+5…

Did I pass 2 weeks already without blogging? I guess! I really didn't count the days. I've been under pressure lately which made me unable to do much even with editing my old photos. The largest portion of this stress has passed (somewhat) already, but some deal of it remains still. More about that a bit later.
I don't think I will be posting much in this post except for an announcement, and as I go on, I might think of posting a bit further about some of my latest edits!

Announcement

I think I've mentioned in previous posts about new uploads to Mostphotos. So, here it is, I've uploaded about 3 new panoramas (plus 2, adding to 10 panoramas uploaded months back). So, the total right now is at 15 panoramas at large sizes, suitable for printing as fine art pieces. I think I didn't post much about these extra 5 panoramas, so I'll try to do so here right now. 

Failakan Sunset

Earlier (as in last month or before!) I've added Failakan Sunset  to Mostphotos (exclusively), and it is an old (half-way) panorama shot over a ramp, which is used to slide boats to the water, on Failaka island. It was taken in 2012. I say "half-way" here as it was not a full panorama, but merely 2 rows was shot, and the third one was not shot (probably because at that time it was getting pretty dark on this depopulated island). Originally done in HDR, but this time it is done with singles of RAW files; All edited and stitched. Of course the colors are edited here and in fact they caused me a problem because when merging layers the appearance of the image would change drastically. I had to re-work the colors after merging (and at 100% zoom to ensure the accuracy of the colors). At 300 dpi, the panorama is close to 102cm by 36cm. I think if I was to print this panorama I would print it on a glossy material, preferably metal. Just one must be careful about the reflections from light fixtures. 

Entry
(Slí Isteach)

Then I added Entry, or as I like to call it in Irish: Slí Isteach. This is a panorama shot in 2014 inside a little defensive tower in the remains of Aughnanure castle in Oughterard, Co. Galway. It was my 3^rd time in Ireland, and my 2^nd time in Aughnanure (the first being in 2009). Generally speaking, this projection is relatively new for this panorama. I did many projections and styles out of this panorama, but this is the first time I do a simple vertical one like this, and centering it at the door. At 300 dpi, this panorama is almost 33cm by 75cm. I had to crop quite a portion to balance the image here and remove unnecessary or incomplete details. I would consider printing this on glossy metal but one has to be careful with the lighting surrounding this; Otherwise it would turn just like a reflective mirror with such dark areas. If one would want to go safe with this one, matte never hurts anyone!

Solar Towers

Then, we have Solar Towers, which took me quite some time to put the keywording for, and I'm not sure why. I think I was passing through some "mind-boggling" phase or something. Anyway, I did the keywording after all and here it is. Of course this is an old panorama and it was done in HDR before but this time, like the rest in this series, it is stitched out of single RAW files. The projection here, though, is the new thing as I didn't do such a projection before out of this panorama specifically. I had some struggles of course with the tripod and its shadows (like in the original) and I had spent quite some time fixing it. At 300 dpi, the size is about 42cm by 76cm. I tend to think that glossy printing of this one would add to the vibrancy of the blue tones and adds more overall contrast.

Beyond Abzu

I rolled back in time and checked some of these winter adventures I did back in 2012, and found some worthy stuff (but with a great deal of post-processing work and fixing), such Beyond Abzu here. Beyond Abzu was one of my first night panoramas and I still remember that cold winter night when my feet got frozen by the cold water. As the processing went on, the general tint of the image got green and that inspired a sense of mystery in me, hence the name Abzu (also Apsu) which is the name of the primitive waters, supposedly, from which the world was created in Sumerian myths. In some way, the whole surrealism in this panorama was pointing to that meaning in my head so I gave it that name. At 300 dpi, the panorama is about 37cm by 85cm, and I would go with a glossy print for this one though I would fear for the level of noise here to be exaggerated. I worked on cleaning the noise moderately because there is a limit, after which details might disappear. However, this panorama still bear some dark aspect and dark areas might work as mirrors in glossy prints,specially metallic ones. But I would imagine it would be so vibrant if printed on metal!

