Brain Squeezing...

I think squeezing my brain trying to find out some words to pin down was sort of successful. I had to surf the net a bit trying to find new ideas and new ways to break the writer's block, and maybe the most and easiest solution was: take a walk. Of course my main course of walking is during my working time, and now with the semester being over, the campus is almost empty and the weather is nice and helps a lot on taking a mind journey. My first trial was finalized and called it: My Golden Days. Another trial took place then after the next day and I could hardly squeeze my brain for the past 2 days trying to find the words, but then I remembered, a poem or a lyrical piece isn't supposed to be "necessarily" long. It is just how you feel, and hence I finalized a short piece called Send Me An Angel. The rhyme in this latter one might not be a strong pattern (abacc), and it does sound weird even to me, but surfing the net a bit I've found that such patterns do exist but mostly in old folk songs. I do imagine though if this is to be a song of some sort or played somehow, it's going to be a slow music tone.
I do understand now how writing is so difficult I guess, specially when you have all the feelings but not enough words in your mind to put them down, or the ability to shape your expressions. I would be able to write single sentences but to stitch them all together in some sense and rhyme, this is even harder than stitching a panorama!
I also got some positive feedback on my previous piece, The Beggar of Nothingville from one of the judges in one contest. I'm not so optimistic though that I would win even though I got 5 out of 5 stars for this, but the important thing for me is to expose it to as much as possible, hence I posted it again in one of the contests after checking the regulations of it.

On the other hand, started to upload the Ayvarith transliteration of Alexander's story into WDC website. Along with that process, I'm trying to unify the notations of writing which I changed by the last chapter (chapter six) of Alexander's story. The process is giving me a headache as well, naturally, because there were lot of typos as well. Some words I'm trying to check again and they are not in the dictionary! Well, I must have been trapped in my own trap; going around some words by using parallel expressions. If you are wondering what that means, think of it that way: instead of saying "I went downstairs," and in your conlang, you didn't make up a word for "downstairs," you might as well say "I went below by the stairs." Long, I know. But this is the way I used to go around some words. The process of evading some words is essential as I think though. It helps on creating a trend of the conlang as it is a language by itself, a stand-alone, not mimicking the grammar and the order or the ideology of other languages. Somehow, in the process of creating a conlang, you must always check that your mind is isolated and not completely dependent on some base. In my case, I do need the base; somewhere to begin with the conlang for sure! That's why I make up words and take up some aspects of Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic.
I'm thinking as well about adding some sound files. This is to explain some of the pronunciations of the sounds to help on reading the transliteration texts. I might as well add a reading for the story itself in Ayvarith. I did some before, but I think I've lost the files, and now I have to work all over again (with some corrections added this time). I think WDC allows for some audio files to be added somehow. I will have to check and see. Meanwhile, I'm working on the website slowly, but seems Fortunecity, where I keep some files now, has a problem with the FTP upload. I remember in GeoCities, the FTP option was allowed for paying members, but in Fortunecity, it says it's for free hosting members as well. Unfortunately, I tried the FTP and it's not working well. Error in password always though I checked it over and over again. The new design I've made is simple but yet contains lot of GIF images because of slicing the main image in the facade, and I will have to upload every single GIF image (after creating a folder inside) if I don't use the FTP client.

Trying to push myself to be busy somehow, even though I do have some games waiting on the queue line. On Sunday, and right after I got back from work with no appetite for lunch, I decided to drive out again in my Seat Altea 2006 and do some washing for the car, and then I headed to my work place again just to park the car there and do some panorama from the inside. I spent like 20 minutes trying to settle down with the tripod inside the car. It was a so damn hard process. In the beginning I tried the monopod in fact, but it didn't work at all because of the extremely horizontal 3 legs it had at the bottom. Finally, with some stretching, a tripod was fitted in somehow and I started to work and moving from one door to another in order to move the VR-head in all directions. I made the panorama without a zenith or a nadir, because generally I don't have an aim for a QTVR. It was just a trial. It took me already one hour or around that to take the panorama with car turned off but lights on inside the car. Made me worried after all this time about the battery; it could have been dead by that time. After finishing the work with the panorama, I've noticed that the tripod's situation is a good one to even shoot a video inside the car! I thought of turning on the video and going around driving till I get back home, just as a trial as I never ever had any experience not interest in videography. However, it is interesting and I'm going back to read the manual for my Canon EOS 7D and learn more about the basic functions. I recorded a bit more than one minute successfully until I got out of the parking place and out of campus, then the tripod's leg got loose and the camera fell down to one side. No great harm, but I was upset of this betrayal!
Back home, the stitching process was sort of smooth, but not completely out of errors and broken lines. Before taking this panorama I tried to pull the camera back a bit instead of the "center" position which is the default setting, and probably, the broken lines, are caused by this pull-back. So far, two versions are stitched: flat spherical and a tunnel (ant view) one. Lot of work was needed with the clone tool to correct the mistakes and other things!

Seat Altea, 2006.

