Bumblebee…

After the problem with my last post like two weeks ago, which was probably accidental (because I type my post whenever possible, in two locations), I’ve decided now to develop a new way to write my blog down, just like I do with my Arabic blog: Type it as a document and then copy-paste it onto the blogging platform. I think it’d be safer that way, so we’ll see.

Meanwhile, I’ve been going through some upheaval here with my sleeping on and off and my vacation (along with the National Day holiday) are all over and, unfortunately, I didn’t do much with my camera, and now I’m back to work; The daily useless exhaustion. Anyway, despite being somewhat idle, I did some stuff that I might share here anyway!

Bumblebee

Some weeks ago I’ve received an email from Chris Hinterobermaier, the Chairman of Trierenberg’s Circuit photography contest (or as we dub it usually: Austria’s International Photo-contest), motivating me to participate in 2019’s edition of the contest and reminding me of my (unexpectedly) winning panorama last year The Pride of My Homeland and the “psychological” edit of Schizophrenia. Actually, in the beginning I was reluctant to participate. I even replied back telling him that I will think about it as I didn’t work with my camera much (specially after leaving the group). I’ve also told him that I might participate in old photos, this is just to keep his hopes low with the quality of the photos which I’m going to participate with (he might have been expecting something new, who knows!). Anyway, after weeks of thinking about and working on some photos, I’ve finally made a decision to participate and it was indeed with lot of old panoramas and photos but more or less with some changes (like converting some to B&W). Meanwhile, I was hoping to upload something related to Retinitis Pigmentosa as it was February (the month of Retinitis Pigmentosa), but here we go; It’s March already and I couldn’t make one photo related to the subject! I’m still working on it though while typing this text. I had one idea that involved my old car but unfortunately, I do need a great deal of help here and I have none to help, so in a nutshell, I had to abandon the idea for now and do other things, if possible.

Anxiety

Thus, I started on working with few ideas in a whim. But the progress was so slow that I needed few days to get things done, even though it was a vacation time, yet my sleeping pattern was going through spasms! Anyway, after trying out few shots, I’ve decided to shoot another selfie (as usual) with a twist, which produced Anxiety. The twist here is: Since I don’t have anyone to help out, I’ve shot many selfies with different hand poses and then re-composed them all into one image. For a dramatic look, I’ve already decided before shooting even to convert this image into B&W. Of course, I had to do that old trick with my eye and brighten it up by controlling the tones (deliberately even with layer masks).

In the beginning, I was planning to work with the concept of “Using Every Single Pixel,” and that is the tendency to frame the subject (me in this case of course) without leaving any unused spaces around the main subject. However, while shooting, I’ve discovered that this is not a good idea as I would later be copying and overlapping, beside aligning, which would move the frames a bit and cropping is, eventually, inevitable. It is a good practice to imagine the process in your head before and while shooting your photos. In this instance, it is not much of a hurdle since I’m just working in a room in the house, but imagine the situation if you are really out there, traveling or something, just far away from home; It would be good to have yourself backed up and ready for bad surprises by doing a bit of imagination before and during the shoot. One of the struggles here as well was the lighting. Since I wanted things to be dramatic, I knew I need just one light (and if need rises, I would use something to reflect it off).

Window capture for the layers layout from the original file of Anxiety.
That is before the final crop and converting to B&W.

However, to contain the light and concentrate it in one area, it was somewhat compulsory to use a snoot, and directing the light with the snoot alone is really, REALLY, an exhaustive procedure. I even tried to bounce the light off the walls (with the snoot on to contain the light and not spread it all over) but still it was not quite enough. It was about time though until I’ve found the right angle and the right power for the speedlite to finally start shooting the series.

After doing Anxiety, I had other plans for some shot to upload on the go to Trierenberg’s Circuit photo contest. In fact, as I was working with my camera, I was simultaneously in the process of uploading my photos to the contest, and there was a bit of vacancy under the themes of Red and Human Emotions which I thought of filling up with one image into both of them. However, this time I really needed a hand with the work, mainly the modeling, so who else would I pick for this mission? My brother!

In creating Remorse, the greatest hassle really was to find a proper red pigment to make into a tear; Something that wouldn’t be hard to wash later on and yet not so watery in looks. In fact, after giving up a bit about finding such substance (we did try many coloring stuff) I was telling my brother that maybe we should just shoot it with water and colorize it digitally (but even that might not work because water would be too slippery). Anyway, the rescue came along from his daughter’s watercolors set and we created somewhat a thick and saturated bit of pigment and, most importantly, washable! However, looking at it now, I do think I made some great mistake (regardless of how strong the message is, is any). I should have used a single light to add drama and deliver the emotional status better. Using two speedlites (for the background and for my brother) made the image kind of flat and more like an image you would find on stock websites. Well, I’m thinking already of uploading it to the stocks but I would need a model release from my brother. The hassle is in printing and writing down these releases (sigh).

