatial recognition to the mind

Geometrical Play I

Geometrical Play II

Yes. The two images are similar with one little difference; one of them is turned upside down. Maybe you could tell right away which is which, but I can't judge myself because I'm the photographer and I already know which is which and it is imprinted in my mind now. However, one or two people did already miss it up and guessed wrong! I feel happy for the confusion here!

Geometrical Play (original scene)

As you can see here, I've just cropped the ground. I think that point is what translates the image to the viewer and missing it up would confuse the viewer. Anyway, this is my aim in the beginning! Creating some illusion, but I'm not sure how affective it is as I said before, because I'm the photographer here. My only testimonial is taken from two viewers only. To add a bit to the confusion, I've numbered the turned upside version with "I" and the correct one as "II". Minds sometimes adhere to the order of mathematics and take for granted that "I" must be the original, I guess?

On the other hand as well, one of the abstracts that caught my eyes is the shadows play; specifically by noon time. The beauty of such shadows is simply, lines. Maybe there are no curves, but there are lines in a zigzag shape. I have to say though, it was not so easy to catch these lines from a proper angle, adding to that, without a tripod.

Linear Shadows

The shadows here are taken with low angle (I had to go downstairs some steps and lower my back). After all, there is some cropping of course and a tilt. The tilt is aimed at making 2 horizontal lines in the middle of the image. Well, maybe I needed to do some skewing here. The image above is prepared from a single RAW. One of the things that I've had hard time with, is the White Balance (WB). This is not the first time anyway. Shooting in the sun is always problematic even if the camera is not directed to the sun's direction, as the WB can make the decision hard to make. I feel the image being dull because of the tiling's color, and making them blue (cold temperature) would interfere a bit with the shadows, so I decided to leave it at that point.
On another occasion though, I thought working with HDR would help me on making a better decision, but I was wrong, again. The problem gets even more complicated when tone-mapping the HDR and adjusting the color temperature from there.

Shadow Tilings (HDR)

Not only the WB was hard to make out here, but cropping was so as well, and the borders of the tilings were more pronounced in this angle. The cropping was a must here and not optional, as the space was narrow, and using a fisheye lens (or even my 18-55mm) would include portions of the stairs and the building. The zigzag lines also, somehow, corrupted the symmetry that I was working for. Maybe it is something to re-visit at another time.

My journey was still going on with my work place. Sometimes you just have to look and "think" instead of just looking. I work in this place 5 days a week, for more than 5 years now, and guess what? There are features that I've just "thought" about and decided to check what I can do with.

Looping Loop

The structure above is hung or welded above the ground, between the pillars and the wall (you could see the edges in the previous images). Merged with HDR, tried to add drama with colors by putting down the saturation for the highlights and putting up the saturation for the shadows (which are settled mainly in Reds). Pushing the Black level a bit to help with it but I think I didn't like it much. Crops existed here too and some perspective corrections as well. If it was in my ability to shoot this again, I would zoom in more and go up to its level and shoot, but I don't have this capability right now, as the structure is around 3 meters above the ground. Anyway, I do prefer the black and white version (and some people already liked it that way).

Looping Loop (BW)

Moving now to my second trial with my sound trigger. I have to say it wasn't successful as I wanted. The main failure here is that I couldn't make the flash shoot for one time only. Adjusting the sensitivity of the sound trigger didn't help either. The experiment was done with playing cards deck, but after all I got some shots that I did submit to some stock sites already.

To Gamble

No. I don't gamble. It's just a title here! The movement blur you see is caused by the several flash shots as the sound of the cards when they are shuffled keeps on triggering the circuit, and in a shutter speed of 15 seconds, lot of pictures taken in this trial were blown out. It was indeed a gamble in the dark, and guess I've lost it. I have to think of some way to limit the number of fires from the flash. There is, however, another idea for this sound trigger that still in the process of cooking yet in my mind.

Last night was a sleepless night. Literally. I really don't know how I'm typing this right now (Thursday) as I didn't sleep a bit all night and came to work (and worked in the lab for hours and then coming here to post something!). Anyway, despite the frustration, there was hope. A hope in an image I've totally forgot about (again!).

