Checkmate…

Strange, weird times are coming through. As much as the time appears to be slow because of the idleness, yet it is kind of pacing fast simultaneously. I feel like I didn't have much time since I finished my last blog post in Arabic, and feels like it was not weeks since I took the following shots that I'm going to talk about here! And guess what? Ramadhan is here already.
I'm actually grateful that Ramadan this year comes by while we are home, supposedly, instead of having to go to work and maybe sign up for a leave during the month to take care of my hysterical sleeping habits that get confused greatly during Ramadan, every year. It's such a bless for me, really.

Marbhsháinn

Well, this is just checkmate in Irish. I've mentioned in my previous post (or posts) a glimpse about my work with the chess set. I got this set specifically for photo shoots; I'm not a chess fan! Anyway been some time since I did something with this set, and so I thought it is time to work a bit. The annoying part though, working with chess can be quite noisy and loud unlike working with the feathers! If you are going to try to do anything like what I do here I hope you don't risk bothering anyone with the noise.

Воздушная Битва (the air battle)

Just as a starter, all my plans were set ahead to make these photos in black and white. Why? Well, let's just say it gives strength to the sense of drama here and also because black and white are strongly attached to the game of chess (in my case, the pieces are made of wood, and reddish and milky in color). In these shots, I've used 6 speedlites: 5 to flash, and 1 master to trigger the rest without shooting. This leaves me with one extra speedlite, the old 420EX which I didn't use here because it is, well, cumbersome to work with. I've checked the manual for this one and seems the only way to control its parameters is to be connected directly to the camera, but I might be wrong here. I got this speedlite for cheap from a friend. Anyway, adding this last one would not add much since I have 430EXII and 580EXII on both sides of the set, and 430EXII on top; Thus things were symmetrical. Why so many speedlites? Well, it was a high-speed session!

The chess set before adding the rest of the speedlites on left and right.
The white boards on right and left are for bouncing the light from the speedlites.

Now, the first shot, Воздушная Битва or the air battle, got me into a tiny trouble, which I had to solve by merging shots instead of doing everything in a single shot as I was planning. Well, several problems in fact:

• My hand shadow from the top speedlite did cover and obstruct the shadow of the falling knight piece. Specifically the black one because I was holding the remote with my left (I'm a leftie) and dropping the pieces with my right. The problem was minor with the white knight but was a major one with the black knight.
• As you might have inferred from the first point, I could not drop the two knights together. Working with a timer is not as precise as triggering the remote with my own hand, and holding the two knights in one hand and dropping them made them so close together which is not what I wanted. I really needed them to face each other. Thus, the only solution for this was to drop each piece alone (several times to pick the best shot) and merge them later.

Luckily, I've taken a shot before I work as a reference and that one was the base upon which the knights were merged, so in total, 3 images put together, with some edit to the shadows of the knights. Well, beside the total edit for the whole shot of course. In Воздушная Битва specifically, I like the luster on the flying black knight and in fact I've toned the luminosity of the colors when I converted to black and white specifically to keep this luster on the flying knight piece.

Фантом Кони (Phantom Horses)

Over with a high-speed shot (or composition to be precise, I guess), I moved further to the Multi or the stroboscopic flash. It's funny how this type of flash was unthinkable to me when I work with my speedlites, but now it is a favorable option when I work with such experiments. Again, I tried to throw 2 knights or horses together in one hand while triggering the camera with the other hand, but the results were not fascinating, to say the least. Thus, I needed my brother's help here and voila! It was perfect from the first shot. I had though to use also another shot for the background to merge it because my brother's hands shadows from the top speedlite. I'm not sure how many strikes of flash were there but I'm guessing 5 from the number of "ghosts" in Фантом Кони, and surely the frequency was low, probably 50Hz. In fact, 5 strikes of flash when working with stroboscopic light is now my standard and my starting point. It seems to yield some reasonable results in most cases. One thing I regret though in this shot is that I didn't ask my brother to hold the horses opposing each other face to face, so as you can see they are falling here and both looking left.

Кто Стоит Последним (who stands the last)

Next in order comes a simple shot, yet hard in the same time. At this point, and in order to shoot Кто Стоит Последним, I had to change the lens. In the previous shots I've used my Sigma 12-24mm and that's out of necessity a bit because the perspective needed to be adjusted a bit because of the tripod's stance. However, with Кто Стоит Последним, I had to change the lens and use Voigtländer 20mm lens so that I can use my polarizer. The Sigma lens is 82mm in diameter and I don't have a filter that fits, and converting rings (step-down) would be problematic. Thus, it was safer to just change the lens to Voigtländer 20mm which has a diameter of 52mm. The polarizer was needed here to emphasize the reflections of the pawns or pieces on the board.
The general idea for Кто Стоит Последним here does not involve any speedlites, but simply some dark atmosphere, dark enough to give me a long exposure. Meanwhile, as the exposure is on, I would be changing the placements of the pawns and keeping the kings in the middle without touching them. I was pretending to play a game of chess (don't know much about chess anyway!), so I kept knocking some pieces down and changing the placement of some others. All of this mess of course produced some ghosts, as needed. Good thing though that I didn't knock over the kings or move the board by mistake; With my Retinitis Pigmentosa in dark places thing could go... astray. Total exposure time was around 4m30s; And I guess this is exactly the time needed to defeat me in a game of chess, if not less!

Báisteach na Ridirí

(the knights' rain)

Then I had this idea, which was kind of "crazy" a bit, but I'm sure not as much crazy as other people I've known (nor my life). The trigger for this idea was that: since I've been editing or composing and merging my previous photos (except for the one using long exposure above), then why take a step further (just a bit!) and make a rain out of knights!?
I realized from the beginning that I'm going to need a lot of work done here, and as if it wasn't hard already, I had to struggle with batteries and power resources for my speedlites as I was preparing them to shoot high-speed. A LOT of high-speed shots.

Идет Дождь Коней
(It's raining knights)

My thought for working with this "project" was to divide the work on separate sessions, with each session being dedicated to shoot a specific portion of the image:

• Shooting the 2 kings at the center of the board (and fixing the focus at that point).
• Shooting the plain board.
• Shooting the dropped white knight piece on various locations from the back to the front and sweeping left to right each time.
• Doing as with the white knight but this time with the black one.
• Doing as with the white and black knights but this time dropping them both together.