Operation Orange

OK. This one here is a story of failure. So, if you are not into that then just skip this portion or close this page altogether. I’ve spent more than 4 weeks (from around January 29^th) in this project and at the end, the result was null. I had to stop it after all. I feel somewhat free after stopping it (because I really need to use the infrared camera in other things) and yet I feel being fooled. But it’s a mistake from my side, and I should learn from this. So, here is a description of this failed project.

After doing a time-lapse of two bananas about 2 months, shooting them in ultraviolet, I’ve decided to do another “rotten” video, and this time shooting infrared, and the target was an orange. Initially, and for about 2 weeks, I’ve set up a 100W tungsten lamp beside the set because it was the best infrared source. Here, I went through much of thinking to try and shoot with a speedlite (because, after all, the fungus needs a dark environment) but working with a speedlite was not an option because of the power problems along with it (speedlites have no indicator for the power level). Thus, naturally I thought of using a tungsten lamp even though it will keep the room bright most of the time, but I was hoping. After 2 weeks from continuous shooting (every 5 minutes, using my intervalometer of course), I realized not much is being changed; With exception of very little green dots on the surface of the orange. At this point, I did change the strategy and changed the lighting to the on-camera flash which is built-in. I didn’t consider this option in the beginning because the direction would be right on the orange and won’t add any depth like a light from the side; Basic lighting stuff in photography. But with this power problem (and not having a studio flash or strobe that can be connected to an electrical point), I had to step down and not trying to be a perfectionist here. Using the on-camera flash allowed me to check the power (because, naturally, it is part of the camera) as well as keep the room dark all the time. It was still an annoying task somewhat to check the batteries and change them once a day at least, and also check the memory cards to upload the images to the PC. Anyway, after about 4 weeks with slow degradation in the outer skin, a quick inspection to the images I’ve been working with here made me realize that the skin of the orange which changed its color to purple is “infrared invariant,” that is, with infrared photography such changes in color do not make any significant change in the perceived image. Adding to that, my friend noted that this purple color is not caused by the fungus actually. Anyway, not wanting to put everything to waste, I’ve just parsed and made this time-lapse video of the process, which is composed of more than 9000 frames over the span of more than 4 weeks. The time-lapse here is composed to fit all frames in the span of about 1 minute (I think most stock sites require such time limitation, so I kept it at that).

 

At this, I’ve learned my lesson, and I should really take some test shots with live samples before going on with such a long experiment that really, REALLY, wasted my time. Well, it’s over now, on to the next.

Finale

Well, I’m trying to work on something here so I couldn’t finish it to be posted here and anyway I think it would be a bad idea to post it as well and make this blog post longer than it is already. Hope things go well with this shot I’m going to make because February is over and I didn’t really do anything related to Retinitis Pigmentosa still! My initial ideas were put to rest. They involved working with my old car in some space near home but I definitely need someone to help me out AND I must work in the evening if I’m going to use the wireless function to control my speedlites (I do have a radio trigger but it is problematic at times). Anyway, I’m up to a new idea now so let’s hope it works well and ready by the week after next.

Since I’m back to work, stress had been building up and my sleeping is indeed swinging. I’m even waking up around midnight and go to work just like that without even a nap. Things are building up inside me and in a time I was thinking I need a vacation to travel, the idea of just resigning and quit out from all this trash altogether is a frequent mind-visitor. Things are hard though and it’s not easy to find another job right now. Even traveling and living somewhere else where I might, just might, find people that I can get along with better – even that had been an idea that comes often to my mind. Is that an effect of my age that I don’t get along with the rest? Is it because of my eye disease? Is it because I’m single still with no one to share my life with like most of my friends do? I really don’t know. I just know one thing: I’m sick. Sick of everything. I want to sit in a dark corner and simply cry. Cry as much as I can, as much as I want, without being afraid of anyone judging me; I doubt anyone would ask even why, that if anyone noticed anyway.
Anyway, I’m TJ. And TJ is always alright…

The Banana Affair…

Breathing some air now and then with the schools being off, and yet trying to get my emotions ready for the stress and frustration with schools' return by next week. Temperatures here dropped down drastically and it was pretty cold, which I like! Unfortunately though, I didn't go out as I was hoping to take photos outside. I managed though to do my promise to myself and took the camera with me to work with Voigtländer 20mm lens and tried to snap some images. Well, I had to admit though that I did a bit of cheating here (if I can call it so) since I did take some accessories with me to help me out with the task. Anyway, this is not the main topic for this blog spot but let's see what I've managed to catch with this lens and camera combination!

20mm Fishing

As I've stated above, I did some cheating here (always in fact) when I did take the 20mm lens and camera with me to work. This cheat was to include, in the pack, some filters and the intervalometer. The filters were: Big stopper (10 stops) and a polarizer. Testing my eyes with this combination of camera and lens didn't happen in a single day in fact. I did take it with me wherever I went for 3 days. I couldn't touch the camera at work in the first day (got busy out of nowhere!), while in the second day, I was actually in a friend's workplace. Initially, I've wanted to shoot something but no one was there and I got bored alone and felt so tired so I needed that nap, until one friend came in and decided then to try something with him, as he was enjoying his breakfast on the desk!