Visitors

The weird combination of factors in this image makes it special to me and to my surprise, just when I pulled down the Exposure slider in the RAW editor, all the details of the sky and the clouds started to appear and the scene turned silhouette. The sun was rising and the sky was blue, but yet, it looks more like a black and white. Not completely, but what I mean is, the saturation is low in the sky. The high ISO level of 12800 made me desperate about this image in the beginning. In the beginning means like, when I took it in the first time back in October 2010. With lowering the Exposure (and increasing the Recovery factor in the RAW editor) seems that the noise level (specially the chromatic noise) got reduced significantly. That does not mean completely vanish, not even by cleaning plugins like NeatImage, for example, but the good news here, it is a silhouette. You have no details in the subject's shape to worry about! so, you can go a bit of extreme with your cleaning tools!
The image reflects my mood indeed, without me planning it. All what I was doing back then was chasing some ravens or crows in the sky. Suddenly it touches your mood once you play with it for the sake of playing with it! This teaches me to always visit what I was desperate of before. Who knows what you can get out of these images that you might think they are useless snapshots. But the main factor here is, what's your mood is about?
Some friends commented already on it saying it looks like something from Hitchcock shows, and later reflecting on it, it does remind me of The Lost Crown and Jonathan Boakes! I think I will print this one and see how it is. I'm sure some websites did reject it already for the noise level still. Oh well...

It's weekend. Finally. Guess what? My friend is inviting me for dinner for some occasion he had. Well, the bad news is... I wish I didn't eat the whole week!!!

Dear Camera, See You Later...

ayħav húþ ğašar mí e-harrá yaw e-dum yi hú báy

lávin anná húþ baZú daynúr majŧún?

šá ąél kil mší yixwan gavvá liQiliváy?

mat hú zmén e-ranáħah, liZú ąayun?

Some "Ayvaric" thoughts has been around, trying to change or edit the literature that I've been inventing for some time now. This time, it occurred to me that usually in English, the word "between" is used usually in combination of two objects, while "among" is for objects more than two. Thinking about it, there is the same thing almost in Arabic and Hebrew (I guess), but it's not a number-related. There is "bayn" [بين] and "ma bayna" [ما بين], but I'm not sure of their exact classical use. To me, I seem to say them fluently according to the speech but without knowing the grammatical reasons for this! In Ayvarith, there is a similar situation even though I've made up some explanations for this without really noticing them myself: (bayun) and (mabyun); clearly close to the Arabic version, but as far as I remember the Hebrew and Aramaic versions are not far from this either. I'm thinking of upgrading the meaning to make (bayun) used for two objects while (mabyun) for further numbers above two. Just a thought.
I've renewed my account on Writing.com for another year. Doing that sort of gave me the pinch to keep up with my other projects. A very bad habit of mine: starting things and never finish them up. I'm looking forward for more tiresome days specially during the summer and the heat here, with the expected renewal of my duties into field trips. Field trips, games, photos, daydreaming, a conlang and poetry (specially poetry. I didn't write in some long time now with all the gush in emotions in my mind). My life truly is a mess that went out of control. Trying hard to keep up and organize my time and even exercise to enhance my physical vitality to cope with my own requirements and my own projects, but even that require time, and to screw things completely, sometimes I'm ready to screw up the world and sleep. Just sleep, like I always wanted (but that never really happened).
I think I do need a vacation from my camera. I don't know why I feel the need to take pictures so often. It's becoming like an addiction, and every addiction is simply bad, be it drugs, drinks or even a hobby like photography. But what you know, once I'm dropping down the camera I'm going to head to that Ayvarith project and web page that I didn't work on for some months now.
I'm back now with my own research about myself, my brain, my skills, and how everything works together. Most of such research is done at work actually not back home, because simply back home I don't have time now to sleep, and if I did, I'm going to screw up the day and just do nothing at all (probably only play those games I want to). With this said, I'm back to some of those free tests online (yep, another addiction), and along with that a belief of some thread of ADHD in my (neurological) blood. While reading The Playful Brain, I'm paying more attention to my simple actions and notifications and trying to analyze them under the light of what I've understood lately. I've noticed what is said to be an "easy puzzle" can take me a longer time to solve more than what is supposed to be a "hard puzzle" of the same type or rank. Also, I've been fluctuating my attention from one object to another (looking at a book to pick it up, and an agenda lies in the way between me and the book, thus I remembered something suddenly for that agenda and picked it up totally forgetting what I wanted to do with the book). Looking at some videos on Youtube about ADHD cases makes me feel superior though. It's not like that with me and yes, I don't think I do have ADHD at all now, but why do I lose my focus that easily? Why I keep flipping channels in my mind? Is it the damned Maladaptive Daydreaming again? I know that I've not been the hard fighter lately against this habit, mainly because I'm exhausted and in fatigue.

Decision is made now. A break from the camera for some time.

