Casper...

A sort of an idle week. Been trying to figure out some ways to use my camera here and there and totally forgetting about my Ayvarith projects COMPLETELY. There were attacks of fatigue, maybe because of my long gone fasting, I'm not sure really. However, it didn't go out completely idle as I was able to reach my camera somewhat, but most of the time I was working on old pictures from Ireland, dating back to 2009! Simply, I just felt like paying a visit to these pictures and having some rest myself, and tried my best to touch the RAW files only, without creating HDR.

Done an experiment just to test how it is to do some long exposure. If I remember correctly, the longest exposure I've done before was for 5 minutes on the roof on my house, when I was testing my new (back then) lens, Tamron 70-300mm Macro lens. I was pointing at Saturn if I remember correctly and made a little trail.

Trail of Saturn. Two trails imposed on each other.

This time the experiment was a bit different, and with me reading the new book I got about Night Photography (a great book, makes me want to try my luck with film cameras instead of digital ones), I'm getting inspired as I read, but unfortunately lot of my dreams need some nice landscapes and some nice people to be surrounded with. I went into trouble with cops before and I'm really not intending to have more at the current time.

My little experiment was to use a longer exposure time, but not outside. Simply in my room. I got the idea as I was reading the book (as usual, in my bed time to help me fall asleep more easily). The process to measure for the required time was somehow long, and I had to use a ND filter in an awkward position, because I was using a Fisheye lens, and in Fisheye lenses you need to a Gel filter to be placed at the back of the lens and not in the front of the lens, but I did it anyway and I stuck it with a duct tape even though it fell down later on because of the bad quality of the tape! That didn't affect the result much. It is an experiment after all and the results were not to be published in stock sites.

Night Photography by Lance Keimig

 

In the beginning I've fixed the camera in one corner and turned off the TV just keeping my PC monitor on (need it). I mounted my Fisheye 15mm lens to get a bigger portion of the room and went on configuring the setting that I would need. In fact I was aiming to expose for one hour but with all the mess in the mathematics the maximum I could achieve was 44 minutes, theoretically. I wanted one hour to give chance for more blur as I would lay in bed later on and, as usual, I would flip all over the place.

I've fixed the mode to Av (Aperture priority) and pushed the ISO to the maximum value "H", which counts for 12800. This is just to take the reading for the time needed at this level at 0EV. The time reading was about 20 seconds, taken while setting the metering to Center-Weight. I used this metering because, logically, I want the whole area to be measured and averaged and not only one spot of the scene. However, with some calculations and keeping in mind that going up and down in ISO in stops, will increase or decrease the time in doubles or halves accordingly (a stop = 2^x), all what was to be done is multiplication (20 seconds X 128, or 2⁷, that is 7 stops) and the result was around 2560 seconds (i.e. 43 minutes approximately). The ND2 (one stop) was stuck to the front of the lens hoping to increase the time of exposure and keeping the exposure as it is but seems I've done some wrong calculations here and there was no need for it. With my intervalometer remote control then I've fixed the exposure time to 44 minutes, and changed the mode to Bulb of course for such long exposures (and had to change the battery to be on the safe side).

TC-80N3 intervalometer (remote control)
Image Source

Snapshot from ACR (Adobe Camera RAW editor) with the time of exposure circled.

The histogram above is not a good histogram under the light of what I've read recently in Keimig's book. It is better, as mentioned, to have a histogram pushed toward the highlights (to the right that is) as much as possible (and clipping would occur most of the time) and it's just a rule of thumb, as this would grant a good exposure for the shadows. The histogram above was adjusted to avoid clipping from both sides. Few minutes after fixing everything and after opening the shutter (with a timer to give me time to go to bed first!), I've heard a sound of something falling down, and no wonder, it was the ND filter. I knew it would fall down with this bad quality of tapes! I didn't try to fix it but rather left it like that to see the results later on and the fact is, it didn't change much of the exposure.