An Taibhse Ag Obair
(the ghost at work)
Voigtländer 20mm, f/9, 10m, ISO100.

 Despite the dim light inside the office, yet the exposure time was not slow enough. Of course, if my desire was to show a motion blur in a suitable manner, I would have used that slow shutter speed and would have asked my friend to do some specific motion. However, this was not my aim. My aim was a complete abstract with a stable background (and for a bonus, a stable object as it appeared with the bowl of cereals!). To help lengthen the exposure time further, I've used (of course) my big stopper which ads 10 stops to the exposure time (and of course each stop is a double), so the total time happened to be 10 minutes. He was shocked at first, thinking how come he would remain stable on the chair for 10 minutes! Anyway, I've explained the idea for him and told him just to stay in the chair but he can move freely as he likes within the chair. I've placed the camera on a small tripod which I got years back (even before my travel to Ireland in 2010; I know because I used it there!) which was sturdy enough to carry the weight of the camera and lens, plus the lengthy intervalometer. It was cumbersome to straighten the image in-camera though, but it was good to some degree, yet I had to depend on the vertical line formed by the board on the wall (its edge) to straighten the image. The bulk of the work on the image was focused on turning the image into a dramatic and yet smooth black and white image; A combination of sharpening and smoothing the noise will always be the nightmare to achieve.

It's Changing
Voigtländer 20mm, f/13, 30s, ISO100.

The next day, in my workplace this time, I had another chance to try out the same camera and lens combination in addition to the same big stopper as well (with the polerizer as well but its effect was minimum). The cloudy weather was encouraging to some degree, even though to my experience, an overcast sky would not quite suitable to show clouds line in the sky with long exposures but I tried anyway and the result was It's Changing. I tried a longer exposure of 10 minutes but the image was so bright and the highlights could not be saved as I hoped. To make sure everything is in proper sharpness, and because the camera was to be placed on the ground near the pillar which did not allow me to see the LiveView or LCD, I depended here on the hyperfocus principle on setting the focusing ring and then I added one third of a stop (hence using f/13 instead of f/11) just to make sure that things are in good sharp level and enough depth of field. I placed the camera on the ground, on the box of the big stopper filter just to avoid scratches to the LCD, and that in fact allowed me also (when I did the 10 minutes exposure) to place a coin under the camera to see the reflection of the red light (which notes the camera is busy exposing the image); That way I was able to see for myself if the camera finished the exposure or not in case I don't hear the click sound when it finishes. Some might wonder why I don't just check the intervalometer, well, for some reasons I didn't want to move or touch the intervalometer: The camera was a bit shaky and easy to rotate on the box, so I kept the cable remote beside the camera, AND, it is better to check the light as I was having a walk in the garden instead of bending close to the camera to see the intervalometer. The red light from the camera's body is way clearer than trying to figure out the numbers on the LCD of the intervalometer. Anyway, I've picked the one with 30 seconds exposure here for processing and the rest of the game with this image, again, was to settle down with proper black and white tones. The highlights were a bit over but I was able to pull them down away from the cut-off region when processed. Strangely how this image was exposed for 30 seconds only at ISO100 with such a filter as the big stopper. I called this image It's Changing because it kind of gave me the chills in the spine for everything that is changing around me and in my life, from simple things such as likes and dislikes, to morals and priorities of people around me. It's changing.

The Two
Voigtländer 20mm, f/16, 1/3s, ISO100.

I wandered a bit around while exposing It's Changing and did notice some good approaches to minimalism and abstracts in some spots, but unfortunately, later on I've found out that many of these images were shaky because I was trying to bend or take them in some hard angle without any help from any tripod or mini-tripod, so I had to forget about them from the time being, unless I can figure our some creative way to edit my mistakes in some form of art! However, I was able to capture The Two here which is, to me at least of some sort, gives and shines some hope in me; About good things that happen in desperate times without me being in control of anything yet make me grow and flourish. I hope. Again, in The Two, I've used the principle of hyperfocus and with even greater f-stop (f/16 this time). I've taken several shots at various distances and angles around these 2 plants but probably the best one was the very first shot I've made (with some re-alignment and crop). Taking such pictures with bent back has never been an easy job, and I wouldn't be lying down in this dirt! I still didn't upload all these photos to the stocks yet. Didn't have the time to keyword them. As for the time being, I need to think about my next challenge and what lens I'm going to use. Should I go with a telephoto this time? Or change the camera and move to my converted 7D? We'll see…

The Banana Affair

The bulk of the previous two weeks, on the other hand, was focused on another experiment done at home, and not a mere challenge with a single lens and camera combination for one day. This, in fact, is a process that took me 10 days to finish! Well, with professionals I'm sure a period of 10 days of shooting is nothing really. The experiment? Rotting bananas. And just for fun, I've called the whole thing "Operation Banana."