Return to Nammu

Lastly, there is Return to Nammu which I consider like Part-2 of Beyond Abzu. In time, these two panoramas are not far off; Both were shot in the same winter, and both in January of that year. However, with Return to Nammu, the sky was a bit darker than in Beyond Abzu specifically because I shot this facing the sea and the moon and the city lights were relatively further away. This allowed for some star constellations to appear in the sky in the original shots and here I tried to process the panorama and clean the noise without touching the stars. Thus, they appear in the original panorama, despite being shot within the vicinity of the city, but only when zoomed in at 100%. Unlike Beyond Abzu though, this one looks quite colorful, and yet mysterious a bit because of the dark night element and the stars, and that moon that shines like a rising sun (but in the middle of the night!). At 300 dpi, the size is about 85cm by 38cm. Print-wise, I guess it would do good in glossy as well as matte. The green hue here, as I see it, would be a vibrant one on a glossy media, specially a metallic one. 

Well, this is for now 5 new uploads to my Mostphotos, which are exclusive to Mostphotos. The links are up there to visit the profile or the specific images, in case you are reading this and wish to get one of these.
My capabilities right now are not quite aligned to provide such printing services and shipping, so I let these images to be purchased on their own as big original files in JPEG format to be printed on whatever the client would like.

Finale

Well, probably I can't get on so much with this post but I believe the announcement above and the details mentioned are just about enough in length for this post; Let's not make it longer!
I am currently on a leave from work for 2 weeks but not for resting or fun, but rather for stress and tracking. After a long wait, I've finally received my "disability certificate" which took a bit more than 2 weeks actually, and finally I was ready to submit my request for a grant of medical retirement from my workplace. But things weren't easy as I hoped for; Suddenly, solving a problem 2 or 3 more problems would occur and some more responsibilities regarding my work are added to the mix, which made every single passing day count. As I'm typing these words, I've finally submitted my papers by email (after a little adventure in going to the new campus, my future workplace supposedly) and a recent phone call confirmed to me that my papers had been signed and ongoing in the process. I just hope the big part of this is over with just before my two-week leave ends. Bureaucracy is not in a friendly terms with my time.
For this reason, and because of all of that stress, I don't think I would be blogging on a regular basis, but surely I will try as much as I can, at least once every other week. Who knows, maybe by the next blog post here, I would be completely free…

Panafraglypherous...

Well, I made the word in the title up out of boredom. However, it is somehow related to the coming body of the post. This week had been somewhat slow. I think this is related to the day becoming longer right now, and the Maghrib prayer (dusk time) which was due aaround 5 p.m., is now due some time after 6 p.m.. I'm just hoping it won't make for shorter sleeping times, as it is already short! Anyway, I got some ideas that had been partially done, in hope that I would continue the trend in the coming week(s).

Nocturnal

The winter is slowly disappearing, and along with it the chances for long exposures, specially at night. In fact, last weekend, I've been going out at late night (or should I say before dawn time) aimlessly just to grasp the sensation of the last nights of winter. In Kuwait, the spring is hardly a "spring," and unless it is windy and harshly cold, then no long exposures are feasible because it seems that temperatures above 15^oC or 20^oC have drastic effects on long exposures and the noise level in general; specially with a camera like EOS 7D.

Sternensturm
Canon EF 50mm, f/14, 15m, ISO100.

In one of these nights, I've tried some approach to Kuwait Towers; an area that I deemed as a taboo for some time. With my previous experiences, specially with security guys in some malls (day and night), I thought what makes me approach the towers? Anyway, I had a go with it and this time I planned my visit just one hour or less before the beginning of the twilight of dawn - because this is the time when the lights in the towers and the surrounding area are turned off.
First, I had a trial with Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens but anyway because of the distance and some light sources in the far horizon, the image was really out of composition after all. My main aim at this point was to capture the landscape, but I realized it is a failed attempt because, simply, there is no organization on ground itself. I wanted to leave after this failed trial but then I had the idea of using my 50mm lens and create some abstract with the towers (or maybe a minimalistic approach) with some long exposure, in hope that I get some trails like I did some weeks ago on another side of the beach. The final result, Sternensturm, contained some faint traces of trails but it would need some 100% view to show clearly. This in fact gave me some tiny hope in repeating the same experience but closer to the towers and using a different lens (could be 15mm), but I need to wait and see the weather this coming weekend, as we had some tiny rain showers.