I should add to that a break from chocolate and coffee as well. Speaking of my mental status as well, in fact, I don't care much anymore about what people think of it now, but I like to explore my mind little bit further. I'm doing some EIQ (Emotional IQ) tests but I don't count on such results as the questions tend to be highly relative to the culture I guess, but anyway, my score was low. Not surprised though. I'm a loner after all.
On the other hand, I'm back to my senseless sketches as the attacks of boredom do visit me at work from time to time and makes me unable to read the book at hand...

The Devil's Automobile
The idea was to create a head with some brain popping out of it, but with such epileptic art form, expect the unexpected.

Sensory Man
This sketch was done horizontally (90 degrees to the left or CCW), and my mind didn't make sense of it as usual except later when I changed the angle of view and rotated it 90 clock-wise to realize it looks like a man's face.

Now back to my camera before I leave it alone for some time. I did my experiment now for catching a flowing water with the help of ND filters, and hence I couldn't use my Tamron, but instead I've used my old Canon 55-200mm, because I do have an adapter ring for the diameter of this lens (Ø52mm). The result was not exactly what I wanted, specially when it comes to the angle of view, but it was some trial that I hope I've learned something from...

Aqua Viridis (Green Water)

The whole problem is about doing the right exposure under the green flood light. One of the techniques that I've came up with is to use the (M)anual mode completely to achieve this. The (M)anual mode gives you the ability to change the shutter speed and the aperture (f-number) as desired and with a half-press to the shutter button the camera would give out an estimation of the light level in EVs. Everything was fine, except of 2 points that I was puzzled with:

1. Where to focus? to the furthest edge or to the nearer one? Here, I tried to focus in between (I focused without the water flow in the beginning thus it was an approximation).
2. What aperture size should I use? I used maximum f-number (narrowest aperture size) but probably I should have applied the principle of Hyperfocal distance? Though I think this concept is mainly used in landscape photography and not in close-up photography.

The main important thing is that I've fixed the shutter speed. Few seconds were enough to make the water flow in a blurry way like a dream effect (in fact it looks like milk to me!). After setting the shutter speed to 3 seconds, and the aperture to f/29, I did simple half-press, checked the EV and then put on some filters corresponding to the mount of EV I want to reduce. The EV reading without putting the filters on was close to +3, thus I've fixed three ND filters: ND2, ND4, ND8. They correspond to a reduction of -1, -2, and -3 EVs respectively, and thus totaling -6 EV putting the scale down from +3 to -3 (3+(-6)=-3, simple calculus). However, even though the picture was fine to some extent, I had to edit the RAW file as well and adjust some sliders and finally, with the help of adjustment layers in Photoshop, I've removed the green color from the background and kept the water and the mug in green only. I'm not satisfied with the sharpness of the water flow itself.

And still dwelling in the bathroom trying to catch up a panorama for this narrow place. I think it's around 2x2 meters (~ 6.6x6.6 ft). It is indeed a challenge to do a panorama in such space. The only panorama, probably, that I did in such a narrow place (and without the VR-head back then) was for the inside of the little tower back in Aughnanure castle in 2009...

The inside of the little tower in Aughnanure castle field, Co. Galway, Ireland.

But, this panorama, taken without the VR-head and definitely a narrower place than my bathroom, but after all I minimized it to 360 panorama (horizontal line only). The hardships of the bathroom were different, specially that I wanted to take the panorama from a level higher than my head, and this time I used my new tripod and not my monopod.

1. With a tripod, the base was stable, but the tripod's head itself was shaky a bit making a small tilt for the VR-head on top of it.
2. The narrow space of the bathroom made the lower angles, where the tripod's legs show usually, a serious issue.
3. Tried shooting with flood lights and not my usual bathroom lights, but the ceiling's plugging point was narrow and the flood light could not be fixed there. In order to solve this problem I had to think of some way to lengthen or extend the plugging point further. Luckily, I got some converting heads (for light bulbs) in the family shop near by and connected two of them to extend the plugging point. I had to work on smoothing the edges a bit because they didn't fit in the first place so I had to widen one converter and narrow the other. I have to say I was working for more than one hour taking the panorama and afraid of this bulb to be falling down on my head at any moment!
4. The usual problems with the stitch in PTGui, but this time accompanied with a glitch from Photomatix when merging all in HDR format. Seems that the new Photomatix has a glitch in batch processing bracketed images. Usually I see such errors and broken lines when different images are merged by mistake, but this time I double checked my images' sequences and there was no mistake. Simply, this one particular slide which showed a strong error had to be done again alone separately. Only then, the HDR slide for that angle appeared perfect.