The last point here was actually eliminated later and I didn't touch it because of the crowded image that later became to be when I worked with the white and black sets separately. The plain board shot was kept as usual as a backup; I didn't really use it. All shots were done with the same light, same shutter speed, as much as possible. Because I was dropping the pieces on the board, there had been tiny movements that would be visible only on comparison but they didn't have a great impact on the merging process; Excellent!
I won't go into details here about the way I organized the files and merging them, but I'd just say I've followed a systematic way (and the file size was enormous). Not all images (more than 52 in total) were used; Some of them had to be canceled for various reasons. You might have noticed in the image above that there is a knight blocking the black king and I left it there intentionally to give depth and dimension to the image.

The white and the black sets separately when combined. Of course there is a number of them that were removed in the final image shown above. Merging them alone makes some nice shot it seems so I will try this later!

Unlike the previous high-speed shots, I've slowed down the shutter speed here to 1000^-1s, down from 8000^-1s (max for Canon EOS 7D). I was hoping to capture some motion blur for the falling pieces, which it did, but not to my desire. The view on the camera's LCD was not good enough to judge, but anyway, I continued working as it is. After finishing the merging of the white and black pieces layers, I've tried to do the same with the doublets (those shots I've made for dropping the white and the black knights together, using one hand) but the image looked crowded already and no need for more. I'm keeping this set though for some editing experiments!

The Falling
One of the "doublet" images that I decided to not include in the final image.
Using the polarizer really paid off.

I had some ideas also to do an experimental light painting on the set before I move on another idea in my work with the camera but I couldn't find a suitable method or idea to apply here, and probably I don't have proper tools to do such delicate painting for small pieces like that. Most of the time, as I've encountered so far, light painting is done on a larger scale a bit and not a delicate one like a pawn and a chessboard.

Finale

Crazy times, and I'm trying to use every minute I could to the max, with my camera. Well, maybe other things as well (gaming for example?) but I'm on the go and trying to try more and more with my camera, in hope of creating something unique still.
Meanwhile, thoughts of leaving my work and do something on my own still roll around my head, as I'm not sure how stable my current job would be still. yet, I'm grateful for the situation now, but nevertheless I cannot guarantee anything in such times. Not sure where I'm heading but I'm trying to take it one step at a time, and enjoy as much as I can. If only I can control the damn mood swings.
Being in lock-down and home quarantine might not be as a catastrophic for an introvert like me, as it would be for an extrovert. Yet, I do have my feelings towards it. In such times, my eagerness for traveling has increased ten-folds than before, even though I didn't know before this crisis whether I can travel or not and probably I wasn't ready for it, but now I really need it to just change the scenery and be away from people. As for me, I don't go out of home much already as it is in normal days so a quarantine or home-stay won't make much difference, but it s the general atmosphere and the people around that would just push your buttons up and down and screw up that peace that I've been trying to work on for quite some time. I need to travel probably to change the people, and not the scenery. It is in such times I just so wish that I have a home of my own, but in a place like this, how would this be possible at all…

Full of Selfies…

With all that craze about COVID19 already, things are being idle here, like most of the world I guess. However, it is just such a good time for an introvert like me! What was supposed to be a short holiday of 5 days for the Independence and Liberation Day, stretched over now and to be a month and some days more.
Meanwhile, I'm here working with my camera at ease and trying to find new ideas, inside the house of course, as I would do usually. On the other hand, sleeping as much as possible. The progress is slow though but who cares? I don't have to wake up in the morning to do the damn fingerprint attendance anymore now. I miss doing panoramas though.
On another occasion, I've been working on some "projects" which I've started before the current crisis, and I consider these projects like an "open" projects; Meaning, there is no final goal to them or anything but I would think about shooting these ideas now and then.
This week and in this post, I'm going to talk about one of these projects which probably I didn't mention anything about before in this blog, and that is Shooting specular. What I mean by that is, using specular (unmodified) light from the speedlites to shoot, and of course the target is myself; i.e. a selfie.

Specularis

It is strange that the word Specular is not identified by many dictionaries as a valid word! It feels kind of annoying to type this blog post and finding the word marked with a red line as if there is a spelling mistake!
Anyway, as I've explained above, a specular light is a light that does not undergo any changes or modifications (diffusing specially) to enhance its qualities and take a better control of it. It is common and typical to use diffused light to shoot almost anything, from product to portraits or even scenes outdoors. However, I was inspired by a photographer which I've encountered online (unfortunately, the name escapes me but I think her last name was Adler). This photographer did some amazing portraiture shots using specular lights. Thus, I though, why not try out to do some myself as a form of challenge. Of course, the only portrait I can take is of myself here, and maybe if he got some time, it would be of my brother; My typical model.

Void

First try of these "specular" selfies, was done with one speedlite. Because I don't have the means to suspend the speedlite right on the top of me, the speedlite was a pointing to my face with some angle, but I tried to make it pointing downward as much as possible. The idea was to light the protruding parts of the face and keep the hollow spaces, like the eyes and the open mouth, dark. After some trials, I realize that at the current situation this might not be possible without using Photoshop after all, which I did. The areas that needed the "surgery" here are mainly the eyes and the mouth, with some burning to keep them black or dark as much as possible. The image after all was also cropped to focus on the face only, and converted to B&W with a gentle tint. I think I can call it luck that while shooting Void some dust or maybe some flare from the speedlite itself caused some sparkles which I didn't notice until I started to process the image. I'm not completely satisfied with Void to be honest but it was one try from a somewhat long running project.

A Specular Selfie

Then, I had another try and it was a simple one but with a twist. Or, well, two twists let's say. It is the typical on-camera selfie shot with produces these bright selfies with dark background like beginners or amateurs portrait shots using on-camera flash, but the speedlite on the camera was fit with a honeycomb grid to concentrate the beam on the face, plus 2 speedlites were put at the back bouncing them off the white wall and thus removing any shadows at the back. I love taking selfies with hoodies; I'm not sure why but I just do! However, there was still some Photoshop work needed with this A Specular Selfie. Cropping, adding more fill to the shades or dark areas of the image to get some details out of the hair. However, this was not the end for this selfie, as more interesting stuff had to be done!