Tick-a-Tick

It was about time to do this experiment, which requires somewhat a strong sun. Since I've been around the Towers area lately, I've decided to finally start with an infrared session shoot for a panorama around that place specifically.

InfraCuvaitum

The experiment was relatively successful. I say relatively because there are some issues I still need to think them through. The panorama, InfraCuvaitum, took around 2 hours and 15 minutes, literally; from 7 a.m. up until 9:15 a.m., excluding the time for setting up the configuration. The panorama, of course, was not shot for HDR processing, but only single RAW files of infrared images. Because my camera is not "converted", i.e. adjusted to allow more IR, by removing the hot-mirror filter on the sensor. For this, each single exposure in the 36-shot process took a time period ranging from 1 minute to 6 minutes. In other words, the whole panorama was done in Bulb mode; not Av nor Manual mode.This in fact was quite an experience!
During the process, I had many visitors; wanted and unwanted. However, because of the long exposure times, they were not recorded persistently on the sensor. In this panorama however, and because of my location relevant to the towers, I had to refer to the planet projection specifically because, otherwise, the towers would look too compressed and out of features. The only way to enhance the tower's look was to use this projection. The sun was harshly blown out (naturally) and hence I had to cut it out of the frame which distorted the square-shaped proportions I usually apply to such images. The sun's flare is still obvious on the right side of the image though.

This experience taught me something about managing the exposures and working in Bulb mode all the way. Mainly, I had to reduce the time of the exposure as the rotational motion of the camera would approach the areas where the sun persists. All that was majorly done by intuition and it was 90% successful, having in mind that these RAW files will be processed to recover highlights and shades. If this method was applied with HDR intention, at night time, I might be able to somehow reduce the rocketing dependence of raising the ISO up to 800 and 1000! Needs patience though, and calm atmosphere.

Panaglyph

This is my new term that I've been using to mark a panorama in 3D (or anaglyph) format. I've been wondering for some time about the possibility of such image because of some paradoxical concepts are involved: while panoramas are supposedly done with the least parallax error, anaglyphs seem to be using this parallax to deliver a 3D illusion to the mind! The solution was simple, and I just can't figure how come I didn't think about it before!

My first "panaglyph"
Click to Enlarge

The concept is, apparently, about creating a difference in perspective. Thus, all what we really have to do is move the camera along some axis to create a change in the perspective. In other words, move the whole set (tripod and camera) to some axis. This simple solution was hidden away from my thinking because I was thinking about the camera's movement alone and I didn't think about the core of the issue: perspective change.
The panorama above is a simple 360^o panorama from the vicinity of my home. As you may notice, the separation between the left (red) and the right (blue) layers is increased at he edges of the panorama. However, ghosting artifacts, at least to my eyes, are not persistent even at the edges. If you are looking at this image right now, with 3D glasses (red/cyan) concentrate on the spikes on the top of the door and you will quickly get into the 3D sensation. There are several points though that I've went through and some of them needs more experimentation:

1.

First of  all, and to make things realistic as much as possible, I did  measure  the distance between the centers of my eyes. The distance was about 7 centimeters (~2.75 in). Thus, the displacement of the system should be around this value as you can see from the sketch on the right.

2.  Because we have to displace the system in a straight line for some distance, in any direction, then the center of the panorama, meaning the point that should be at the center when stitching the panorama, must be known beforehand. This is because, this point and angle that will be overlapping (and with the least difference between red and blue fringes). The displacement should be parallel to the plane of that surface or angle, as in the sketch.

