The reign of the dissertation continues…

I do apologise (if there is indeed anyone reading to apologise to! – but I always hope there is since that is my main motivation for writing, but whoa!  We’re getting a bit off-topic in the brackets so early in the post!) for my lack of posts recently.  I have, I am proud to say, been working on my dissertation – or at least, attempting to, which is better than walou!  I seem to have found myself in a vicious article-reading circle.  I have around twenty articles to read, with an average of twenty pages each, which is good – articles are good.  However, the problem is that occasionally, when I reach the end of an article, I start reading the bibliography to see which articles the writer of that article used for their article and then start searching for that article on the internet.  Then, while searching for that article I come across related articles that look equally promising.  And so, my list of twenty articles to read continues to multiply and I never seem any closer to reaching the end of them!

I think that was an extremely confusing, if not meaningless, paragraph, and so I shall move on to – yes, you’ve got it – photography!  My photograph of the day reflects something I love about England:

I know, they’re just photos of the sky, but that’s the point!  The sky here is always so beautiful, subhan Allah.  It gives me such a sense of peace, alhamdu Lillah.  So, there you go!  Also, I’d like to point out that for the first photo I changed the exposure (I think it was +0.7 or so), which created a nice effect, I think!

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Tired. Late.

An attempt at the previously mentioned challenge and more Photoshop experimentation:

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This seems to have become a photoblog…

I might as well get it over with.  I didn’t do it.  The mini photography challenge I set myself yesterday, that is.  I tried, but my camera can’t focus that close up.  I know, that’s a feeble excuse because I suppose I could have taken the photo a bit further back and then edited afterwards.  It was raining a lot today though, so most of my time spent outside was either hurrying (well, to be honest, I like the rain so “hurrying” is probably not such an accurate choice of words – let’s say “wandering”) from one building to another or, if it wasn’t raining, sitting on a bench trying to get work done.

Anyway, despite the fact that I have not yet succeeded in that challenge (I will try again tomorrow in sha Allah, I haven’t given up, don’t worry), I did take a couple of photos today that I am rather happy with, so I will share them.

I took this while waiting at the bus stop.  It was a messing around/experimenting type of photo, but I like the way it turned out: the brightness of the colours and the way it is focussed (there must be a technical term for that, anyone?).

Long live Palestine!

I took this one while trying to do the challenge!  This bee seemed to spend ages on the flower – it was almost as if it was saying “come and take a photo of me!  What are you waiting for?”.  I’ve attempted bee photos before; they’re always disappointing.  This one is not so bad though, at least it’s in focus!  It probably would have turned out better if the sun had been shining on the flower in question and not the one behind it though!

I thought I’d play with the above photo a little on Photoshop – just for fun!  I haven’t really ever tried using Photoshop for such purposes; I usually use it to create collages and that type of thing.  Here’s the result of my experimentation:

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Experimentation can be delicious…

Before I get back to dissertation-related delights, I’d like to write my post for the day while the sun is still out!  I always seem to write them sometime around midnight and since my photos for today are very bright ‘daytime’ photos, I don’t think that would be a fitting time to post them!

Yesterday, I realised something quite bizarre; I don’t really know how I went this long and took so many photos without ever having experimented with varying the exposure levels on my camera…  I seem to vaguely remember fiddling with it some time in the distant and foggy past and then immediately setting it back to the original level.  I don’t know what scared me so much, but its effect has lasted to the present day.  Anyway, as I said, I realised this yesterday and decided it was time for me to see what I could do with it.  Ah yes, and I’d like to mention that that was one beautiful cup of tea: honey bush and rooibos, which I had never tried before – yes yes, I know this is not a food blog, but I love food too, so leave me be!  It was the kind of cup of tea that makes you feel like you could lean back into your chair with a notepad of crisp, creamy sheets and write a novel.  Aha!  You thought I’d gone completely off-topic!  But, I managed to link it back to my blog just before I got too carried away!  Anyway, back to photography, I present the result of my experimentation.

I know, it’s not very good.  Quite disappointing actually, which is why I am including two other photos that I like more (although, I still don’t think they’re as good as they should have been) with the normal exposure setting.

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