The Gothic Selfie

Typically, when I see bright eyes in an image (of me or of others), I'd think of converting the shot to B&W to give it a dramatic twist, specially if the bright shining eyes were combined with a darker tone for the skin. To my surprise though, when I did that to this selfie, The Gothic Selfie just happened to appear! Well, maybe with some adjustments here and there but the general look was pointing to something "gothic" - or least this is what I think; I don't know much about these look-styles. And wait for it, please. There is more to come out of this selfie too!

Luminosity

This one is the last in this mini-series; I promise. The 3^rd selfie, Luminosity, is a combination of the Gothic and the original, blending them together using the, you guessed it, Luminosity blending mood in Photoshop. The look is quite intriguing I guess that I might consider such option in the future when I work with other photos. It is like adding drama using B&W method but then adding colors to it to make it a dramatic colored image. I did try this method indeed in the next shot as we shall see.
The next idea was a fun one to do, and a quick one (despite the many, many, test shots). What I mean by quick here is the fact that I didn't need any special setting or preparations for the speedlites or the camera. Well, just the camera on a tripod.

Abducted

Honestly, I was not really sure what I was doing here. But the scene appeared as if I was being abducted by some aliens, so I went on that title. In this setup, I've simply held two 430EXII speedlites in my hands on the sides near my face (on low power).Never underestimate the power of low power! There is a lot of drama that can be extracted in portraits by using low power in speedlites or strobes. The white orbs around my head here are the ceiling's fixtures with LED lights and I had to clone one spot here to make the pattern symmetrical. In fact, this pattern is what inspired me to name the image Abducted. As for the facial expression, I was not really sure what to do with my face but I just did it and things kind of complimented each other. Now, without jumping to the B&W version of this image, which looks ordinary to me in fact, I've applied the Luminosity method here and the result was appealing to me as well.

Abducted (lum)

One of the issues that I was not sure of when processing Abducted, is the matter of the skin tone as I couldn't really decide whether it is normal to be so, or it is too bright. I did put the tones down a bit for the skin but with the Luminosity method, things went down drastically when it comes to the skin; Looks like I've had a tan already! Combing this with bright shining eyes and you have a dramatic, contrasty, version of the image; Even more dramatic than the original.

Now, these selfies were kind of successive (sort of) and one idea followed the other. Sometimes I just get lazy and work few days later but the idea is there. But things got a turn here as I was thinking of changing the "modus operandi" for how I work with the speedlite. In the previous selfies, the speedlite was on top, front, and on the sides. So, it was time to put it under. I usually avoid this position under normal conditions because it is a mark for some horror look or movies. Well, I just got the idea for that!

Coronal Attitude

Despite Sickness
Shot with Huawei Mate 9
Edited with PS.

In Coronal Attitude, I was not sure what I'm doing here but all I wanted is to keep the speedlite down there. Despite its simplicity, this shot took a lot of time in processing. I was fluctuating in editing between what I usually or conventionally do, and editing trying to achieve that cinematic look. One point that I really, really, hated here is the highlight on the nose tip which looks like banding. I tried to fix this in various ways but nothing seems to work! Guess it's how my nose works! Another point here is the color of the face mask in my hand, which I was reluctant about; Should I keep it saturated or desaturate it? I chose to desaturate it a little (originally it was saturated more than the image shows here). I would be lying if I said that I don't like shooting with a mask on my face really. Not sure why, but I think they add some kind of mystery to the whole image and character. In fact, I did take a lot of selfies with the mask even back in January with my mobile. Back then I was sick actually with the usual cold and to protect Mom and others, I would be walking around with the mask; That was even before the outbreak and the spread of the COVID-19 worldwide and reaching here already (which happened around the last week of February). I just loved that morning light through the balcony.

They Are Gone

And along the way with the craze and the fuss about the virus, things got sad even further at home actually with the departure of one of my uncles. Even though I didn't bound much with him but I felt very bad inside specially that he suffered in his last years from various issues that doctors simply couldn't diagnose or realize. He was simply unconscious to what is happening around him until one morning, we got the news of his departure in the hospital. He is relieved now from this mundane world and its pains and silly people. Combining these sad feelings inside me and the stressful news about that virus made me shoot They Are Gone, which is in some way an appreciation message to those who work day and night taking care of things; Patients, tests, keeping things going in essential positions in the state and so on. Some of these people are at the risk of losing their lives doing their jobs to keep OUR lives going. If you are reading this, please show them some appreciation.
Now, back to the technical part about They Are Gone, you might ask what this shot has to do with specular light; Apparently it is taken with natural light (which is in a sense specular by the way, but we are speaking about flash specular light here). The fact is, I did use the on-camera flash here to lighten the shadows a bit on the lower part of the body. Not the big speedlite I mean, but that tiny almost-useless flash on-camera. For such situations, it does nice job I guess and I didn't want to complicate the shot more than that; Just a camera, a tripod and the cable remote. The hassle with it though was in the angle and the distance which looking at it now actually still makes me uncomfortable a bit. Despite the lighting being good somewhat it still needed some extra work in post-processing because in that phase changing one factor would change something else and the whole thing reacts like a chain-reaction and thus the quality of the light has to be adjusted again and again. The main work was to soften the image and (ironically) diffuse the light from the window digitally giving a dreamy look or a glamor look.

The Cane

And just before finishing this post, this is one last shot which I thought of just before the departure of February, the Retinitis Pigmentosa Awareness Month. Specular light was in use here as well and directed from the side of the face. I was lucky that the cane, despite its thickness, did a great job on blocking the light from the other side of the face just as I planned. I think also placing the speedlite a bit backward relative to the side of the face helped greatly with this and made the image split into 2; Light, and Dark. However, the main plan was to make a B&W image (thought I added slight tones to it) but the thing is, the red patch of the cane is not supposed to be visible anyway (and it isn't really in the original colored version). The major work in post-processing here though was on the eye, mainly with the dodge and burn tool (or something similar to that in fact).

Now, there are some plans or ideas cooking at the back of my head but there is one critical question that I'm still trying to find an answer for and that is: Would putting obstacles (not diffusers) in the light direction count as "modifying" a specular light? Logically it isn't but would be merely re-directing the light. Yet, I can't get over-obsessed with the idea and that sense of challenge when talking about specular lights as something to take it as it is and not touch it. But I'm there; Hopefully I'll get over that idea with some light "modifiers" that do not diffuse. Meanwhile, I'm working on some modifiers that diffuse the light too but we'll see. Been ages since I completed that project anyway!