 Footage from the 2^nd day.

So, before delving into the details, I just want to talk here a bit about the idea, which was simply to document the process of rotting for bananas, and since I didn't know what the exact outcome would be, I've decided to place a peeled one and unpeeled one, side by side. To get some good contrast with the white banana body, I've placed the set on a black paper (then acrylic board). The shooting took place under black lights (UV lights that is) and, of course, used my UV-pass filter (B+W 403) and DR-665 hot mirror to block any infrared, and after fixing the white balance, the result was a monochromatic image.

In the beginning, as you might have heard in the video if you watched it already, I've set the timer to take a picture every 2 minutes, but then I realized this was a bit of an exaggeration to get a smoother transition when frames are merged into a video. Thus, by the 5^th day, I've changed the interval of shooting to every 5 minutes instead. There was some degree of disappointment though, mainly because I didn't realize some biological (botanical) facts, such as that bananas do not turn brown because of some bacteria of fungi, but it turns brown or black in time because of some enzyme. Also, after the 5^th day, I've decided to warm the set up during the shoot, so I placed a hair dryer not far from the set (which actually made the whole room warm and cozy in one or two hours!). Finally, the end result was actually a shrinkage in size for the peeled banana while the unpeeled turned into a "fluid" form, but I didn't dare open it! They were 10 days full of running around checking batteries and memory cards (used 2 memory cards in the process, exchanging one when it's almost full with the other one), and the total shots taken here were more than 4000 shots (yes, four thousands).

 The Banana Affair

The hurdles were not limited to the physical realm with the set, but also in the digital realm with the preparing of the photos. Shots were all done in RAW. You might see the video here is a bit shaky and cumbersome with some movement? Well, blame my clumsy movement which caused me to shake the tripod in the process many times. Anyway, the video above is the total one and it was adjusted later on. Originally, the video was 2m14s long but I've shortened that later on by increasing the fps (frame per second) rate. 

To do such a massive and huge edit on these files (done in patches each time I would have to change the memory card) I had to dig out the old Digital Photo Professional (DPP), or namely the Canon's software which is installed along with the drivers long ago but I seldom use, if ever. Despite its controls, I managed to achieve the look on one image and generalize the "recipe" (i.e. the parameters of editing) on the whole set of images and then save all those edited as JPEGs with resize and changing the name of each file in sequential manner. All this process was to be so hard to be done in Photoshop - Maybe someone might say Adobe Bridge is the tool for this task? Not sure it would do so, besides, the controls and menus are some what complicated for me to dig out. DPP was much easier to work with and simple (and its simplicity sometimes is what makes not edit in it as well). Oh, and I could even change the color space to Adobe 1998 space along with the conversion to JPEG. 

This was the story of the Banana Affair, and guess what? It is now uploaded to the stocks and accepted exclusively on Dreamstime! It was hard at first because I don't know many aspects about uploading videos or footage to the stocks and they have special requirements, but I've done it after all with some trials, and now I'm up to do one more if I can! Let's see if it ends up well.

Finale

Well, as you can see I'm trying to keep myself busy with the camera as much as possible, but on the other hand I do have my moments of inspiration which I translate into some quote writing of some sort. I didn't write or think of words to pin a poem for some time now (since December if I recall) so probably my plan for the next coming weeks is to focus on this more, but more importantly, to focus on my feelings. 

Many things are troubling my mind; Life, work, future, as well as death in fact. I'm trying my best to stop my mind from triggering panic attacks and anxiety, and to keep thinking that it is all in the hands of God. This alone, is really leaving me tired to the extent of not taking care of what I'm supposed to take care of, or even indulge myself in. I think this exhaustion is even placing some love inside of me to hatred, to some aspects or some... people.

Some people do think that I do believe in horoscopes and the stars, but I'm really reading and checking those to ease things on myself and to feel the pat on my shoulder, not because I do believe in them (even though they are an interesting thing to study somehow because of my interests in occult in general). These things promise a happy and a promising new year; I'd like to keep that thought but I'm sure that the reality has another venture for me. Probably I'm due to a short vacation, not to travel, but just to stay home and sleep or do things and work with my camera without trying to manage the damn bedtime and the sleeping pattern…

Racing Time…

Here we go, with a new year, and... some new load of problems I guess? Anyway, life a problem in its core I presume, right?
Well, in my previous post I was talking about doing a self-challenge as I used to do before and head to work with one camera and one lens (did that already with 50mm lens) and this time to be using 20mm lens. Anyway, for some technical reasons, I had to delay this for a while until I finish some experiments at home. Why? Because I'm using the intervalometer in shooting some time-lapse at home, and I do need the intervalometer to shoot long exposures as I'm planning, at work, if possible. So, I'm waiting!
Mentioning time-lapse, there is one big deal which occupied me for a while and I was not able to post about it in the previous post because I was simply busy processing the images and the video. Let's see…

Frozen

Refreshen
Source
In this shot I've used a continuous
light source focused on the glass
and the ice cubes in a dark
room and with a considerably long exposure.