3. In the stitching phase, the first panorama is stitched and arranged in the proper manner, then a template is saved from this stitch, and simply applied to the second panorama directly. This is what I've done in the panorama above, but more experimentation is needed specially with a full panorama. I won't be surprised if I get a lot of discrepancies and stitching errors in between the two panoramas.

Now critical questions remain: How would other projections behave under this procedure, specifically the planet projection? Would I be able to coincide an angle other than the one parallel to the displacement? Probably this is hard to do because objects in the planes orthogonal to the displacement direction would change in sizes; either get smaller or bigger. But it is worth a try after all.
Now this is one new field to experiment with - and with summer coming, probably it will involve a lot of indoors capture!

Finale

Now, it is the time that the group had been working with Austria's international photography contest and I've been somewhat busy with this issue in the past week; because I'm the one responsible for this account in their website. The payment will be from my own Paypal, and then I'm supposed to receive the cash money. Let's hope the process is done smoothly. The deadline to submit the images is March 17^th and I'm waiting for the rest to upload.
I got some interesting messages and emails concerning some of my images, which made me think again about marketing further somehow to some specific users. Not sure how really but I'll try to flip the idea around my head and see where would I arrive. Apparently, even Flickr can be a good source for marketing when used properly! Furthermore, I'm not sure that the outcome would be something more than a reputation at this stage.
Furthermore, I'm trying to get myself a bit immersed in my work business and related matters despite my concrete knowledge about its futility. With the administration, just like the rest of administrations around this country, I'm not an optimist about creating anything useful, nor raising the awareness about our roles as scientists. I live where administrators who barely know algebra and barely write good Arabic are guiding the general assemblies of the working forces. Imagine the outcome...

They say the best cure for a weary mind is work and getting busy. I'm trying my best so far amid my exhaustion and time limits. Yet, I can't help but to get panic attacks, the fear from the future. Everyone is talking about the collapse of this country; people are getting sicker by the day from the deteriorating conditions, and the general control over people's lives by corporate people and estate owners. Life had stopped here almost, and people don't think of having families of their own. More people are thinking of immigration to a better place. With family pressure, I can't help but to worry more and more. Sometimes it does feel like I was born, just to carry out my injuries alone...

Cuvaitum At Work...

My mood has been off lately. Trying to smile and laugh just to cover up for the bleed. Ah well, who cares anyway. At least I had the chance to play with my camera and catch a panorama in day time, away from the cops and security people. An experiment that I might be willing to do again, some time...
Previous weekend was specially weird. I did sleep so early. So early that I won't be sleeping like that for work itself! And wake up early too. I didn't want to miss the chance here so I went on to have breakfast on the beach and look for something to capture. I took my tools including my Manfrotto 303SPH VR-Head (was it a coincidence?) and drove along the beach. It was around 7 a.m. or a bit before that when I settled behind Kuwait Towers and started to do my job in a hurry fearing the usual. One panorama was enough to keep me busy for a while now. There are lot of things to do with one panorama, as different viewing angles do make a difference now and I won't let go, from now on, of a panorama until I exhaust my options with it. However, I didn't miss the chance to take some single clicks here and there. It's nice to add some icing to the cake isn't it?
Just before going on, I would like to talk about my previous "homework" in my photography class.

I. Homework #1:

It was our first homework in the Photography Class L1. The main point was to criticize the images in general. Along the years that I've been working with my camera and specially in the field of HDR techniques, I've faced many useless comments and criticism that just don't consider what I'm trying to say in the image. Anyway, I think my mind now has developed a sense of what is a "real" criticism and what is "trash". For this reason, I tried my best to do the shots in JPG only without RAW and without any adjustments at all. Since my teacher is the one who will criticize me, then I have no problem at all and I would learn here, instead of putting up with depressive non-sensical comments. Anyway, our homework was to take 4 shots, and I did take several shots for same scene and then picked the best as I think for this homework. Some people brought 5, 6 and even 10 shots. I wonder if they have problem with mathematics!?