Finale

Well, I hope everyone is OK and taking good care of themselves under these circumstances. For this blog, there had been numerous visits from Italy according to what I see in the statistics related to this blog, and that is before the crisis and lockdown. I hope, and I pray, that things will ease down soon specially with some good news arriving daily at the moment of typing this blog.
For someone as introvert as me, the situation didn't change much as I'm staying home most of the time, but the big stress here is caring for the health of those around me, specially my mother with her health issues which makes me close to having OCD over the health issues and cleanness.
On the artistic plane, there had been much work going on old and new images and hopefully I'll have the time to make a post about these in time, and as I'm typing this, the idea of making a new Arabic post for my other blog tickles my mind already, as I didn't make a post for that blog in some long time now. Also, on this plane, just one or two hours before finalizing this post, I've received a notification about one of my newly-added images on YouPic website which was marked as Inspirational by the admins of the website. That means more publicity for this particular image and apparently it has some interesting elements to it. This further even gives me an idea of creating a separate post about the 10 images been marked so far on YouPic and some story about them. We'll see about that.
Now, under these circumstances, the ideas are coming to me even stronger than before about trying to do something at home; Working at home, even though till this very moment of typing this, I couldn't reach a conclusion of how to do this or what to do even. But I have to say that under such circumstances I am blessed to be where am I already.

Cinematic Lady Nature
10^th Image to be marked as "Inspirational" on YouPic.

Fire and Water…

Weather is cooling down! Oh my what a relief! Sunrise is getting late few minutes by each day and thus I'm leaving to work every morning while it's dark somehow, and it will be darker and darker soon. I love the atmosphere, if not for some of the stupidity on the road of course. I just hope that this winter would not pass without some outside work with the camera, again. Anyway, as a continuation

Tine Agus Uisce

If you are wondering about the meaning of the subtitle here, it just means Fire and Water and you will know why just now, After finishing my work with dice and water, I thought maybe I should do another thing before I move away my gear from the set. And it occurred to me: Why not candles? Surely we can have some action by that, right? Besides, I do have a bunch of candles left around which I bought for some other project in the past and I hate to see them collecting dust like that for nothing! So here we go…

Aqua-Sword

Aqua-Meteor

Initially, the idea was to capture the moment just before the candle's flame goes off by a blow of air. I used a compressed air canister for that. However, where is the action in that? So, right away, I've decided to change my work to include water and fire. Working with water here is a bit dangerous because it might get sprinkled around the set and all that (which it did) but small amounts of that from a syringe hurt no one, I think! And so, the game began trying to capture the right time manually. The good thing about using a syringe is the change in angles now and then, trying to get different perspectives and different action. The hard thing was, though, is getting the sprinkled water right on the flame, which caused many shots have out of focus droplets, sometimes beyond repair and not serving the image in general at all, somehow like Aqua-Meteor, but I like this one somehow.
The depth of field here ranged between f/4 to f/5.6, despite the usage of a macro lens; Canon EF 100mm Macro USM. I lowered the f-number here for two main reasons:

• Even though using 6 speedlites, I thought of lowering the power consumption to have even a shorter "flash duration" which I thought it would be better somehow to capture more precise moments. This of course requires allowing more light in by increasing the ISO or lowering the f-number, and so it was the second (while ISO was fixed at 200).
• The background contained some metallic bar which I couldn't cover, and increasing the depth of field (i.e. increasing the f-number) would cause it to be quite obvious and hard to fix later in Photoshop. In fact, it was already problematic in some shots at this f/5.6.

Der Kampf
One of the shots where
water droplets were not
stable enough even at
the speed of 8000^-1s.

All shots were taken at 1/8000 of a second for the shutter speed and this time I didn't try to gamble with the shutter speed. Yet, I think I do need more than 1/8000s to stabilize the water movement further from what I saw in the final results. I think I will do some research about available tricks to overpass this speed in high speed photography techniques. ِAnother problem was there to be dealt with which was the changing level of the candle flame itself (because of melting). So, it was a work of lowering and raising the tripod's neck (central column) and re-focusing, and forgetting to focus already for some shots. In fact, I've tried to make it a habit for me to check the focus after every shot I made in that session. Anyhow, seems I really need to work on that background in the future, in case I'm working in such set, in such place, again.



Luckily, this set of shots was accepted right away without any refusal on Canstockphoto and on Dreamstime. Probably by the time you are reading this you would be seeing some of these images in my signature frame below the post. Now, there is one more idea which I wish to do at some time but not sure when (priority goes to photo shooting more than editing) and that is to combine several of these recent shots and make new ones of various combination of fire, water and smoke. I'm sure it would be such a delicate work and probably I won't produce much images that way, but it is worth trying.

Finale

Well, on a side note, after more than a year of stopping posts on Instagram (and I mean photos, not posts related to my Ayvarith conlang on @Ayvarith), I've started to slowly post back. But this time I won't be paying attention to that stupid platform. Some people welcomed me in fact with my first post after the stop. An encouraging sign but still I didn't put much effort into that. Beside that, I've posted once a day only (so far as I'm typing this 2 photos were posted). I used post at least twice a day back when I was active there. In fact, I've even considered having a third new account to post stuff from scratch but I've forgot about this idea and decided to go back to my old account. This time though, no following, no like for like; Just nothing. I'm posting there, and whoever wants to, can give a like and leave. It would depend on my mood and my schedule as well. So, posts won't be schedules as before and I'm already planning to stop posting in some days if I have to.
In the meantime, thoughts about my life and destination is still a recurring idea in my mind. I'm not sure I do have a goal and despite about all what I hear, from all these motivational speakers, about the importance of setting a goal; I still feel that it is all nothing but rubbish. Not aiming to disregard what other people feel about themselves or the things they feel important but I'm seriously in the status of not finding any value; Specially in these societal standards and hypocrisy necessities. There is a feeling going inside when I see newspapers, TV, two people talking, something strange just tells me all that is an act. All are nothing but actors...
Just a final thought, I've made an astrological reading (paid) and one of the questions I've asked was about career or career path and what is best for me in general. I have to say that the reading in general blew me away and the lady did pin the nature of my current work without telling her anything about it. It seems I do have to focus away from the scientific field indeed. She said things will take time to find out and to get along and find the real passion in my life - well, after all the information she gave out about me (even about my delayed speech problem when I was a child), I tend to believe her in fact. Maybe then all these motivational stuff that people have the vibe with currently would make some sense to me? We'll see. For the time being, I really just want to enjoy "some" of my life; Just as she said as well.