I was encouraged to do this experiment after my work with the incense sticks and capturing smoke as well as doing a short time-lapse. Thus, I thought, why not work with a melting ice block? I did somewhat similar experiments before, doing long exposure for melting ice and the results were so-so I'd say. This time, as with the case with the incense sticks, I've planned to work with speedlites and take several shots. Originally, though, I was planning to do a real long exposure actually, and triggering the speedlites by sound every 1 minute or some other specific time period, but re-thinking the procedures and the capabilities, I changed my mind and decided to shoot normally with the intervalometer and capturing many photos and by this I would be a winner on both sides: Merging images as in double exposure or more than that, as well as forming a time-lapse for the whole process.

The set where the shooting took place, with 3 speedlites at work.

The main problem though was to make the ice block and how to make it interesting! After thinking thoroughly, and after noticing some candy tins which were prepared specially for some occasion I'm not aware of. Anyway, my brother helped me remove the golden paint on the tin, but still some work was left since the tin had some design. Not willing to paint it all over again, I've used balloons to cover the tin and make it all red (after felling it with marbles). Then, I've prepared a cylindrical canister open from two sides and filled it with water with the tin inside (hence the marbles to sink it down). I did face some problems here but let's not delve into these details, as they were about to drive me nuts!

The shoot in action.

Before the actual shooting takes place, I did practice on a glass in the same position where the ice block would be. I got the 3 speedlites to work perfectly as I need, despite the cumbersome settings or light modifiers I'm using here. I used 2 speedlites on the side, and one speedlite with a snoot to cast some light in the background even though, initially, I didn't want to do that in the first place, but then I thought it would be a good idea to separate the ice block from the pitched darkness of the background; However, in all 3 speedlites, I tried to use the minimum power to give just a hint about the boundaries and not illuminate everything (and this is also useful to save power more because I was not sure how long this process will be), and thus all speedlites were on powers less than 1/8 of the maximum.

Frosted Love
Time-lapse

It took me around 5 hours (or maybe a bit more) for the ice to melt down to considerable and acceptable amount (but not completely!). The hardest part was to remove that ice spot on the surface of the heart which seems to be there for hours and I was afraid that it won't melt down at all. I did melt it down a little but not completely (using a kitchen torch).

I had my lesson now for working with ice. It is probably the most unstable thing on planet Earth! You will notice how the ice block in the time-lapse moves around; Unfortunately, something I couldn't prevent or avoid. The white powder scattered around the block is actually salt which I used to stabilize the block in one place, but even with that, the block would rotate around itself as it was melting. You might have also noticed some purple spot in the lower right corner (and there are two of them if you checked the photo of the set above). These were clay (play-doh) pieces which I used to raise the acrylic board just a little to balance the block, but even with that, the block kept on moving left and right and I realized I would need salt here. For this reason, it was such an exhaustive work for 5 hours or so, even though I thought I would rest a bit while the process takes its own pace; I was completely wrong! I had to run often to the set to check its process and to adjust the block manually in between the shots. I'm happy though that the lighting from the speedlites kept consistency and there is almost no change in the light level in the video.

Defrosting Love

Finally, I didn't forget my major aim for this whole "little" project here, which is an image (and not a time-lapse video). With such a huge amount of images (more than 580 shots), I was a bit puzzled at what I'm aiming for, or more precisely, what images do I need to mimic the thawing of the ice (the time-lapse was in reverse so it was like if the heart is frosting not defrosting). Thus, I've set my mind to pick one image with 100 shots apart in between (approximately). The resulting image, Defrosting Love, was formed by blending the images using Lighten mode mostly but later needed some work with layer masks to hide some unneeded artifacts. The hurdle though was with the red tones as their saturation and lighting were a bit troublesome to tone down and keeping a natural level. Anyway, seems (just seems) I got it right.

Now, I still need to add some keywords to the image and get it ready to be uploaded to stock websites. Though I finished this little project a while ago, but I was really busy with other things around which kept me (or rather made me forget) about uploading this image. As for the time-lapse, I'm still reluctant to upload to stock websites (some of them accept footage) as it doesn't seem quite perfect, but I'm keeping my options open for the time being. I'm typing these words as I'm working on another project which hopefully I'll be posting about soon when it's over, and also I need to get ready for another idea which is cooking at the back of my head! I'm having a rain of ideas, and probably I should thank winter for it!

Finale

AC-E6N
AC Adapter for some Canon cameras,
including Canon EOS 7D.

This was a quick journey through a little project which I've done lately, and somehow it got me keen on trying more time-lapses, if possible. It also sparked my interest in getting one of those AC adapters for the camera and thus I wouldn't have to change the batteries often during the time-lapse shooting; It's quite critical to keep the camera untouched as much as possible. I asked about it around and the shop owner said it might be available in 3 weeks or so and I didn't really find it in listings of other shops around. I'm not going to order that with international shipping as well, as it's not really worth all that money for this item alone (I don't have anything else to order along with it). So, I guess all I can do for now is wait! 

