Alhamdulillaah no one was injured in the dramatic collapse of the roof of the Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin stadium in nearby Gong Badak here in Kuala Terengganu.  It is only about 10 minutes away from where we live here in KT, and in fact, it’s on the way from our place to downtown.  Therefore, I took the opportunity to snap some pics over a couple of days.  You can find more pics in the gallery, including several panoramas.  I’ve also taken some HDR pics, but they are not processed yet.  Patience is beautiful. 

Alhamdulillaah, I am quite pleased with the following HDR image I was able to assemble.  While not as good as the best that are out there, it is definitely a step-up from my other attempt I shared here.

HDR Scooter

The workflow this time was almost the same as always, with one minor difference.  I took several shots of the same scene at different exposure levels (1/3 EV), amounting to a whopping 28 (!) separate exposures, which is about the most I’ve ever done.  I renamed the images so that they were in sequence from darkest to lightest, which helps with the next step, which is to align them using Hugin‘s separately-packaged align_image_stack.  However, instead of using the align_image_stack utility directly, I called it from within Qtpfsgui (using the –align switch on the command line).  I used the default HDR generation settings and output to OpenEXR format.

The difference is that I did the HDR generation from within Qtpfsgui rather than using align_image_stack’s own routine (which also outputs in, I believe, Radiance HDR format).  Comparing the two, I realized that there wasn’t much difference at first, but at a closer zoom (e.g., 1:1), the Qtpfsgui method has far less noise in some areas (but not without some glitches, maybe you can find them), resulting in a smoother & more-natural picture.  I may consider playing with more than just the default HDR parameters with Qtpfsgui for generating the HDR image to see what other results I can get.

The final phase is tonemapping, which I generally don’t tweak.  Contrary to previous attempts, the Mantiuk algorithm produced a very colorful image, which I usually can only get with Fattal, which brings with it some other complications.  All in all, it was great.

If I had to guess, I would say that part of the reason for the ease of working with this HDR sequence was that the image had plenty of HDRness available to play with – the sky, the ground, the scooter with its reflective highlights as well as its darker spots.

Alhamdulillaah, I’ve just managed to produce my first HDR (high dynamic range) image the results of which I’m pleased with.  Once again, I have CHDK to thank for enabling this feature easily.

Note:  I begin this post with a mildly detailed explanation of the human visual system, HDR & LDR images, and the process to create HDR & tone-mapped images.  The pictures themselves are near the bottom of this post.

First, a little background about HDR.  The way our bodies capture and process imagery is, to put it lightly, amazing.  Starting from when light first hits the cornea through to when we perceive the visual object (not to mention how our brain’s store such visual images, which is far from just keeping a “bunch of bits”), the Words of Allāh resound with truth regarding His Creation:

And it is He who spread the earth and placed therein firmly set mountains and rivers; and from all of the fruits He made therein two mates; He causes the night to cover the day. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought. (Alqurʾān 13:3)

Thus, in the way that they are created, our eyes can capture an amazing amount of detail and range in their own way.  The range of regular (so-called “LDR” – low dynamic range) images is quite limited in comparison.  And this is, actually, the vast majority of image-related technologies, be they cameras, display devices, or even image formats such as JPEG.

HDR images, however, are those which do or have the ability to capture image details, specifically color & brightness information, at a much higher level than normal technologies.  Since normal technologies, such as our digital cameras and screens, can not capture nor display HDR images, we have to take a different route to get the information.  One technique is exposure bracketing where one takes a picture of the same scene at different exposure levels, one after another.  The reason for doing this is that, while the normal dynamic range of a camera may be unable to capture the bright, medium, and dark details of an image all at once, it does have the ability to capture these details separately with different settings.

Alhamdulillaah, there is also software that exists that allows you to take these separate LDR images and combine them into one now-HDR image that contains the details from all the separate exposures.  Doing so is not trivial, and it may take one multiple attempts to get something that looks good.  More often than not, the result is eery, because of a technique called tone-mapping.  Tone-mapping is a technique whereby the colors and range of an HDR image are brought down into a simulation of what our eyes would perceive in the scene.  In reality, that’s all but impossible, but it yields some interesting, beautiful, and sometimes striking results.

The specific software I use is the unpronounceable Qtpfsgui (I just say it one letter at a time).  Qtpfsgui is a front end for pfstools, which is an outstanding image toolkit for these kinds of images.  It takes care of aligning, merging, and finally tone-mapping the images one step at a time.  I short-circuited the first two steps (because Qtpfsgui can be fussy sometimes)  by using the command-line tool align_image_stack to align the different exposures (since I moved a bit between exposures) as well as creating the HDR image from the three separate images.  Then, I used Qtpfsgui just for the tone-mapping stage.