تلاقي (Meeting)

Collective…

As a starter, I'm really not sure how am I typing this blog post with my continuous sleeping problems which are adorned with marvelous migraines from time to time during this week. Anyway, since I don't have much material for this post, I think it will be somewhat a quickie one.
In a continuation for my previous post, I'm still working on my project of shooting profiles (side shot) in infrared using only a candle. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this in my previous post, but I've decided to call this project The Candle People. Things are now out of the profiles section as well, and I've started to shoot some face-front shots as well, upon request.

Abdullah A. (profile)

Abdullah A. (halfie)

So far, there had been only two requests to re-do the candle shots and change the profile look to the face-front look. Both from nephews. My first nephew did not like the look of his nose in such profile. Well, I guess many people are displeased with their noses nowadays (me included but I don't tend to hide it). However, I'm not expecting from people to understand the artistic values the way I see it through. In profile shots, I do appreciate the contour and the dramatic light and look of the face rather than the "beauty" of the person. Personally, beauty has nothing to do with this little project of mine. It is about evoking emotions via light and contour with no or little facial expressions. However, I've complied to the request and I still like the results. My first trial with him was to shoot a "halfie", but this halfie is not exactly done by cropping the face (even though it is a little) but by implying heavy shadows to half of the face (mainly by editing). This halfie might have a strange effect on the size of the eye here; I didn't change the size of the eye while editing, but it seems to me that is kind of large. Might be my imagination?

Abdullah A. (front)

Anyway, the other frontal shot here for Abdullah A was not exactly a halfie. Too bad though I had to crop a little too much here to balance the image because while shooting (using burst mode) the head was moving and one of the ears did not show completely in the image, which in turn forced me to crop a little from the other (and that meant cropping from the whole image and just from the side because I tend to keep the aspect ratio). On purpose here, I told my nephew to look up which I think gives a better emotional expression (at work with the forehead lines). To have some dramatic look (or to increase it so to say) I've resorted to an old technique which involves the usage of the High Pass filter in Photoshop. This of course exaggerated the noise level as well but I didn't bother to clean much of it here because the image in the first place is not intended to be "soft" in looks. This look, upward, seems to be a "hack" on its own to have a dramatic look. I've applied already with my other nephew who requested a re-shoot and seems to be OK. As I'm typing this there are still some from this series that needs to be processed yet.

Collective Ideas

Meanwhile, as I'm trying to work on the Candle People project, a flow of ideas somehow ticked my mind lately. At some level, I think the Candle People is one of these projects that just doesn't have a dead line. But it is ongoing whenever the chance shows up. Anyway, meanwhile, I think I will be back to one of my old passions, and it is a tiresome one actually, and that is: High Speed photography.
I didn't formulate a concrete idea about the subject but I'm intending to use the full set of speedlites in my arsenal (7 at the moment). I didn't make up my mind yet about how to set them up, but I think there would be two main methods or sets: a) Manual, and b) With an external trigger.

General scheme for the setup

First of all, sorry for the bad sketch here (and the bad scanning, done with my mobile in bad lighting conditions). As you can see here, this is the intended general setup that I'm thinking of for method A; the manual shooting. What I mean by manual shooting here is that I would control the camera manually with a master speedlite light on it to control other speedlites on the set. Meanwhile, the master will not shoot, but only responsible to give out the command to shoot to the slave speedlites. What I'm intending to do here is (and let's hope it works out well), is to use a very low flash power (if I can, lower than 1/32) and try to shoot using burst mood in hope that the low power consumption at this level of power would help on quick recycling and re-shooting quickly. I wouldn't know if this will work until I try! It would be a shame if it doesn't work that way though because with such number of speedlites, things could be balanced out somehow. Of course the position of the speedlites and direction is subject to change accordingly when the practical work is ongoing.
As for method B, the same schematic above applies, but the master speedlite is placed on the set as well and would be connected to a trigger. A laser trigger (which I failed using before). In previous times, I've used this trigger in connection to the camera itself but researching a bit and asking some professionals, I figured that the lag time (the time for the signal to travel from the trigger to the camera) is considerably long, making capturing the exact moment quite hard. Most professionals, as it seems, connect the trigger to the speedlite and not the camera and thus reducing the lag time considerably. I can connect one master to be triggered in that way and set others to slaves and all should (theoretically) shoot about the same moment. However, in this method, I'm supposed to leave the shutter open and work on the subject and speedlites with the trigger. For this, such method must be done in a dark environment, or maybe some ND filter on the lens would do? Not sure. We'll see about that. And like the situation in method A, the power is supposed to be set low for a quick recycling time and low power consumption.
Thinking about it, just theoretically, it seems that method A is favorable, despite my wish to get my old trigger working again since I failed using it many times. But if the burst mode works well in such setup, then things are set and I don't think I will try method B. The hardest part though remain: To setup my gear to work!

Finale

Beside the idea mentioned above, I'm thinking of other things as well but no need to put all the eggs in one basket. There had been also some simple shootings with my mobile for some geological stuff around my workplace and I've even uploaded one of the images to the stocks. I didn't upload to them in a long time.
With me now putting the contest on Duolingo behind my back, after some incidence of cheating as I've discovered, I've realized now the big mistake I've done in using this platform. I'm now trying to be more at ease and back to learn the language on my own pace instead of trying to gain more points and be leading the "score board" (or whatever they call it). In fact, I've had more time to post some articles in the Arabic forum after deserting the forum for quite a while. I've realized now how people do appreciate these posts which have some delicate matters and tips about Arabic that Duolingo is not providing for those who really want to learn the language. This made me think: What is really made for me? What I'm really supposed to do? I think this appreciation and this enthusiasm is the answer. Thinking about it, what did I really gain from being #1 on these leaderboard contests or whatever? Nothing but stress. While the solution was quite easy but I didn't see it back then; To leave these contests and focus on education and learning, and teaching those who need to. After turning off the "public" settings on Duolingo (which removes the leading board and all these scores stuff), I do feel such a relief. I have no more time and more organization capability for my time. I won't regret this.
Now, it's time to post this and go and figure my next move. A poem, or a new photo, or maybe a new article for the Arabic Duolingo forum. I can't believe it is weekend already. I'm perplexed as to whether I should sleep more, or work more on the things I like to do. or maybe play more. Two days for a weekend are just not enough… Not enough to forget what I need to forget out of my life…