Many ideas are running through my mind right now, and just to name few: Reviving the Scopa project which I've stopped months ago, and maybe, just maybe, I might try to go out at night like I used to do before and shoot something (crossing fingers to not encounter any annoyances). This is beside challenging myself with the one-camera one-lens challenge. 

Because of all of this "indulgence" with ideas, I really had little time to connect with myself and write a poem. I'm breaking my own promise to myself of writing at least one poem a month. I didn't compose any poem in December, and now January is on its beginnings, yet I'm not sure if I will write anything.

Despite this enthusiasm and this mind running with ideas, I'm on the contrary to all of that, tired. So tired. Of everything. Overthinking is taking its toll on me and I'm fighting back with whatever power left in me. This aside, I've noticed how much I'm getting frustrated and angry and simply irritated by simple things. They say this usually happens when a person keeps so much inside without venting or dealing with these feelings; All that would show later as a burst of anger against the silliest of things. This is what is happening to me really.

Deep inside me, there is a perplexing mix of feelings of love and hate, eagerness and despise, but the greatest of all of these feelings, is the fear from tomorrow...

Chaotic Life…

Busy week, and busy health issues as well. I did not feel like typing this blog post really but I'm pushing myself just to get myself out of the circle. Car issues (not over yet with those) occupied my mind (and still) for the past few days and I was not able to work with my camera and incense sticks to apply some ideas that occurred to me.

My new Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

Moreover, there was a bit of news I was lazy to post about last time, and that is my nifty-fifty lens (Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM) had gone dead with the focusing ring not responding; Not in manual, nor in Autofocus mode. This is one of the critical lenses I have, and having it ready is a must. Thus, I was anticipating in my mind to order a new one and this time it would a 50mm lens but from Canon's L-Series (higher quality and, well, pricey). Unfortunately, though I had to ignore this option when I discovered that the diameter of this lens is 72mm and not 58mm as its cheaper counterpart.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM

This difference will make lot of troubles with my arsenal of filters which I usually purchase based on the 58mm standard, as most of my lenses do have this diameter and some do have step-down or step-up rings for them to attach these filters. Using a step-down ring for 72mm to 58mm is, as far as I know, does not exist and most probably I would need 2 step-down rings (72 to 62 and 62 to 58) and such a setting is not advised for because it might cause more vignetting and probably more flares because the body of the filter would be separated more than usual from the surface of the lens front. Thus, after checking it out, I've finally ordered the same lens I have from a local store (AABWorld) which Ironically offered the lens for $4 less than its price on B&H! I got it delivered on the same day. Man, I'm spending lot of money in this month...

Smoking Smoke

I've posted in my last post here about working with incense sticks and some plans about it but I didn't post any results from that experiment. In fact, my aim in the first place was to do a long exposure with periodic flash bursts from my speedlites and thus making a multi-exposure-like image within one frame and one single exposure (by working in a dark room). However, we are talking here about exposures that might extend to 30 minutes, and the stroboscopic feature in speedlites won't handle this situation properly. Therefore, I was looking for another solution to this. Meanwhile, I was busy the past week in writing a blog post in Arabic for my Arabic blog specifically about this experiment and how I did what I did. See, I was busy!

The set for shooting incense sticks.

Thus, since I couldn't work out my way with such idea, I had to do things digitally, by using the intervalometer and take shots automatically every 30 seconds (I worked with 1 minute as well) just like if I was doing a time-lapse, and then work hard digitally to compose and overlap the images and convey a sense of movement. Well, the end result was actually more surreal and far from being about movement! Yet, I still like it. For fun (probably posted this before?), I've created a reverse time-lapse out of the 80+ shots that I took of the burning incense sticks. I didn't bother to add sound or anything.

My first step in processing this amount of images (more than 80 shots) was to use the Blend technique, in which I would change blend for each layer to merge it in a somewhat similar look to the multi-exposure option in some cameras. Mainly, the Blend option to fit the usage here was the Lighten option.

Emerging Smoke

I have to admit though that the general look might be messy with Emerging Smoke, yet I do like such a mess with its abstract sense and randomness. Notice that the final image was rotated as well to add a bit of mystery to it. The coloring was done digitally of course and I used a simple gradient here close to baby-pink and baby-blue, but I think I should have made the grading softer some more as it appears as if the change was sudden from pink to blue. The smoke here also does have some metallic sense to it, and I think it would be good as a background of some sort. It is already accepted by some stock websites already with its counterpart coming next. One thing to notice here though, the Lighten blend does not work with all kinds of images; Sometimes, if the images are generally bright, the Darken blend would work better, or maybe at times a mix of the two blends would do!