The first row of pictures are the original images, taken at -4, 0, & +4 EV settings.  Looking closely, you’ll notice that each range brings out different details: the darkest shows details in the clouds, the middle shows details in the sea, and the brighest shows details in the sand.  These are the separate LDR images at different exposures that I talked-about above.

The second “row”, containing only a single picture, is the result of the several steps I mentioned above to produce an HDR image.  I make no claims into how “real” this image looks, but it does show the details that I was looking for – from the clouds to the sand – in one image.  I also think it looks cool. 

This is the first HDR image I’ve created that I’ve wanted to share, and so I took this opportunity to explain the process too.  If you have any questions, then by all means, please post a comment and then subscribe to the comments so you’ll know when I’ve replied.

As bugs are normal around the house here in Malaysia, I have just gotten used to them for the most part.  Yes, the wall next to me is a veritable graveyard for mosquitoes, but most other insects don’t bother me much, alhamdulillaah.

This includes ants.  Ants are usually very benign, they mind their own business, and they even are basically the bottom chain of clean-up around the house.  That is, anything biological that we failed to remove, they take care of for us.

So, it was only with a casual non-alarm that we regarded the increased amount of ant activity in our bedroom.  They were more apt as of late at finding our food and swarming it, but that’s just ants.  Until I came into the bedroom one day in the afternoon and found the following.

Yes, the ants were invading!  Actually, I quickly discovered that they were actually moving, but in such huge numbers.  I, personally, in my life, have never seen this number of ants before.  I was shocked.  I quickly tried to blow them all out the window, but that really wasn’t so effective.  They just came back, albeit a bit more scattered.  And that did nothing for the enormous amount of antlife that were underneath our light plastic tarp-style tiling.  I do not think I am exaggerating when I say the total count of ants was in the tens of thousands.

You can identify that they’re relocating by the fact that they’ve brought with them their larvae, which, upon close inspection, look like ants, just completely white.

To view a few more pictures (not really revealing much more than the above two), visit this Gallery:

http://www.basilgohar.com/media/v/malaysia/kuala-terengganu/when-ants-attack/

To see it in live action, click the image below. (WARNING: It’s a huge number of ants.  If you are squeamish, I advise you not to download or watch the video.)

Alhamdulillaah, from our apartment in Alexandria, Egypt, we have an outstanding view of the Mediterranean Sea on clear days. On foggy days, we’re treated to an eery sight where the sea is ambiguously “missing”.

One of the amazing sights I discovered while looking over the sea was the hypnotizing landing sequence of a flock of seabirds that had chosen a rather colorful spot on the top of the one of the nearby buildings on the coast.  The video captures the beginning of the landing sequence, so click the thumbnail to check it out.

Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day featured an announcement for the International Year of Astronomy.  This alone would be noteworthy enough, but they also have a downloadable trailer (warning: contains some music, but it’s not prominent until the end).  This is great for geeks, and especially video geeks like Belal & me (him much more than me, of course).

Best of all, the content on the website is licensed under a Creative Commons license (albeit, including the non-commercial restriction, which is the worst of the available standard CC licenses).

Alhamdulillaah, my wife & I arrived safely in Alexandria, Egypt this past Friday to the welcoming arms of my parents, whom I haven’t seen since I left the US back in June.  If you’ll recall, I originally departed on this journey because I could not bring my wife to the US yet, as the immigration process is still ongoing.  Needless to say, we are enjoying happiness upon happiness being with family that we haven’t seen for months, and, in the case of my wife, well over a year.

The last time I was in Egypt was in the Summer of 2001, and I didn’t have a blog, own a camera, or even have a website at the time (other than one through my university department, which is long gone by now).  The only way I kept people updated was via e-mail, interestingly enough!  Alhamdulillaah, now I have so many ways to keep people bored about my current goings-on!

I had forgotten just how big Alexandria is, and also how photogenic.  Our Internet connection is an order of magnitude slower here than it was in Malaysia, but at least it is stable, and we may be upgrading it, in shaaʾ Allaah.  So, updates will be forthcoming, in shaaʾ Allaah, but please be patient – since I’m sure you’ll on the edge of your seats waiting for more media from me…

In the meantime, I leave you with this treat – a view from our balcony.

Panoramic photo of the balcony from our apartment in Alexandria, Egypt in the direction of the Mediterranean Sea

Alhamdulillaah, though I am woefully behind in catching-up on my Planet Fedora feed, I do sometimes uncover gems in these old posts.  One such post includes a link to a TED talk by Ken Robinson, “Do schools kill creativity?“.  I found the video to be both enlightening as well as entertaining, as he brings to his presentation some very light-hearted humor.