Nail in a Wall

My first shot, nail in a wall. I don't know what happened to this nail, anyway I was surprised for its shape. The fact is I had only 2 hours probably to take the shots before my class starts, thus my mind went on thinking so fast about a solution. The idea was to have a long shadow of the nail but unfortunately, the sun was not in the proper angle in the afternoon. I tried to fix the proportions according to the law of thirds as much as possible, as shooting in this angle was hard. The nail is on a column and a bit high from the ground level, and also on the edge of a small stairway. I had to play around with my tripod until I made it stable and high up above the stair steps and the ground. My teacher said he likes the texture but because he didn't want to announce the names of the photographers when he viewed the pictures, I decided to keep silent and not explain my motive and the things that went wrong for me. The main concept of this image is loneliness, and if there was a shadow it would complete the meaning I had mind. Loneliness vs. Greatness.

Metallic Design

The second picture was taken for the rail of the stair way at home. After taking the image and uploading it to my PC I've noticed that the front portion (top left corner) is a bit blurry which is something I didn't want in fact. Anyway, my teacher liked the concept but, like I thought also, he said the door and the books on the left were a source of distractions. Unfortunately, I can't remove them, and if I was to take the shot in portrait I believe more distractions would be included. He liked the angle and the blur effect (shallow depth). I would crop the distractions but as I said, I wanted the images untouched as much as possible.

Floral Design

The third image, Floral Design, was also from the stairway rail. I had this idea long time ago (but thinking of a panorama for the stairs alone actually). The image was taken with my Tamron 70-300mm, and probably at 200mm or close to that. I was pointing to the rail from a distance of around 2 or 3 meters (~ 6-9 ft). The reason for this is simply, from a close distance I would be able to put my tripod calmly. Because I didn't use a timer here to take the shot, seems the image was shaken a bit, or it was blurred slightly because I used manual focus (always use it with my Tamron). My teacher noted that there is a little shake in the image when viewed in 100%. At this point, my teacher said that apparently this person (i.e. me) likes textures, which is true. I'm not so fond of portraiture.

Qul

I don't remember really what my teacher said about the fourth image, Qul, but the image you see here is actually the adjusted RAW and not the direct JPG that was viewed in the class. Anyway, it is simply a zoom into some Arabic calligraphy engraved on a wall clock in the main hall (living room). Tamron was also used here and I had to raise the tripod higher than my head. The play was in the WB to give more golden streak to the whole thing. I think it was Flash WB.

The clock in the hall (old picture with illusional adjustments)

My teacher is a school by himself, and I guess I'm lucky to be one of his students. Trying patiently to wait for the big bites of info that will make my brain jump a bit. So far, in Level 1 now, the info encountered are mostly well-known to me. Left to say, all of the images except of the first one were submitted to stock sites, but after RAW adjustments. No HDR this time.
My teacher has an impressive photostream on Flickr. Give it a try. He's a genius! As for me, I still hate Flickr for some reason I don't know. I just reject it mentally!

II. Cuvaitum:

One of the surprises that I've encountered this week is, when I wanted to name one of my pictures in Latin, I've discovered that Google Translation engine did include a translation for "Kuwait" in Latin. I didn't know there would be any translation for it really, as mostly the name, specially Kuwait's, is copied as it is in English into various languages. Kuwait was translated as Cuvaitum.
Last Friday morning, and because of the amazing adjustment in my sleeping time, I woke up in the very early morning (with ease), something that doesn't happen when I think of going to work! Anyway, I didn't want to miss the chance and picked my tools, and specially my VR-Head. I can say, I picked it up half-intentionally. I was hoping that I will do some panorama, but I didn't know just yet for what. After having breakfast I was staring around trying to find something, and even drove along the seaside trying to search for a potential. Finally, my eyes was set on a location that I deem, usually, a taboo. I did take pictures from there before but this location is always dangerous to me (me, being someone with past experience with cops). Kuwait Towers.
Now, Kuwait Towers are a pretty nice target for photography at night more than it is in day time (probably only in very early morning or at sunset when you get some special light qualities). I did take some shots long time ago for the towers when I was experimenting back then with my Canon 350D. Sweet old days.