Sleeping Ghost
general view

Sleeping Ghost (cut)
zooming into the blur movement

In fact during the exposure I did indeed get up to do something with my PC and get back to bed but such movement was not recorded in this long exposure because I would need to stay more into one position and then move to record my image on the sensor. My movement to the PC and back to bed was fast so it was not registered on the sensor, but instead all what there is to see was my flipping in my place. A nice experiment that makes me somehow confident about my approach to this matter. Hope I can target the sky soon.

Another trial took place, with my little gift to my niece for her birthday. Well, I have to say it is a cheap one but I guess she wouldn't mind :). The take was to take a picture of it with a candle light, simply because I was sick of using that softbox I've made myself. It's clumsy and bigger than it's supposed to be I think. The shoot was done with Tamron 70-300mm Macro lens, as I wanted to get a closer look on the stones.



Juveler (jewels)



Juveler means "jewels" in Swedish. Why I chose Swedish? I don't know. Probably because I have now many Swedish online friends via MostPhotos, anyway the sound of the word was appealing to me. Yu-ve-ler. Has a sense of Turkish if you ask me (plural article in Turkish is -lar or -ler)!.

Despite its simplicity, the white balance here was hard to pick up and I had to adjust it by the RAW editor. Anyway, I preferred the hot tones to reflect the goldish hue (gold is attached to money and jewels and richness in general) even though the bluish hue when using Tungsten WB was appealing as well. Many ideas were crossing my mind just to shoot this simple bracelet, like long exposure (but there was no need for it really) and focus stacking. Focus stacking was probably more reasonable to do, because in such macro lenses the shallow depth is common and it depends on what kind of effect you like to achieve. If you want to increase the depth of field, then, focus stacking is the solution (and more work awaits) to include the whole subject into the depth. After looking at this result here, I think I can say I'm satisfied. The blurring effect at the back is nice enough. One thing I'm not satisfied about is, the luster of the stones. I wanted them to sparkle but I think I should have changed the angle of the light or the camera. I need to read more on this topic specifically.

Still working on some vertical panoramas and trying to understand more about the looks and trying to make a decision what would look good or bad about them. I can say that I've discovered that not all locations might be suitable for this. Naturally! Not all structures are suitable for such panoramas (or for other types of techniques as well). This is nature I believe. There are often times though when flipping (rotating) the point of view (the roll) would be better, but you might sacrifice some aspects. This is exactly what happened to me.



Alice in Thornbrook

Considered, by me, one of the worst panoramas I've ever made. This panorama can't be stitched directly in HDR, but I had to go around and tone-map, then stitch. However, what I like is the light lamp in the ceiling which gives an illusion of a tilt while the ground is straight still, and the window on the right which gives a depth to the inside. The image is for the dining (or breakfast) room in Thornbrook House (B&B) where I stayed for 14 days. Miss those days.
Another panorama, which was a bad too, and even worse than this one because of the shake and shifts of the tripod and the VR-head rotating my camera. This panorama even got severe stitching errors even after stitching the tone-mapped version instead of the HDR version.




In Terra Horologiis (in land of clocks)



I like the tones, and the window on the left, which like the previous vertical panorama gives some depth into the inside, but the bad part is that it has so much distortion in the chairs and clocks, and other furniture pieces. Unlike the previous one, which was a simple room, the lounge was filled with objects making distortion in such locations appear so severe. Conclusion: Always check the location and see if you can re-arrange objects in case you would think of doing such vertical panoramas. Also, don't forget the roll part, which can be a good trade between good features (like a window in perspective for example) and the good looks (not much distortion in vital parts).

It's Thursday, finally. I'm praying for some rest now after a week of unexplained fatigue. Words are stuck in my mind and can't put them on paper or on monitor. A sense of panic and fear occupies me from time to time but I don't know why, and my daydreams are having a great toll on my mind with negative thoughts. I'm going to hit this Post button and try to forget the world while reading a book... by the way, did you know that I hate Internet Explorer? Yeah...