The flood light with extension made of converting heads (or plugs). The arrow points to where drilling was used (with a special head to soften the area and not drill through it)

The right side of this HDR (tone-mapped here) slide became partially white with broken lines even though the bracketed sequence is correct! It wasn't the only slide, but it was the worst...

The whole point of using flood lights here and not the regular light bulbs that were already there is that I wanted to avoid the WB (White Balance) problems that I had before in my first experiment in this bathroom. If you read my post last week you'll find an explanation of the problem and how it was hard, somehow, to choose a particular WB with such lights. Here, after fixing the flood lights, I've simply shot the panorama with Daylight WB.
As for the glitch in Photomatix, I thought it might be because I was setting the options for reducing the "ghosting" artifacts to "high" while the camera didn't shake so much and there were no moving objects to eliminate, thus I processed the package again in a batch process but turning of the "ghosting" correction off. Yet, the weird artifacts kept on coming.
It is always hard to set control points for the make of a HDR panorama, probably because of the exposure data embedded in such files that makes PTGui unable to set the control points properly. However, I've tried the old trick which seems to be working fine for now (but that didn't spare me the troubles): tone-map the HDR slides under certain settings, then stitch them and save the file as a model. Then, open the HDR panorama file and apply that model. That way, all the control points that were applied perfectly for the tone-mapped images will be applied to the HDR panorama in the same systematic way (providing the control points are perfectly situated in the tone-mapped model). I've stitched the HDR panorama then without even optimizing. All the errors that occurred while trying to align the HDR images disappeared simply depending on the tone-mapped counterpart. Why not simply tone-map and then stitch? Here you go:

• HDR panorama will have exposure information rather than a tone-mapped version (even in 16-bit TIFF). This option gives you more control over the light effects.
• There are occasions when you think it is better to manually edited the HDR file for some reason (changing hue before tone-mapping, changing exposure of certain areas only before tone-mapping, ...etc).
• If you are thinking of making a QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality) file, it is important to match the exposure of the left and right sides of your panorama, otherwise in the QTVR file you will notice a strange straight line while rotating your QTVR. This option, to match the two sides in exposure, is available when you tone-map in Photomatix (and other programs), while stitching already tone-mapped images won't give you such an option and you might have to find other ways to solve the problem.
• PTGui got an option to fix the exposures for the whole HDR panorama before stitching. Useful sometimes to make an average of all the slides' exposures.

After stitching the HDR panorama, there was a heavy load of work with Photoshop to clone out lot of the undesired objects to make the panorama normal as much as possible. Parts of the VR-head did appear so much in this panorama specifically, and it is hard to simply remove by cropping; I have to clone out instead. I think it is time to re-consider the way I work with vertical angles, as it seems a 45 degrees up and down is causing me problems! Beside these parts, some weird artifacts in red appeared as well, and still I can't explain what are these as there is simply no reason for them to occur!

Lavatrinum
My bathroom, and still you can see some red artifacts in a larger view. I had to cut out the roof because the green light was subjected to "poster" effect, or banding artifacts.

And one of  my biggest mistakes, again, is using a large f-number (narrow aperture) causing a lot of sparkles caused by the lights. If I remember correctly, it was f/20.
After this panorama, I think I will get back to the sweet old Photomatix instead of the new one because there are many issues now that I've noticed that are caused for no specific reasons. Such glitches didn't appear in the old Photomatix (version 3). The only problem with the old Photomatix was the weird squares that appear on the viewing window (I think related to the insufficient memory as my PC runs for long times). So just to be systematic:

• The new Photomatic (version 4), has a problem in tone-mapping window. As you work according to what you see while you tone-map, once you hit the "Process" button, the final image would come different to what you have seen in the tone-mapping window.
• The new Photomatix has a problem with batch processing RAW files. As it turned out, some HDR slides were merged with strange white bands or broken lines (like what happens when two different or so much shaky images are merged), while when these specific slides done as a single process, this problem doesn't occur. Talk about time-consuming!
• Related to the problem mentioned in the beginning, some weird artifacts, in form of colors or shapes, appear after tone-mapping (e.g. in my example above, red areas appeared and had to be cloned out, and banding of some colors making gradual change appear as blocks of pixels).

I don't think, however, I'm going to do it all over again with the old Photomatix, but I learned my lesson I'd say. I have to check further with my VR-head and the best way to deal with low angles to avoid including the body of the VR-head itself into my panorama. It's not completely evadable, but at least the effect can be reduced somehow.

Finally, my order(s) had been processed and I'm waiting for their arrivals. I'm doing it slowly so that I'd have more time reading The Playful Brain. Three photography books, one teleconverter, and a sound trigger. Did I say I need a break from my camera? hmmm......

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...