Humid Towers

Kuwait Towers in A Windy Day

But this time the circumstances are different. Completely different. Day time, early morning, the sun is rising and, a panorama. Maybe one thing is common between the old and the new images: all are HDR, and all were manually tone-mapped.
Since I'm working with a panorama, I had to do it as fast as I can for fear of any "undesired" visitors in the early morning (a bit before 7 a.m.). I skipped working out with the nadir and took only direct shots that I didn't use later on. One panorama, many opportunities...

Towers of The Rising Sun

I know that Japan is the land of the rising sun, but are there towers for the rising sun? Oh well. The main difficulty here lies in cloning out the lower portion. I've cropped a bit from the lower part where the VR-Head shows, but this was not the difficult thing to do. It was my shadow with the tripod. Because the ground had a pattern in formation, it was so hard to make it unique, or maybe I'm out of patience to finish this and I couldn't bear in mind working slowly and copy brick by brick. It is possible to make it unique but it's not for me now. I don't have all the time in the world nor the power (cloning work is done in HDR mode, meaning more processing power). I approached the situation with many tricks, the last was to copy a portion of the right corner and paste it over the left portion where my shadow was (after cloning it already) and then do a layer Blend as in stack focus.
The tone-mapping was done manually, i.e. in Photoshop itself and playing around with the curve of the histogram myself. I've been a good boy here and didn't touch other slides like the Threshold and the Radius which caused me grief in the past, and will never learn how to do them adequately. But before tone-mapping, I had to reduce the luminance of the sun and that was done simply by adding Exposure adjustment layer, and with the White dropper I click on the disk of the sun. The image appeared darker in the beginning while the sun was like a dot in the sky (which is the thing I want actually). You have to bear in mind when you work in this way that this is HDR. The luminance data are there and not gone; maybe shifted, but not gone. With this simple correction in Exposure, I've moved to tone-mapping. All the later versions of this panorama, were tone-mapped in the same manner, but maybe the fixes for my shadow were different a bit.

Planeta Cuvaitum

The great advantage here in tone-mapping with Photoshop (which is something I rarely do right now) is that you have a control over certain areas, even though Photoshop's tone-mapping algorithm is considered Global, meaning it effects the whole pixels in the image in the same time. However, with the help of the curve and the histogram. This way, I was able to make the sun as a disk with a halo around it by doing a "U" curve at the end of the line. This "U" curve simply means "high-low-high"; now imagine this to the sun disk (out-middle-inner part) and you will be getting a bright circle, then darker circle, then bright spot in the middle. Are you following? Hope so! Such control is not possible in Photomatix and I did try indeed doing some effect but nothing worked to my taste.

Although I almost chose my location randomly in the area behind the towers (and hoping to keep me a bit hidden from the eyes wandering on the street in the front), I think now I was lucky to pick this location! This was apparent when I went on doing a TV (Tunnel-View) effect for this panorama...

Crescent Sun Towers

The shape of the crescent was indeed random. I didn't plan it. It just happened to be there when I twisted the panorama. Only one thing is annoying me here though; the patch in the sky. Cloning problems are apparent here as you see. Cropping further to hide my shadow or the bad cloning would cut out the fun from the rest of the images with nice patterns made by the pavement, so, I guess I have to bear it as it is.

Two projections though, didn't appeal much to me but I had to do them after all just to make things complete. The Vertical and the "Wide View" or WV. The WV is a term I've made out myself really, since I didn't find any proper names for it. It is a manipulation of the Little Planet projection by changing the angles of Pitch and Roll mainly and fixing the orientation with the Yew.

Nos Regulam Solis

Cropping the sides in this vertical panorama was a hard issue for me and I'm still not satisfied with the final product here. I felt cropping was screwing the balance of the image in general specially that the sun and the towers are not exactly on the same alignment. I had to do the cropping to the side to remove the highly stretched pixels (which is normal in such type of panoramas of course). I think what makes it so hard to decide with the crop is the diagonal lines in the image itself which, if straight, would make for a unidirectional look on the whole thing.