I should be cautious by saying I do not necessarily agree with all of his points 100%, but that is rarely the case with anyone.  I believe most of what he says is, at the very least, beneficial food for thought, especially for anyone that has an interest in education of any kind.

While riding (on a scooter) to a nearby masjid with one of my brothers-in-law, I felt something flew straight into my eye despite the fact that I was wearing my glasses at the time.  I was unable to flush it out while on the bike, and I thought that, like most eye gunk, it would just migrate to the corner of my eye for easy extraction.

As it turned out, I was unable to get it to move, and after returning home, I could still feel it.  I looked in the mirror and was able to spot, rather clearly, a small black speck in my right eye right between my iris and the surrounding white area.  I flushed my eye out with water, and, alhamdulillaah, I was able to get it out.  Surprisingly, it stayed on my finger long enough for me to show it to my wife, brother-in-law, and finally, to take a few pictures.

UFO extracted from my eye

The object is roughly spherical in shape (though it’s hard to tell from the picture), and if I had to guess, I would say it was an insect of some kind, or part of one, given it’s semi-shiny appearance and the few features I was able to make out.

There are too many amazing things about this.  For starters, just the sheer size of the thing and how much trouble it was causing me in my eye.  Also, the fact that it was so easily flushed-out.  And, alhamdulillaah, my eye, though red immediately after I extracted the speck, was fully healed as if nothing happened within hours (and possibly minutes).

Alhamdulillaah for the blessing of sight and for everything else that we take for granted.  How easily could it have been that this would have turned out worse?  Alhamdulillaah ʿala kulli shayʾ.

If this isn’t one of the most amazing pictures you’ve ever seen, I really would like to know what you’ve been looking at…

Alhamdulillaah, I was able to take some pictures on the beach near our home here in Kuala Terengganu (KT).

Beach Panorama

Kuala Terengganu "Island"

Alhamdulillaah, my good friend Belal Khan of Leechon Films fame has started (a while back, actually) a program called Message Mastery.  You should get the full explanation from the website, but the basic gist of it is that it is a training seminar focused on developing masterful messages through the medium of video.

He’s released a few videos that are freely available that are samples of what the entire program entails.  I found the one entitled “Three POWER Principles of Filmmaking” to be quite refreshing in how simple, yet effective, such techniques can be.  Even more beneficial is that the tips he provides, while framed around the production of video media, are general enough to be beneficial in almost any context.

Give his site a check-out and leave some comments as he’s very keen on getting & responding-to feedback from his visitors & members of his program.

Disclaimer:  Belal is just my friend – I am neither associated with Message Mastery nor am I enrolled in the program…yet.

Alhamdulillaah, I’ve been able to take an enormous amount of pictures during my stay here in Malaysia until now.  And while the actual yield of shots with any value may be low, the sheer volume of photos means that I have plenty I would like to share.

The sheer amount of work to upload these and present them in anything close to an appealing way through WordPress has made me decide that I am going to seek an alternative method for disseminating the videos.  I am hoping I can leverage my Gallery installation, in shaaʾ Allaah, but it’s support for alternative media types has not impressed me to date.  And don’t even dare suggest that I use a Flash-based solution…

Read on for the feature presentation(s)!  As usual, make sure to get a copy of the free-and-open-source VLC player if you don’t have it or another media player that can play Ogg Theora videos.

Kuala Lumpur Downtown Time Lapse

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720p HD

Balcony Sunset Time Lapse

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720p HD

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720p HD

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720p HD

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Quick links to all video downloads

• kuala-lumpur-downtown-time-lapse-vga
• kuala-lumpur-downtown-time-lapse-hd720
• time-lapse-balcony-sunset-vga-24fps
• time-lapse-balcony-sunset-720p-24fps
• balcony-sunset-time-lapse-vga
• balcony-sunset-time-lapse-2-hd720
• time-lapse-balcony-sunset-3-vga
• time-lapse-balcony-sunset-interrupted-vga-30fps
• time-lapse-balcony-sunset-interrupted-720p-30fps
• time-lapse-balcony-sunset-interrupted-epilogue-vga-30fps

Enjoy!

Alhamdulilllaah, there are some outstanding opportunities for views of the downtown Kuala Lumpur skyline from the roof of our apartment here.  Some of the shots are clearer than others due to the conditions at the time I took theme.  These are my first attempts, as well, so keep that in mind.  Click the link to see them!