Back to Work...

First day of work, after somehow a long vacation. No news yet of any crisis coming this way yet, but I'm sure so much had been happening during my absence! I feel like I'm missing something, but what, that's what I don't know. For a beginning, I've missed bringing my headphone with me to work, so no music for today.

Recently, I've changed the folders of my images in Photobucket, those that I've processed recently, and hence there must be some change in the previous posts, i.e. broken links. I will try to fix it later and put the right link again. I thought maybe I should put sub-folders inside the main folder of the processed images and make each one bear around 30 images in total.
I'm still processing and although I didn't post much here, but there had been around 17 processed images, and some of them were panoramas. Some panoramas really got me into a headache mood with the errors that I couldn't fix. One of these panoramas is the lounge, which previous, I was planning to make into a spherical panorama with a QTVR. Unfortunately, many errors existed that I just couldn't fix them with PTGui, and after stitching they were even harder to fix using Photoshop. Beside the usual broken lines in this panorama, there were areas of haze or blur. You'd see such areas usually when a bright slide is blended with a darker slide (yes, even in HDR mode), and this causes abnormalities in color blending and sudden change in sharpness from one slide to another (specially if you have one continuous line running from one slide to another). The nadir (or bottom slide) is another problem as well; well, it always is a problem, but here it was extra. The ground was a carpet with a design and it is hard to clone the tripod and the VR-head out of the picture. Right now, I'm thinking of limiting this room to a 360 panorama instead of a spherical one. Notice that some people use the term 360 panorama interchangeably with a spherical panorama, but here I mean by 360 panorama as a horizontal sequence, only.

The lounge of Thornbrook House. A single image, not part of the panorama.

The image above is one side of the lounge and where the heavy load of errors occur. As a single image like this one above, there is no problem at all; simple tone-mapping, manual of by Photomatix and you can get the required results, but in a panorama where other slides come on the sides of this single image, you can get into troubles because of the harsh contrast between each slide and the other.

However, beside working with panoramas there were some other single images on the go as well. At this moment in fact, I've been saving some of them after tone-mapping in TIFF16 format but I did not clean the noise and did not work on other things until now, because I had to stop to stitch one of the panoramas, for a section of Hore Abbey.

The Scriber.

One of the images that really puzzled me is what I called "The Scriber." Speaking linguistically, the term is not accurate, I know. I think there is nothing in English as "Scriber." However, let's say I'm the one who coined it for the time being and get on with it, for the sake of simplicity.

Why this image puzzled me? Well, in the beginning, I took this image and I've seen a man in it when I was there in real location; in the graveyard of Cashel Rock just at the back of the chapel (ardeaglais). The engraving appears on a pillar on a shrine or mausoleum, and I was not sure what this man was doing. Later on however, and while working on the photo, I realized the man was maybe a monk or friary of some sort, who copies manuscripts or writing something and kneeling in front of a desk. On the left (in front of the kneeling man) you can see shelves of books as well. There is also some writing above this engraving but I couldn't read it. Makes me wonder now who is this man buried in this mausoleum? A monk for real?

Not all my work so far had been in HDR Tone-mapping category, but there had been some other ventures. Well, only one image in fact, which I needed to use the Exposure Fusion method.

The image above is for one of the glassware that I've been mangling with in the lounge of the Thornbrook House. This image was mainly composed of 8 slides combined together by Exposure Fusion. The reason for this is that each image was actually a single one, and not bracketed (with another 2). The setting was made on the octagonal table in the lounge, and I had to change the flash head direction manually in each shot and put it on one corner of the table. This way, I was able to get sparks from every possible direction. The flash head was controlled by the wireless function of course. I had to eliminate the background and keep the table since it was so disturbing for the composition and the flash body was obvious in view even though the EF function did some job on erasing the moving body a bit. Regular work then followed; contrast and saturation increments. I realized that taking pictures of glassware is one of the hardest tasks and you really need to control your background the very first thing. I believe the darker (and plain), the better.