Burning…

Things are becoming to overwhelming in this month. I was really going to postpone typing this blog post for another week, but here I am; Trying my best. Things are going slow to stand up again after the rain crisis and my room turning into a swimming pool. There remains some clutter to clear still though. With all of this and that, I'm trying to get my cameras going on again, as well as checking some of the photos in my arsenal to be uploaded to the stocks (and keeping some of them exclusive to some, as well). However, numerous things happening around me and inside me that all leave me just like paralyzed and unable to think clearly or even get the motive to work on anything I like at the current time.
Heavy-weight news are coming one by one, starting now with the change in policies for Flickr, after being acquired by SmugMug. The new change is to take effect in January, and in that time users with free accounts will be limited to 1000 images only (regardless of their sizes) - My account bears more than 2500+ images already. They are planning to delete old images till the limit is met, and thus more than half of my work will be deleted eventually. Registering as a pro-user is not an option as well. back when I used to pay for Flickr for a pro account, it was for $25/month, but now it is for $50/month (some even say it costs more than Photoshop does). For now, I've backed up all my albums on Flickr and compressed them and kept them safe in clouds, and I'm not sure where to go next to show my work. I've posted a Good-Bye note to my Flickr already and I've stopped posting anything new there already. And this happening only when I started to link my images from Flickr instead of posting them here directly, so I think I'm going back to my old methods of posting my photos here as I type my blog posts.

On the other hand, events are taking place in my workplace and some time by the next year, my workplace would be moved to another place. Other people (most of those I know) are excited about it because, as they see it, it is better; Yet, this is not the case with me, as the place is further away from home than the current location, and with me feeling my eyes' weaknesses taking the toll on me, the idea of moving further away to that area makes me gloomy a bit, specially if I would be needing to drive in the dark (winter mornings or rainy days like we are having right now mostly). Needless to say, I'm trying to cope with exhaustion (and failed already) as it is with my workplace now, what would be the situation with a location almost double the distance? And the traffic jams? All that lead me to think seriously of submitting a request for a "medical resignation" for my eyes problem with Retinits Pigmentosa. But then what? I just don't know…
Things are not any better on the personal and home fronts. Even though I didn't do any official diagnosis, but it seems I do have a touch (or maybe more than that) of depression. Mood swings, family affairs, flashbacks... all of that is just not doing any good and I'm really tired.
Usually I keep ranting till the end of the blog post but I couldn't keep it this time as it is at the core of being able to post this in the first place.

Burning

As I was idle with my camera for 2 weeks or more, with all the struggle with my mood, and the rain interference, I've finally managed to raise up and shake my head a bit to do something. Initially, the idea came about first time when I was burning some incense stick in my room (beside burning aromatic oils) to banish away the bad smell after being soaked with rain water in my room. In the mess, I just got perplexed with the view of these smoke lines going out of the incense. This is not the first time I work with smoke in fact, I've played before (burning some tissue paper though to get the smoke heavy and clear) but this time I had different ideas I wanted to implement.

Censer XXI
An old work with smoke photography.

The main idea this time with these burning incense sticks "was" to do a long exposure in combination with flash strokes; It does sound like the stroboscopic functionality, but I'm talking here about a really long exposure, in minutes, for the duration of the burning incense completely. In rough estimation, one of these sticks would need about 30 minutes to burn completely. This essentially was the first impression or idea that occurred to me (and it took me days to get myself to move and do something about it). However, things had to change drastically as I started the practical side of the idea here. Mainly, the idea swept from being a long exposure with stroboscopic effect, to a regular time-lapse-like shooting (frames at specific assigned time) and trying to combine all these, as much as possible, to get an overall effect.

Sample shot from the series

At time of typing this blog post, I didn't proceed with the merging process for all these shots (more than 80 number), but I'm offering here a sample shot.  To get some inspiration, I've checked Pinterest to get some ideas further and I've seen some photographers who did digitally colored their smoke shots, and I think this is what I will be doing even though it is a bit further away from the "authenticity" measure. The Censer series which was done long time ago had been colored using gels and it is definitely to work with. However, I need to think about my choice of colors to overlay over the final image(s), as most of the images of smokes I've seen been colored as a rainbow. You can see from the sample shot as well that I do need to work on my background as well and this black cloth is not suitable here (actually it got brighter as I processed the images to lighten the smoke). I just hope darkening the background would be easier later in the process.

The set used to shoot the incense sticks.

The shooting and its set is a story on its own, starting with my everlasting nightmare: Tables. Even though I got this table from my sister which is higher and with larger area (far better than tea tables I used to work with mostly), I did have this problem in setting everything in proper level, specifically the speedlites with the incense sticks which were pinned to this Styrofoam box. The camera level was also low and I had to bend my back for long times (by the end of the shoot I got a chair though). To add to my hurdles, my 50mm lens is malfunctioning now and I'm not sure what to do about it next. Probably I'll try to fix it if it possible at some workshop if any exists here! For now, I've combined my 20mm Voigtländer lens with a teleconverter which doubles the focal length to 40mm. This did it for now, but the downside is that the aperture cannot go wider than f/7.1 (i.e. the f-number cannot be less than f/7.1) and of course this is not quite useful if I'm planning to do any bokeh effect in the background. I'm checking my options now but I'm so overwhelmed that I think I will keep this for later to see.
Now, to business for those who would like to read what this set above is all about (I'm sure professionals don't need to know what I'm doing here):

• Far left (the silver curtain): This is a car shade I've kept specifically to be used as a reflector. Frankly, probably didn't do much for the shoot here.
• The white box at the center is the Styrofoam which I used to pin the incense sticks.
• The speedlite on the table between the camera and the Styrofoam is connected to the camera by cable and worked as a master without triggering itself. I've used this first to be able to use the HSS (high speed) option and shoot beyond the sync speed because I've been told high speed shooting is required for capturing the smoke. Turned out to be not true and the HSS didn't help at all so I was back to normal sync speed (1/250s).
• The two speedlites (only one obvious in the image) are the main source of light here. I was planning to use one, but then as I wanted to empower the light in HSS mode I've brought in a second one. But then went back to normal sync speed and left the second addition as it is. Took me a while to figure out a suitable technique and finally I've placed a white cardboard behind them and reflected their light from that surface. Their power was reduced as much as possible with the most significant effect; This is mainly to save power as much as possible with long continuous shooting, and to keep the flash light duration as short as possible. Working in Manual mode, 1/8 of power was enough for both. 
• One cardboard was placed between the speedlites and the camera to block any stray light causing flare. Flare was a problem in the beginning and some annoying brightness was present when I started testing and this black "flag" solved the problem, initially.