Just yesterday I purchased a tripod specifically so I can take more steady shots.  It will also help me in taking more clear & even panoramas, because with a tripod I can have a more even axis of rotation – as opposed to the rotation happening due to me twisting my waist with the camera held in front of my face.  I think this will yield even better & more accurate panoramas, in shaaʾ Allaah.

Look to a future post where I explain how I created these images.  It’s amazingly more simple than it seems, alhamdulillaah.

Alhamdulillaah, after finding the wpLicense WordPress plugin on the Creative Commons website, I’ve been able to completely license all my work released through my blog under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States license.  This means such world-changing works as my essay on Social Networking & online projects, my tirade against anti-userism, a heart-warming story of love, loss, and & hard disks, the possible (at least, then) merger of Yahoo! & Google, natural sounds recorded with my H4, and many other things.

This license covers all original work by me posted to this blog, including literature & multimedia (audio, video, & images).  For attribution it is sufficient to link back to the post containing the content on this site.  Since I have chosen the Attribution ShareAlike license, this means I simply want to be credited for my work and I would like that any derivative work using my own work also be shared in a similar way.  I would not mind if someone makes derivative works (keeping in mind the above two points), and if someone makes money from using my content, so be it!  Feel free to share some of the wealth with me if you are so inclined, but that is not a condition. 

So, at long last, my blog content is shared appropriately.  Let the creativity flow!

UPDATE: I fixed some typos and clarified the language I used for describing the terms under which I am licensing my work.

Okay, so I have an addiction. Here are some more time-lapse sequences I took this past weekend and Monday. I’m now dabbling with alternative frame rates and sizes, including, by “popular” request, HD resolution videos.

I’ve learned a few lessons from these sequences, and I’ll elaborate a bit more on each one.

Sunset 1

This time-lapse sequence is composed of 900 images, taken with an approximate interval of 5 – 8 seconds (it’s not very precise due to a few factors).  As happened with at least one other sequence, something interesting started to happen just as the sequence finishes…you’ll have to watch the whole thing to find out…

Highlights include seeing the contrails of planes transform into high-altitude cirrus clouds as well as shadows from individual clouds sweeping across the sky!

Bonus points if you can identify the embedded subliminal message about lawn care. 

Lessons learned: Capture more!  If something looks interesting in real-time, then it almost certainly will be more so in time-lapse!

Sunset 2

Possibly my best sequence yet, it is composed of a whopping 1500 images, taken with an approximate interval of 2 – 4 seconds (the setting was 1 “second” in CHDK).  This is cropped to 720p HD resolution after I resized the sequence a bit to make it more manageable.  For an uncropped sequence, see below.

Highlights include very detailed view of cloud structure as well as cloud formation & dissipation.  Additionally, more cloud-shadow streaks are visible.  Finally, there is some interesting stuff happening at sunset that appears to be some very high-level development, such as waves within the clouds.

Lessons learned: Fix the exposure and other settings so that there is a consistent feel throughout the whole sequence, unless that changing exposure settings are intentional (which they are not, in this case, but it’s not so bad, either).

Sunset 2

(VGA resolution)

This is from the same image sequence as above, except the original 4×3 images are resized to VGA (640×480) resolution.  It should be easy to identify where the crop took place (somewhat below the exact middle of the frame, poised just above and between the non-sky parts).

Windy Day 1

Windy Day 2

These two image sequences (Windy Day 1 & 2) are real gems, alhamdulillaah!  I really liked them.  Sadly, they are also the shortest.  And why, might you ask, are they the shortest (and most irregular in length)?  Well, the sequences are titled quite appropriately – they were taken on an exceptionally windy day.  So windy, in fact, that my lightweight plastic tripod (that came more-or-less free with my camera from Newegg) was blown over by the wind…twice (once per sequence, thus the abrupt endings)…with the camera still on it.  The first impact was on concrete.  The second was grass.

Highlights include some stunning sun rays sweeping through the holes in the clouds.

Lessons learned: Have a basic understanding of physics (especially the aspects of mass, force, leverage, and thus, torque) before undertaking photography in averse conditions that lend to beautiful photo ops.  Additionally, should one’s understanding of above-mentioned topics not be sufficient, at least retain the common sense to place the camera in an area where damage from falling would be minimized.

Windy Day 3

Windy Day 4

These last two image sequences were done on a different windy day, but with a heavier tripod (an old, well-built metal one belonging to my father).  There really isn’t as much inspiring about these sequences.  The quality of the images was outstanding, but nothing particularly interesting happened.

Lessons learned: Place the camera in such a way as to minimize unwanted obstructions (in this case, the trees didn’t add much).  Also, a deeper field of view would make for a more interesting shot – more time to see the cloud formations develop and dissipate.