Dancing Towers

Not one of my favorites really. The Dancing Towers is supposed to be something with a comedy twist after all. The twists in the tower were made in HDR mode before tone-mapping by using the Wrap option in Photoshop. The tone-mapping (and adjusting curves later on) didn't help me to add some strong contrast but rather darkening the ground. The other problem was that the ground and the sky portions were too much compared to the main subject: the tower and the sun. I had to crop and cropping here wasn't easy either. The subjects of interest are nudged to the left rather than the center or one of the points of the law of thirds.

QTVR

I was drooling to do a QTVR out of this panorama but unfortunately, things were not easy. The fact that the panorama was tone-mapped manually in Photoshop made me lose one key option here, which is very important for making a QTVR: the seamless blend. In Photomatix, this is simply done by ticking one option while tone-mapping; the "360 panorama" option. I don't know yet how to blend the left and right side seamlessly still using Photoshop as my search on the net was in vain. I even tried to put the final panorama into Photomatix and stabilize the sliders as much as possible to keep the look (changing only the Gamma to fix the contrast) and turning on the 360 panorama option, but even that was in vain. Probably the only real benefit that I've gained so far from such search is to know how to add a label or a logo to my panorama instead of the nadir point in more comfortable way, using PTGui. You can find the tips here in the Support/FAQ webpage of PTGui (with many many other useful info that I didn't read before). The QTVR might need some time to load, plus, of course, the QuickTime plugin.

III. Land, Paper, Wall:

On land, it was the ruins of Hore Abbey, which moved to my camera's sensor to be printed later on. Mom desired something to fit in the living room to change the scenery and she was so fond of Ashford castle in fact, an awkward handheld panorama taken back in 2009 in Co. Mayo, Ireland.

Ashford Castle

Unfortunately, when viewed in 100% I've found that the middle portion of the image is out of focus. Probably I was working in AF mode (a big mistake in panorama venture). The greens also don't appear as they are when converted to CMYK system. I had to convert because of previous experience with this printing shop which seems RGB is not appreciated much (although an expert told me that it is a single print and they should be able to produce it properly in RGB). Anyway, the mistake with the focus was a killer enough to abandon the idea. So, mom picked another shot, the ruins of Hore. I have to say I'm really proud now that she picked my stuff!

Ruins of Hore hanging on the wall of the living room.

The print and the frame prices were fair I'd say, but while watching the process going on (in 2 days) I really wished to have my own tools. I fell in love really with the HP designjet 800ps in the printing shop, but unfortunately it is discontinued, and for sure it costs a fortune!

My signature. Still think it sucks!

However, one of the things that I was limited with is, the type of paper that I could pick. In fact, there was only one variety. I'm sure there are several papers out there that are better (and more expensive, I know), but there was only one type so I had to put it down with that. I wasn't ready to move around to other place to check.
The next thing was, after the print and checking the colors, I went to the framing shop. As I expected they were not that professional I would expect but they did a good job with the frame. I was a little upset about it because when I went back to the framing shop to give them a leaflet with my own signature, the print was rolled up and kept between other stuff. I was a bit angry inside because this is not the way to deal with a print. Also, the matting they provided was not thick enough and seems merely like a cardboard. The leaflet I brought was not stuck or anything but merely fixed, and I didn't get the chance to sign on the matting myself. Anyway, after all, mom is happy with it. I only wish if I have the money to get all these stuff together in one place and do my own prints. My printer supports A4 size maximum, but I wish to have one with A3 size capabilities. Would be awesome and in fact, more elegant to frame in that size I think.
I'm trying now to finish this lovely thin book which my friend got me for my birthday (but didn't get the chance to give it to me in time). It is a practical book and to the point, for beginners. I want to write something for now, but I don't know what. So much is gushing out, yet little words are coming in my mind. For one moment I just wish if I can sit down, one leg on the other, and my palms behind my head, and stare into the world... maybe thinking of No Other Worlds...