It was a long shoot made on intervals of 30 seconds for 30 minutes (in addition to some manual shots done after the program on the intervalometer was fully executed). Processing the images in a haste collectively did make the background brighter than it originally was and the lines in the background showed clearly now, so I hope those can be eliminated later as I work on it. Initially and just for fun, I've created this short time-lapse in reverse.

Well, I didn't bother adding an audio. This said and done, I'm still looking for opportunities to do a long exposure using speedlites triggered at specific intervals of time, in stroboscopic manner, and thus creating a multi-exposure-like image in the same frame of these burning incense sticks. It needs a bit of research so let's hope I get the time to do this. I'm doubting that traditional methods would do here and probably controlling the speedlites with a third party device is required here.

Finale

Well, I guess after ranting in the intro of this blog post maybe I don't have much to state here, but I did in fact work on a short poem, which I've called Just Dance:

Just Dance

In whatever land there is to be
long forgone, or beyond many a sea
Dance!
In whatever Heaven there to be
or wherever gone that soul of me
Glance!

Pretty young to handle all the romance
sweet sixteen or eighteen set to dance
Be!
Sleepless nights all there is in the stance
That is the passion and its annoyance
See!

Praying though in distress or through the glee
however the soul of yours is free
Glance!
Solitude, watching is all to be
under the years and tears over me
Now, bye bye,
Just,

Dance

 

The rhyming scheme goes by A-A-B-A-A-B/B-A-A-B-A-A (which seems to be called, partially, Caudate) and with metering as (9,9,1,9,9,1) except for the last stanza, in which this order of meter was broken. I had a real struggle to complete this one though and I was somewhat lost in thought. To tell the truth, I'm not so convinced about it but I had to take it off my back and post it. So far, I got 2 positive feedback despite being clearly hard to understand as someone noted.

Now, it is clear from all these events and all that struggle (and some more to come concerning my cars), I do really need a vacation. A real one, with traveling. I know, I've kept saying this for almost a year now or more and still didn't do anything about it. I just keep asking myself, why can't I just have some rest on my own? 

I need to wind myself now and get ready to do some phone calls (I hate phone calls) to get some insurance work done (and paid) and finish with the annual check up for the cars, with one of them still in the garage for a month now... might be the time to get rid of it but I'm not sure yet. The idea of taking so many decisions all at once successively is just overwhelming that makes me want to go to bed and just sleep. A really long sleep, and giving the world my back with little care, if any…

Rimming…

Well, that was a break! A break from blogging that is, but a forced one unfortunately. I was preparing a post for my Arabic blog about "rim lighting" and things started to build up as my work demanded some work which required some dedicated time. I even worked on that during the weekend! Can you imagine? Doing a work-related work in a weekend? Pfft… Just to add to my misery, a car accident occurred which actually wasted my whole day (I had it as an off-day from work).

Meanwhile, because of that article I was preparing, or even before starting with it, I did prepare some images and probably would be working in the future about some more. But first things first!

Split

It all started with a comb. Yes, a comb. And not just any comb. A comb which might be used with beards or baby hair (I guess?)... and it's broken into pieces. Probably, as an INFP myself, metaphors and symbols do play an integral part of my expressions; Visually and linguistically. Thus, when I saw this tiny comb, I think something inside had been moved…

580EX II Speedlite covered and
leaving a small slit on the top only.

Now to business: Lighting. I knew from the beginning that lighting this shot is going to be somewhat picky. It needs to be dramatic, as well as directed to the comb itself alone as much as possible. The situation was settled by using a black paper on the speedlite to block all the light except of a tiny strip. This tiny strip was also somewhat wide for the comb but it did the job after all, and an increase in f-number (to f/8 actually from f/2 I think) was required to give it that dramatic look. I had to, however, paint the background in black myself because the black surface I used had a texture and with lighting on its side it gives out quite a visible texture behind the comb. This little quickie shot, triggered more work later on in fact.

I could not resist the temptations for trying out this method (of covering the speedlite) with a selfie, and so I did. This time though, I've covered 2 speedlites with black papers and made a vertical slit in the middle (almost) about 1mm wide or so (tried to make it as thin as possible and yet passing some light). The results were... interesting!

I didn't have the time to fix the speedlites on tripods or anything and then level them up and down. I just held them both in my hands and extended my arms to the sides at full length. The looks are somewhat similar to the hatchet lighting style but with more drastic shadows I guess. Quite a strange look to me as if the light beam stopped at some limit on my face though! But the strangest thing was the black "hole" in my forehead is if my forehead had a bulge! I guess I won't know if this is normal or not until I have to shoot faces of other people (with the camera of course), and see the results for myself.

Rimming

A cylinder opened on both sides.
This is what I used for the next
few experiments with the speedlites.

These experiments with "slitting" the light beam reminded me of an old method which I've read in some books but didn't get the chance to apply it much. That method is specifically dedicated to shooting engraved flat objects, like coins or medals. Having a plenty of cans around (from consuming those delicious chocolate biscuit sticks!), I decided to go on and experiment further to see for myself what can be done with those. Thus, I picked one (and I have an arsenal of them!) and removed its bottom, and stuffed it with black paper (don't have a black paint). In the beginning, I thought of lifting the cylinder a bit with some coins but they were too slippery and shaky, so I used small paper clippers (and they would help holding the paper inside the cylinder firmly as well).

The first trial was with a decorated golden tray. We use it here for serving coffee (my favorite Turkish style!). It was tricky somewhat for a number of reasons:

• The tray was smooth and caused the metallic can to slide easily.
• The tray was polished and that caused some reflection problems.