So there you have it!  I’ve been working on these sequences (both making & processing them) all weekend and until today, so I am happy to finally be done with them so I can share them.  Comments most welcome!

Time-lapse sky by Basil Mohamed Gohar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Alhamdulillaah, I have really been engrossed in using ffmpeg, one of the most amazing a/v command-line tools out there, for my various personal video projects.  However, recently I was experiencing a recurring bug where I could not work with some specific codecs when either the input or the output file was on a particular drive (!).  The drive in question happened to have only one FAT32 partition, so I suspect it may have had something to do with it, as using another drive for both input & output would generally work flawlessly.  The particular action I was trying to perform was to encode a sequence of rather large JPEG files (3072×2304) into a single video file using the outstanding (but still somewhat experimental and/or unstable) FFV1 lossless codec.

So, I visited the ffmpeg website and looked at some of their bugs, but didn’t see anything related to this.  Then, after seeing some of their pre-bug report checklist, I decided to check the version of ffmpeg I had on the system, and found it to be from March.  So, I pulled-down a fresh copy of their trunk via subversion and ran configure & make (I did not run make install).  Running the resulting ffmpeg binary from this compile run worked perfectly, alhamdulillaah.

The lesson is, if you’re running into a bug with either ffmpeg or any other package, then give a shot at running the latest code, if available.  It may seem like common sense, but I had underestimated just how easy it would be.  Surely, other packages may not work as simply, but it really was a piece of cake in this case.  Now I guess I need to learn how to package RPMs so I can help out the Livna project to get this latest code into their repository, which I also understand is not simple task, as many other projects rely on ffmpeg…

As I’ve already alluded to in a previous post, I’ve been using the CHDK firmware supplement with my Canon PowerShot A550, which on it’s own is an outstanding camera, alhamdulillaah. This firmware add-on, though, really takes the cake!

One of the features made possible by CHDK is the ability to run scripts which take the enabled features of your camera and do interesting things with them. One such script enables one to take a sequence of images of a fixed interval over a period of time – i.e., time-lapse photography! So, over the past two days, I’ve gone-ahead and played with this feature a bit by just collecting images from my office window while I diligently “worked”.

Through the script menu, I was able to setup the time-lapse to take one photo every second. As my office is on the 4th floor of large cubic structure in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, I had a nice view that combined parking lot-and-street activity with some nice cloud shows. That both days were signficantly overcast actually proved to make the videos more interesting – so much so that the last image sequence was pointed more towards the sky to capture the natural splendor up above.

Note: All videos are in free and open source Ogg Theora format.  If you do not have a player that supports this already installed, then I recommend the VLC free and open source player.  Most users of a GNU/Linux or other *nix-based systems will probably not need anything special to player, so this note is mostly for Windows users.

Time-lapse view from my office window by Basil Mohamed Gohar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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This was my first image sequence out of my office window. The white balance is really off, unfortunately, because I didn’t attempt to adjust it at all. Subsequently, the entire image sequence has a color hue due to the tinting of the office building’s windows.

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My second image sequence came out a little better with regards to color, because I set the white balance to “overcast”. This is still not as accurate as it could be, however.

work-window-time-lapse-3

The third image sequence is the longest, and first one from the second day. This is a sequence of 600 images in total! I manually adjusted the white balance for this and the next sequence, and as such, the color appear much more natural & realistic in these two sequences.

work-window-time-lapse-4

The last & final image sequence for this batch was really just something I did without giving it much thought. Amazingly enough, it turned-out to be the most interesting until the end when it gets cut off (due to lack of space on my SD card) – the direction of the clouds began to change! This sequence in particular encourages me to try to stake-out a day with excellent cloud activity and just setup the camera to capture as long a sequence as is sane.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and these clips as much as I did making & manipulating them. I’ll make another post explaining how I captured the images & converted them into videos. Feel free to post comments and/or questions should you have any.

Alhamdulillaah, I’ve been playing around with CHDK, which is a free firmware add-on (note: it does not require flashing your camera’s firmware) that enables a multitude of features on your ordinary, run-of-the-mill Canon PowerShot digital camera. In short, it’s amazing. I haven’t had enough time to truly “unleash the POWER” yet, but I’m already amazingly pleased with what I can do so far that I was unable to do prior to this.

Amongst its amazing features includes the ability to save images to a RAW format, full control over shutter speed & exposure settings, fine-grained control over video quality settings, HDR photography, and an amazing BASIC-based scripting language that enables, among other things, time-lapse photography (examples in an upcoming post, in shaaʾ Allaah).

Expect myriad future posts relating to images & videos I’ve been able to capture with these new features, especially in combination with