Smokey Carnival

The next play or trick required some special sorting for the images: Only those with longitudinal smoke shapes would be picked for the process. And the process was simply assigning a channel from the RGB spectrum to each layer (consecutively), in addition to some tweaking in contrast, and at a later stage tweaking the colors with Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and voila! We have a Smokey Carnival. I'm not sure how many layers I've used here but it was somewhere between 70 and 80 shots. This combination of images, too, is now available on the stock, and I think it does make another background or backdrop image, or even a wallpaper. Things won't stop at these two, as there are single layers which produced some interesting shapes of smokes that I'm willing to experiment with and add some digital colors to keep things interesting (probably combination of gradations made of complimentary colors). Yet, because of the hectic life issues I'm having currently, I had to stop editing those images and even stop doing some plans with my camera. Let's hope this weekend gives me some breath of life to stand up again.
As I've mentioned earlier, I was thinking of some method to time the speedlite to shoot in specific periods of time with a long exposure (extending to around 30 minutes maybe!), and seems the solution is here finally but I didn't get the chance to try it out yet. Without delving much into the details, it seems that I need to dig out my multi-gate trigger (which works with infrared, laser and sound) and hook it with the system for this experiment. Let's hope I would be able to work with it this week or so and get some good results!

Finale

Well, as you can see here maybe this is kind of a short note of what I've been doing lately with my "life" - if I can call it so. Too bad my mind had been too busy to write or think of some words to jot down or even to look inside myself for feelings to express in a poem. However, in the mid of all of that, I'm keeping a record for some of my thoughts about life on Writing.com and I do post them as well sometimes on Twitter and FB. Anyway, probably not the time to post the link for that for the time being.
Times is ticking away and to be sincere about my feelings, I'm loathing and getting disgusted by every second the ticks while I'm in this place. A place that I call home, or maybe I'm forced to call home. Time passes and I feel more estranged and more isolated. Adding to my eyes trouble that makes driving such a hassle to be aware of, the hassle of dealing with the outside world and with such savage and barbaric creatures that call themselves human beings makes my anger deep inside incremental. So much that I feel like crashing everyone I see in front of me with my car, if I can get the chance to. Probably this is the effect for not traveling out for 3 years... Probably I'm on the verge of forgetting that once upon a time, I was a human being.

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…

TGIT...

Been one of the most catastrophic holidays I've encountered so far. Four days of complete boredom. No going out because of the jams (jams of celebrations), and barely doing some activities out of home in the mornings, and now, trying to organize my room little bit. TJ, cleans his room! This is what life is coming to!
I've taken the chance one morning to go to the beach, again, to try out some time-lapse with the sunrise and this time with my intervalometer. Because I was so lucky, and please note the sarcasm, the weather was foggy at the day in which I was able to go out in the morning. That was the morning of Friday, February 25th. I'm trying to pull myself back to photography on the beach. I didn't do that in a very long time now, specially at times of low tide. Sometimes, I do hate my work because of missing such moments in my life.
Anyway, In the fog there were some chances worthy for taking. The turbulent movement of the sea (high tide with some wind made the waves crush against the rocks on the shore), made some kind of effect when I processed the images in HDR, similar to the effect of using a slow shutter speed (long exposure) with moving water...

Terra Natantes

Floating Land

I almost got myself wet to take this photo, going a bit deeper into the beach and closer to the water. It was wet sand already and the air blowing almost pushing me towards the water. The fisheye was the first option here to add some weird depth to the image, but I was thinking of getting even lower than this, but the conditions didn't help. I didn't want to cover myself in mud!

The effect of the sea turbulence was greater when I snapped directly into the sea from the top of the rocks, just at the back of some restaurant (I think it was pizza hut)...

Fogland

This shot specifically was merged into HDR under ProPhoto space. I was kind of "missing" working in that space. Yet, because I was concerned about uploading this image into some websites that do not support such space, I had to pull back and put it into Adobe 1998. Because of this change of space, the bluish hue turned dull, and I had to add extra layers to put it back as I want it. By the way, the concrete structure in the middle is in fact a sewage outlet pouring into the sea! And despite this, and despite all the warning signs, people still do go to swim in that area! However after taking that picture I've been snapping with my 70-300mm macro lens, zooming into the rocks trying to catch a splash of water, and I had to use high ISO, as high as 2000...

Splash

Monday now, February 27th and the last day in this boring long holiday, I've decided to go out a bit and do some activities. Had lunch in my favorite Chinese restaurant and at day time, the beauty of the decorations is pronounced more. The only special thing at night time inside the restaurant is the spot lights which make it more interesting. My brain was wandering off in style of a daydream about possible shots inside the restaurant. I made a plan that I might ask the owner for her permission to take pictures from the inside and the outside for this restaurant. The facade of the restaurant MUST be photographed at night, otherwise I believe the image won't be that interesting at all. Even some thoughts for a panorama went on but a complete panorama should be taken away off the center to show a special Chinese-like lantern in the middle of the restaurant, hanging from the ceiling. Being under that won't be of much interest (not even in a QTVR).

On the same day, I've went for a car wash and it was such a crowded place. Took me around one hour to get out of that place! However, I managed to settle the tripod and the camera with the timer remote control in front of the seat next to me and started to take shoots for every 5 seconds. The situation was shaky and the camera fell down with the tripod on my first turn out of the station, thus I had to drive slowly and holding the tripod with one hand while driving. At home, I managed finally to combine the slices to make a simple time-lapse, without any sounds of course...