This is beside the common problem of lighting inside the cylinder when the camera is placed on top (and turning the inside of the cylinder into pitched dark), but that was a minor problem somehow because light was still seeping through and I could even use the AF function of the lens sometimes. For those situations where light is critically needed inside the cylinder with the camera on top, I would be using some LED light placed near the speedlites. However, the critical problem with those polished surfaces is the reflections of my hand and the camera's strip (the camera's body is black so that was not a big deal). The best I could do about these reflections is to try to let them be on the edges of the frame as much as possible and then crop them later. Usually in such situations, specifically when shooting glass (like those in museums), we would place the camera and lens into somewhat large black paper or foam board (just big enough to cover the actual frame to be photographed) and in that way the black color is reflected off the glass or in other words: clearing the glass. This is beside using polarizers too sometimes. However, all of these techniques are for the "macro" world and not for the macro shooting we are doing here with a lens going inside a cylinder! Anyway, to keep things a bit interesting, I've created a "texture" made out of the repetition of Golden Curves, and it's now available exclusively on Dreamstime.

There is one thing for sure in such shots and that is cleaning is a must. By cleaning I mean working on Photoshop to clean the image. Here in Glowing 20, I didn't work on cleaning the image (except of replacing the background with black), and adding some sharpening to that and the surface of the coin got bloomed with these small dots like digital noise! Now, the challenge still did not begin, yet.

Shooting objects which are not flat proved to be difficult with such a cylinder. Mainly, of course, because the light is projected from below and we do need details of the top part. Thus, the light should strike at about the middle of the object or on its top (from the side to give a rimming effect). In Delicati above, I got desperate and I was back again to the black paper slits covering the speedlite head. For this reason, I've decided to "make" another cylinder with various slits on the sides, and holes as well. It's too early to talk about the results from these 2 as I didn't experiment with them much (and I would delay this blog post if I want to include the results here!), so I might keep this for another post. However, I did try a cylinder with slits with the same object in Delicati.

Cylinder with slits, the one I used
to shoot Argentum. Covered
some slits with black pieces of
paper with the help a rubber band
so the light from speedlites would
pass through certain slits only.

The looks of Argentum look pretty impressive, more than Delicati. Well, to my eyes at least. But the mystical look as I believe is greatly emphasized in Argentum rather than in Delicati. But one problem here remains: Flares. By flares here I mean the harsh highlights reflecting off the metallic surface. Probably to solve such issue I would have to place some kind of a modifier to soften the light as it enters through the slits of the cylinder but this is another issue I need to test with in the near future to see how it would work out; Though I have my own suspicions about the usefulness of this. In Argentum I've worked around such strong flares on the metallic body in Photoshop doing some magic with the "Blending" options for the layers. Just to note, Argentum is also available on the stock, in 123RF. 

After working on Argentum, I did continue to do some work and little projects with this method of lighting and some of them are on the stock already indeed, but let's keep that for another post maybe.

On The Side

Beside all of this fuss going on with my speedlites, I couldn't hold myself further from capturing and making some new 3D anaglyphs. The target this time was some fossils in the Geology department in my workplace. The department was renovated and the display cases had been changed or re-organized and I have to say some of those was really, really, appetite-instigating for some 3D work. 

Even though I've noticed those a month or two ago, but I couldn't work out with them except in recent weeks, and I had to do it using my Huawei Mate 9 smartphone, and there is a word I'd like to say but let's end this 3D talk first. It would have been better if I could have shot those using my DSLR camera but the situation is not on my side here specially that I go to that department in the final minutes before leaving my workplace (to do the fingerprint scanning for leaving). Moreover, I would have probably used a polarizer or some black board to hide the glass flare but with a mobile phone camera there was not much I could do. Thus, though the illusion is good enough for pop up (at least to my eyes), but the flare and reflections from the glass case makes it a bit annoying.

The case with the trilobite (if my memory serves me right here about the name) was a bit better but the probably the shit was too much between shots that it took me some time further to ensure that this illusion goes without ghosting effect. It is with this image that it was prevalent that higher pixel resolution does not mean necessarily a good image quality. The resolution for my Huawei Mate 9 is 20MP, while it's 18MP for my old Canon EOS 7D. Naturally, the file size for shots taken with a 20MP camera is larger than those taken with 18MP camera. However, the resolution when zoomed in at 100% proved to me that there is a critical factor related to the sensor and its size and not just its resolution which decides how clear the image can be. At close up, the shot for this trilobite was a bit muddy-like and not quite sharp. One might say it's motion blur or a focusing problem, but all that is (with time) can be quite easily distinguished when seen on the image. And that murky-looking details is absolutely a resolution issue and not anything else. Anyway, I'm limited with my options here and at the end, I do have to work with the mobile phone (I even look weird shooting several shots for these fossils with students roaming the place!). I still have some specimens in my mind and I might try to shoot them for 3D work in the coming few days!

Finale

Now, I was going, hopelessly, to write down a new poem but unfortunately, because of this busy schedule and pressed time and exhausted body, it was really hard to focus on the words and feelings I need to write, even though I do have a general concept in my mind about what I want to express. All I can hope for for now is that I would be able to do something about it in 2 weeks from this post!

The weather is getting down with its temperatures. Such a good tiding and announcement for the coming of winter. This summer really exhausted me as it is already. I can't believe how I'm coping with this for 3 years now without traveling. 

After quitting Instagram, I'm trying to focus my attention onto Twitter, as I'm using it as a platform to "advertise" for my stock images on somewhat a daily basis. Not sure how effective this is but this is the least I can do to publish my work. I am also publishing some weird panoramas (mostly planets) that I didn't think of uploading to the stocks before, but with a catch: Each stock website would be responsible (or exclusively offering) a specific type of images; From Malta, Ireland or even those tiny projects I do at home. Beside Twitter, I'm also publishing my work on Pinterest, even though it kind of feels weird and I'm not sure how it really works! This said, I'm also trying to cancel out my accounts in some stock websites as I deem them not useful at all. Who knows though, I might consider finding new venues as well.

Meanwhile, my time is passing in such a strange way as my life goes on. It is slow, yet so fast in the same time. Memories from the old days are frequently passing my mind and evoke emotions that I've been trying hard to hide in every single damn day that passes. I'm not ashamed to say even that some times I had to cry alone, but well, who cares after all. It's me, and it's my time and no one else's. The question remains though, how much time is left for me to live what I want to live, or maybe I'm not destined to live what I wanted to live…