Well, there are other options of course to deal with my images, like the black and white and processing single RAW files, but so far, I will work on HDR images and in fact I can produce many versions of a single scene by manipulating the HDR image in different ways. One idea is to transform a panorama already stitched for the St Dominic Abbey, into something a bit abnormal...

St Dominic Abbey. Flat Panorama. There is also a Little Planet (LP) for this one was nice and weird looking indeed, 

to see it you can click here. Some people said it looks just like some biological organism!

Now I'm back to work, everything is fine so far, with my co-worker being absent today for some reason. I need some time to grease up and go ahead with the pace as I used to, supposedly I was! I already got a list of tasks that are waiting for me but no pressure so far on doing them. The main pressure now is on keeping with my own projects. Currently, I'm reading my manuscripts book that my friend gracefully got for me for my birthday. I'm planning to finish as much as possible of it here at work.

Beside that, I have to think about my Ayvarith plans and writing some poems. These two alone bring me stress more than my work itself; well, beside driving in the streets of Kuwait of course.

I type down these words now and still thinking of my next year. Can I make out a vacation, again? I will be having some expenditures the coming year because I'm planning to get a new car, and this time no leasing. But one car that I own. Not sure what will I get, as it all depends on prices, and the shapes of course. After all, there must be some bump down on my budget the next year, and a vacation out of Kuwait might not be an option.

Kuwait, again...

Here I am, back to Kuwait. My sleeping time and habit now is a mess and trying to enjoy as much as I can (with my photos from Ireland) before the beginning of work by November.
I was planning to go to Failaka today, but my sleeping habit isn't helping for now. Today was the perfect time supposedly, as the ferry sets off at 8:00 in the morning, while other days coming after will always be later than this time. The earlier, the merrier. My aim in Failaka is to take a panorama for the inner structure of the bulleted house that I've been visiting every time I go there. I don't know if I can do this before November now, but I need to work more on my sleeping schedule. In fact, I get more excited about my photos and work that I simply forget all about sleeping and stay until the morning, when I sleep usually.

Been working on few images and some panoramas, but the work on one panorama takes such a long time, and almost feels like one day is spent for one specific panorama, so far. One of the first panoramas I started working with for now is the Thornbrook House garden panorama. I'm planning to email the images to my host, Mrs Mary Kennedy.

I did have some hard time working with panorama, as usual, because of unexpected stitching errors. Small in size, but with close inspection they were obvious. Despite the fact that I've used a VR-head here for my camera, but seems there was some shake in the tripod or some rotation in the tripod's plate itself while rotating the VR-head itself, and hence such errors were produced.

The Thornbrook House (B&B) in Cashel town. Spherical Panorama.

The sky was colored with Photo Filter layer in Photoshop. It was grayish and to give it a bit of life, I decided to go and put some bluish hue in it and the scene turned somehow like it is an early morning scene in winter, although the panorama was taken around noon or afternoon of that day.

I've made several sizes of the same panorama for different purposes that might come later. Also, I stitched the panorama all over again, and had so much trouble with memory, this time changing the projection style into my favorite little planet style...

Thornbrook House (B&B). Little Planet projection.

The nadir (bottom) point was not a problem in this panorama, mainly because I picked my location carefully to do this. I picked up a grass land so that mimicking and cloning in Photoshop would be relatively easier and more gradient into the already existing background. Another type of problems occured for me while doing this panorama however, and that is because the PTGui stitcher, was in fact connecting and stitching irrelevant images in the low row of images taken at -45 degrees. This happened because part of the VR-head was apparent in the lens view and at that time I was thinking "not a big deal since we have grass and I can clone it out easily," but the problem proved to be more than that. PTGui started to assign control points from one image to another thinking they are points in the scene itself while the fact it was just my VR-head rotating around itself! The next time I do this, I think I will have to gauge the elevation and limit it to around 30 degrees top and bottom. At the moment though, I don't think this is a good solution. Despite this problem, I did in fact stitch the panorama at the end without doing an optimization for my control points, because every time I do it I get results as "Bad" or "Very Bad" and hence, I decided without optimization, the panorama looks good for the first glance.