I think, however, that the ant-view (or tunnel) view is not that good, thus I will stop my trials with that and be satisfied with what I have here, so far! I think I could try this again with another car. The question is, would my plans for getting busy most of the time would work on braking down my daydreaming process a bit? Frankly, I'm not so optimistic about it. Maybe a mental process is more useful to brake those ideas, like thinking of a line to write in a new poem. This is what I'm trying to do recently but no hope. It's like I'm keeping my mind busy for nothing, and soon, I will escape to another world.

Maybe some people who read this now would say I'm exaggerating about the daydreams. Well, let's think about it a little: 10 minutes in the bathroom just to wash my face sometimes (and sometimes forgetting what I wanted to do there even), driving completely unaware of the movements around you, the inability to focus or concentrate on the long run, specially when reading something (greatly affected me during high school and college), and sometimes even talking or making a gesture with no sense. Now, if you think the things I'm mentioning previously are serious enough, then, I'm not exaggerating my fears from daydreaming.

However, trying to put some effort with my pictures from Ireland. I feel that I've almost done everything I can with those pictures. I do need to work on the camera more somehow. Anyway, after the "likeness" of my Tunnel Effect for the playground from Bayan park, seems that I will be visiting the old panoramas from Ireland and try to stitch them in that projection and see if there is any interesting results. Also, I will work on them in Adobe 1998 color space, as some of these panoramas were done before in Pro Photo (my beloved) space. The first of those to be visited was the Ardeaglais Cormaic (Cormac's Cathedral on Cashel Rock):

Ardeaglais Cormaic (Tunneling)

Usually, when doing a full spherical panorama, I do consider stitching the panorama in 2 projections: the flat spherical, and the little planet. The little planet projection was, I thought, more suitable for panoramas taken outdoors where you can engulf the main structures with the sky that you would be taking in the panorama itself, but I was wrong. The little planet projection proved to give interesting results when done for indoors panoramas as well. Now, this consideration for the LP projection, encouraged me to add one more projection to the list of "must be done," that is, the Tunneling (or Ant View as I called it before) projection. The tunneling projection (also a term coined by me. I don't know if there is a specific name for this) is simply the reverse of the LP; in LP you look from above to the scene, in Tunneling you look from ground level (or from below let's say). Compare? Would be fun!

Find your way around

I will post this now, in hope of doing something interesting with my camera in the coming days. I'm studying (or let's say general reading from the web) more of lights and other camera aspects, as well as looking for some opportunities to upload the BIG QTVR files (50MB+ in size), and show them to other people. I leave you now with a Scottish tune that I liked so much and been listening to all week! (you don't have to understand a thing just enjoy the music!).

Playgrounds in My Mind...

Just decided to go on and write some words in my blog since I don't seem to be able to concentrate my words into a poem. Words come and words go but I just don't understand anything. I can't type or write anything. I hate this when it happens. Been fluctuating now and then between various songs for Phil Collins that hit to the core of the heart, and then change to Black Eyes Peas for some breathing away from my melancholy. Yet in all that process, the words don't stick together to allow me to write something, nor my daydreaming stops. In fact, I feel that my daydreaming is blocking the string of words from being complete and hence I'm jammed. However I try to write something, my pulses go passionate, always. I don't want to write another love story, and I'm afraid if I let go of my imagination and write something about my life or world, I would be going wild and violent. Not a pleasant picture if you ask me. Not for me. I'm not a rapper after all!
I think I need someone to aid me on completing the words or the sentences I make. Yet, this is somehow, a far away solution. 

An interesting experience though, that when I worked with my camera for some time now, and work on concentrating on my pictures (processing and so on), I tend somehow to lose myself into it, and forget about all the vivid images or daydreams that I've been into. I know that occupying your mind with something might help already but, till when? I don't work with my camera all the time. I barely took some snaps in the past few days even, and all of them were in a hurry, being afraid of any cops, or security people.
One of these shots were taken beside the shopping center where I usually pick up my breakfast every morning...

The Giant Chessboard.

To tell the truth, this is not the view that I wanted to achieve. However, the light is nice in early morning just like that. That's why I like winter more than summer, well, along with other reasons. I used my 15mm fisheye lens here, but maybe I should have used the 55-200mm instead (which I did the next day). I wanted this to be taken from some elevated point as in a bird's eye view, but unfortunately, this is hard to be done in that location specially with all security people being around the place and you just don't know when they might catch you in. I left the lamp post o nte right side as it is, just not to make the sky all plain an dull. To take this image I was turning on the camera (and it goes into sleep-mode automatically after one minute or two) and left it in the car as I went inside getting my breakfast, and once I'm in front of this I had to park and get down and snap in a hurry. My first trial was blurry, thus I changed to AutoFocus to do my work faster. All this fuss, for this snap. Yeah, how easier can it be?

My next snap was the next day directly, in the parking lot in my work place. I noticed that the light lamps in this place were awesome in the morning, when they are still on. The thing is, I thought these lamps work by solar inductance or whatever it is called, i.e. they are turned off whenever enough light hits the main switch or, again, whatever. I discovered then they are switched on and off manually. The moment I went there with my camera into the parking lot and just when I parked, the lights started to go off one by one so I had to take some snaps in a hurry. The result then, when I got back home, I didn't realize how lucky I was despite all the anger that was inside me for that incident...