I still need to learn more about these codecs and formats. It took me some time just to get it in a suitable size! Now since this one is done, I thought of the previously done manual time-lapse for the sunset from the roof. This time-lapse was done in HDR and then tone-mapped, but something went wrong in some slides making the sides of the JPG files go dark or bright (all HDR slides were processed under same settings with a batch process command). I had to struggle a bit with this one to fix the size of the file and the dimensions of the clip.

The timer remote control is a must in time-lapse photography, and I thought in the beginning that I can't take bracketed images with a time-lapse process. I was wrong. Don't blame it on me though because the manual didn't mention any tricks about that. I emailed the support center for Canon-US, and they gave the answer in the very same day (thank you guys):

Thank you for contacting Canon product support regarding the Timer
Remote Controller TC-80N3.  We value you as a Canon customer and
appreciate the opportunity to assist you.

This is possible, though a combination of features on the camera and on
the timer.  On the camera, set the drive mode to continuous, and
configure Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB).  In this configuration,
you can hold down the shutter and take three bracketed shots in rapid
sequence, and then the camera will stop after the third shot even if you
continue to hold the shutter.  On the remote, configure your intervals,
and then also configure the exposure time for 3-4 seconds.  This will
"hold the shutter button down" long enough for the three bracketed shots
on the camera.  This should achieve the effect you are aiming for.

Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance with your
Timer Remote Controller TC-80N3.

Thank you for choosing Canon.

Sincerely,

Dirk
Technical Support Representative

Such trick was not really mentioned in the manual and I never thought about it. The way that the manual put it is just so specific and to the point. Every mode in the intervalometer has a job to do and that's it. However, I tried what the support suggested and it worked! I spent a nice one hour on the roof of my house just relaxing beside my camera and tripod in the nice breeze while reading. Eventually I had a nap on my chair that got me a stuff neck!



There were 24 slides of HDR after all, and each slide (or bracketed sequence) is taken in an interval of 3 minutes. I wished to make it smoother than this really but I was afraid of my CF memory card limitations. I might try shorter time in some other occasions. The tone-mapped images were then combined into the video you see above and I had to struggle again to limit the size and other things. Now what came as a surprise to me is the following: I was trying to combine several slices into one image (not a movie), as I was aiming to make an image showing the sun on the move. I used the Photoshop's blending, and I never had in my mind (which should be something natural but I think I was dreaming or something) - never had in my mind that the first thing blending command in Photoshop would do is to eliminate the difference to make one coherent image. I'm talking here about "image stack" blending and not "panorama blending". Image stacking is usually used for increasing depth of field when you take several images with changing focus zone (specially with macro techniques). However, the result was astonishing. A nice blend of colors (which is more vivid in ProPhoto but I had to put it down to Adobe 1998)...

 Sunset

Not all the 24 slides were combined actually, but I picked them out on an interval of 3 (i.e. 1, 4, 7, ...etc). This is because I had in my mind the movement of the sun in the sky, but I never thought that Photoshop will simply eliminate the sun in ALL of the slides and keeps up with the color blend. I think this unexpected result is a lesson! I think it would be something similar to the Exposure Fusion (EF) technique that I used before to blend several images with different White Balance (WB) and not different Exposure Value (EV) as it is the usual with HDR images. However, I will try to work on my previous aim, that is creating an image with several suns in it. I did it before but it was simple that time and not many frames involved.

Today, I've finally managed to stabilized the tripod inside the car on the back seat. I did take a video already this morning and I'm aiming for time-lapse from inside the car. In practical use, I've discovered that 18-55mm is better than 15mm fisheye lens when taking a video from that angle. Mainly, this is because the tripod is so tied to the back seat and laid back a bit and a fisheye would show unneeded parts of the car inside. Still though, I might want to achieve such effect later. I learned also that it is better to leave the EV level at 0, instead of raising it to +1 to brighten the things inside the car. The front (the road) was so bright in the videos. Is this a trend towards videography that came over me? This is a bit scary 'cos mainly I've always hated to take or watch videos (movies and shows, ...etc) - but only a few of them. It's fun though with people looking at you thinking how weird you are!

Now Ayvarith-wise. Fortunecity, which was my last hope, made me sick now. I can't upload anything to that website and barely able to upload some pictures. No audio no video, just plain! I'm looking now further to see any place that can host such files. I don't want to squander my files here and there, like building the web page in Fortunecity and host the audio files somewhere else. It's going to be a tiresome process that way. For this problem now, I'm sort of delaying my recording for the Ayvarith text of  Alexander's story. I've finished recording the samples for the Preface (samples of how to say the letters), and all I need now, a place to host them. Yuck!

I'm trying to get myself busy as much as possible despite my physical capabilities, but well, I don't know where I'm heading at... man, I need a shower...