Of course that was not enough for me. Still something is missing. QTVR of course! I made two of them, one sizing 4MB in moderately large image and another one sizing around 300kb only with a smaller version, for web purposes.

Along with this panorama, which is the first to achieve so far, I did some simple single images. I might post them at a later time. This time my travel consists of so many panoramas, more than I did take last year in Oughterard, Co. Galway. This means more hard work for now. One of the single images I've processed today was a scene taken from St John The Baptist church, which I visited in my second day in Cashel. The image, although I've saved it and uploaded it that way, is still not what I wanted to achieve by the HDR. I'm reluctant to upload it to stock sites even because I'm almost sure, it will be rejected.

St John The Baptist Catholic Church - Side. Cashel, Co. Tipperary.

Maybe what I like about this image is the crisps that I made in my trial to make it more sharp. Other processes involved here is a fisheye distortion fix, since the image was taken with a fisheye lens, rotation, and chromatic aberrations fix (which was not a perfect fix anyway).

Although I'm still in a vacation, I do feel like something is missing from my life yet. I don't know if this is just an effect of my holiday in Ireland, or it is simply a psychological effect for now repulsing my work start by November, or it means indeed that I'm missing something! I have some books to read still and I have to think of what to do next in my Ayvarith and the project of building a webpage for it. In the same time, I will keep working on my panoramas and images most of my time at home I guess...

St. Dominic Abbey

With my leaving day approaching, on the 14th, I finally got inside te abbey ruins that was around the town center. The abbey's name is St. Dominic's Abbey and lies in a street of the same name. Well, not exactly the same name. Sráid Ministreach; The Abbey's Street.
It was indeed a beautiful morning, with shiny sun and not much winds except of a breeze, but it was cold as well. I went out today without wearing my jacket. I realized later on I would get sweaty and hot with the jacket and actually it adds to my burden when I work and walk, as in everyday so far. It was chilly and my thumb specially got almost frozen, but with time and some walking in the sun, got me almost to normal.
I reached the abbey after some 15 minutes of walking or so. I went around the abbey trying to find some sign or some way to get in. I did that for like, 5 times or so. My host actually told me that there was a sign as a guide on how or where to get the key to get inside the abbey. Finally, one lady came out from the next door house and asked me if I want to go inside, and I said yes! She handed me the key then after going inside her home to get it and told me to put it in some box when I finish.

In my roaming around the abbey, I did take some separate shots for different angles of the abbey, and also a shot through the bars of the gate for the inside. I did a little vertical panorama for one of the walls which was topped with a little tower or some kind of observatory. I was so close to the wall that I couldn't make up for one shot for this view, and I really loved this angle of view. I have to do it back home when I have the chance as my laptop is not equipped at all. I almost feel naked when I work with it.

However, in the inside of the abbey there were 2 main halls or yards. One which was in the front and can be viewed through the main gate of the abbey, and full of graves (but not much standing gravestones), and the other one was somehoew viewable from te main gate in the front but it was inside and you would need to get over some steps to get to it. I made a panorama for each hall of those and then wandered around shooting some random single images.

Some flowers on the top of a high wall of the abbey.

One of the most interesting features I've noticed in this abbey actually is, some paganic-like symbols or statues. Being not Christian myself, I did ask a friend who is a Christian and they said it does look like some paganic like symbol of fertility, although I always thought such symbol should be a feminine one and not a masculine like this one;

 Idol?