Alone...

As you can see, I called it "Alone." The thing that happened here is that I snapped it before the other lights at the back turn off as well, resulting in one light post being off while the others are on, like if this post is isolated from the others. I think this is somehow a lesson to me that I should wait on bad things and bad happenings, and see what or how I can change, do or deal with such things. Valuable lesson, let's hope I have the nerves to apply it to my daily life...

On the other hand, there seem to be some panorama that I won't waste my time on processing it. It was the one taken from Salmiyah park last week. The place was really empty except of some trees and even a HDR processing didn't do much to attract the eye, so I had to do just anything. So, I went on with the "ant's view" again or maybe I should call it "tunneling effect". Later on I used the name "tunneling effect" for another image.

I didn't bother to give a name even...

The image here was processed in HDR, then since the saturation was high in general (and lowering it down was not attractive as well), I converted the whole thing into B&W with some touches of slight yellowish hue and adding more contrast to give a touch of drama to the whole thing. That's all I could think of, and as for the straight flat panorama of the same scene, I don't think I will bother with it. I might have worked a bit with it if the trees were more and dense a bit though.

Following now on the same trend, I did the same effect for more "interesting" scene. The one I took last Wednesday in Bayan park while I was there with my friend. I made 3 different projections of the same panorama. The time was in the morning so, the sunlight was interesting and gave nice contrast and hues already.

Flat

Little Planet

Tunneling

The last one of those maybe gained most of the popularity on Mostphotos.com. Despite the fact that this panorama was taken completely on a monopod (with 3 mini-legs), this is one of the panoramas that I didn't have much problems with broken lines in it. Notice that I'm talking about a HDR panorama, with 3 exposures on each angle. It was shaky as usual but everything went smooth that day (despite the breeze as well). Taking a panorama from a monopod, although it might be shaky, it is much easier than taking a panorama with my old tripod, mainly because the legs problem (they show in the lower angle slides, along with the body of the VR-head too) and because the monopod head is equipped with a screw that can fit the VR-head and can be flipped to fit a camera. I'm currently in the process of ordering a separate head (just a cheap one) for this monopod. The problem though remains: stability. The end of the story is, of course, a QTVR.

There are some times when you do process an image and then you find yourself being into melancholy because of it. I don't know how it happens but, it just happens!

Once Upon A Time...

This one is taken from the same place; Bayan park. Just like the panorama from Salmiyah park, I really didn't find something interesting about it except that it is a general view for the playground in that park. I tried hard to make it somehow interesting when I processed the HDR slide, but no use. Thus, after the tone-mapping was done, I decided to just turn everything into a dramatic black and white with a touch of golden hue. By the way my usual "golden" color is #FCC200. There are other hues for "Gold" that can be found in Wikipedia. When I stare at this image, I try hard to remember did I ever play in those? I sure did but, when? Frankly, I don't remember much at all.

For the time being, I'm thinking of a new project and this time, no cops or anything or any security involved. I want to do a panorama from the inside of my car. I don't know how yet, but I have to try this practically myself, and of course I have to be in a spacious area and not in front of this house, where you can barely jump into your car. Probably I would have to switch to the tripod here since a monopod is hard to be stable inside such a situation. I've been roaming some places now looking for some kind of a converter that makes a small screw head fit into the large screw hole of the VR-head, but no luck so far.

Now as I type these words and trying hard to squeeze my mind for some words I'm writing, let's hope I finish this. Work is dull, but I have to not complain, because it has been worse in the past few weeks. I'm trying here to seriously control my love for coffee in some way, specially after getting myself a 3-in-1 coffee package  and put it at work. This, can really screw things up. I've taken my camera with me this morning trying to snap the "chessboard" scene again but this time with a 55-200mm lens, but that didn't really solve anything. It won't do much unless I can snap that scene with a bird's eye view. However, I might shoot a scene like this again, from my work place...

Ad Coelem (to heaven).

which was shot originally by a fisheye. After tone-mapping this and cropping a bit (and still it is off the center a bit), I realized this better be in black and white because the colors were, dramatic, but to saturated and desaturating them, again, will leave it dull. But I think if I'm going to try my 55-200mm lens here,  I have to try some different angles. I tried it already on some junk around the place the other day but it wasn't a trial I worked hard for. Just for fun...

Government

Named it "Government" for obvious reasons, I guess. I tried to achieve some blur here but I think the distance in between the fore- and background didn't help. I wonder if a stronger lens like a macro lens would do the job. Mentioning that, I'm on fire, waiting for my first macro lens to arrive. It's a tamron 70-300mm. Although it is well-known that to get a sharper image it is better to take a picture with a stable lens with a fixed focal length, but I don't that now. Let me find my way with the macro, then I might decide about it. The most important fact now is my fisheye got a fixed focal length and this is way too important for doing panoramas with this lens.

Now, it's time for me to rest, from the whole world a bit...