The question is, what does such a shape or statue do in such an abbey? The abbey dates back to the 1200s when it was first built. It had been reconstrcuted several times though, but definitely this thing is so so old from the way it looks, and feels. The other significant thing here as well is that, in this abbey and in Hore Abbey which I visited yesterday, there were many graves for people died in the 1800s and specifically around the 30s of that era or maybe 50s I'm not sure because the old gravestones are hard to read big time. I think most of these graves from that era belong to victims of the great Irish famine back in the 1800s although I'm not sure of the years of the famine but it happened back then in the 1800s. 

Beside that little (relatively) statue there was another statue or idol of some sort in a shape of a head as it seems but its features were completely, almost, abandoned...

 It is such weird to see these shapes inside such an abbey. The structure of the abbey is actually fascinating and there are some traces that you can see there were for arcs inside the abbey but eventually with all that time since the 1200s and re-building again and again, lot of these features are lost. All you can see is some lines as traces of some structures or broken columns. My panorama should tell better, hopefully. 

As for now, my plans for tomorrow, my last day in the Thornbrook house, is to take a walk without my camera and all the heavy loads and then simply get back home and start sorting things out and putting my stuff in the suitcase. By the day after tomorrow, I shall be in Cahir and probably I won't log in online from there, but I do have a little thing to do with the interior of the castle, hoping that tourists are not condensed there to make my work even harder.

Cashel...

Here I am. Finally, in my final destination, the Thornbrooke House in Cashel, Co. Tipperary. I couldn't write something yeterday when I was in Cahir because the wireless service in the hotel was only downstairs in the lobby, and I really didn't have the time to go there. I was so tired that after showering in Cahir House Hotel, I fell asleep for most of the day and woke up by night.
Cahir is a little town, and I was surprised by the simplicity and the beauty of this town. There is so much to see in that town and since I was planning for one day stay only, I didn't have the time to go around so much. There is a place called the Swiss Cottage which I aim to visit some time from now. The way takes around 15 to 20 minutes from Cahir to Cashel. I had my morning walk after breakfast around Cahir and snapped some images, but before that and the day before, I snapped a picture for the castle from my window, and at night it was also glamourous.

Cahir Castle from my window

Down there and beside the castle, there is so much to see. Long walks and chestnut trees, and the river or the stream, which I've forgot its name!

The Little Waterfall Beside Cahir Castle

There is so much to see in this little town and even it has an antique shop that I SHOULD visit beside a gifts shop that it is a MUST for the family and friends. But the thing that really pleased me there is... SHAMPOO!!! YES! They do have a shampoo in the bathroom in the hotel! Silly isn't it? Well, after being in Travelodge in Dublin, I decided to buy my own shampoo, and I found out a pharmacy in Cahir that got plenty of hair-care stuff. Beside that pharmacy there was a photography shop that got me interested to see. It might be a studio, and they might still have the old camera stuff!

Cahir House hotel is a fine place but not for people who expect high level of services. It's quiet, sort of. The squeaky floor was a problem for me since I move a lot inside my own room, and there is no lift (elevator). I had to train my muscles a bit with carrying my luggage, because I didn't want to anyone to carry them for me. It's a habit of mine not to trouble others with my own stuff!

Now this is my first day in Cashel, I'm not planning to do much other than organizing my stuff and settling down a bit. I have 13 more days to come ahead. The owner was so generous to offer me 2 muffins! They were so yummy! I'm trying to remain awake so far and thus adjusting my sleeping habit. On the technical side, my Photoshop CS2 on this laptop, beside the laptop's speed, is giving me some hard time. The RAW files taken with my Canon 7D are not supported, and hence I have to adjust the terms and the size to post them in here with the DPP (Digital Photo Professional) that comes with Canon cameras usually. Beside that, All the images here won't be adjusted in anyway to be tone-mapped HDR like I did last year, but directly put in here, from a single RAW file.

I need to get up now and do other things!