2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003
This is todays B-Side. It was a bit difficult at first to choose between the 2 pictures but in the end I dropped this one because it didn’t contain as many interesting elements as the other one. I also prefered the purple hues of the chosen picture combined with the greeness of the metals. This B-Side had a lack luster color combination.
On Wednesday the 25th of May, the Paramount channel will be airing the first episode of the tv show Listen Up at 9PM. The show stars Jason Alexander (George from Seinfeld) and Malcolm-Jamal Warner (from Malcom & Eddie). Its supposed to be really good. Click here for other showtimes.
Now this is a logo done right. Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait recently rebranded and its pretty obvious its a way better logo then BKME‘s. The new BBK logo is visually attractive and friendly. The logo is very simple and clean and can easily be distinguishable from the competition. The color choice of blue is a common one among banks here in Kuwait but the addition of the 2 orange tones help differentiate it from the rest. I think at the moment, BBK has one of the nicest logos among the local banks. What I am wondering now is if Commercial Bank of Kuwait will be re-branding. There current logo was designed by a Pentagram, a world renowned agency. Actually I think I will post about that tomorrow. For more information on the BBK rebranding click here. I am not sure but I believe the BBK logo was done by Artograph in bahrain.
Found a flyer to a photography exhibition, I won’t be going to it but maybe someone else is interested.
Breathtaking Images of Ancient Egypt and Kenya
Photographs by: Mrs Haifa Al-Muhanna & Sakoma
Location: Diva House – Beside Al-Amiri Hospital
Date: 21st to 23rd of May 2005
Time: 6:30PM
After the catastrophe yesterday at Marina, where is the best movie theater in Kuwait?
I just got home from Star Wars, its 12:30AM. Yeah the movie started at 12:00AM but it was such a fucked up experience. From what I saw of the movie though, it was looking REALLY good, like REALLY good, BUT the Marina Mall theater is just terrible.
The issue I had was with the sound. The first 15 minutes of the movie was this huge gigantic space battle with explosions and chaos non stop. The sound though was incredibly low and was coming out of the front speakers only. I swear I could hear the guy next to me eating his popcorn! I told Nat we should just leave, she suggested I should tell someone. So I did, I went up to one of the movie ushers and told him to raise the volume, he went and told some Kuwaiti guy who was sitting watching the movie with us. He went out and came back in a minute later but the sound was still the same. So I told Nat lets leave, I wasn’t going to watch the movie like this. So we got up and left, once we reached the main entrance where we got the tickets from, I saw a guy who looked like management, I asked him who I should I ask a refund from. He looked at the tickets and told me that once the tickets were cut that I couldn’t get a refund. He didn’t bother to ask why I wanted a refund or why I looked pissed and wanted to leave, nothing. So I proceeded to tell him that I paid KD5 to watch Star Wars and you can’t expect me to watch it in a theater where the sound system is lower then mine at home. I told him the sound is too low and I already complained about it and no one did anything. He told me that no one had told him about the sound, he assured me he would fix it and told me to go back to my seat. So I did. I got back inside, by now I had already missed a good chunk of the movie but I was like its ok, at-least the sound will get fixed. It never did! It didn’t get louder and it didn’t go into surround.
Finally we decided fuck the refund, lets just get out of here. If the movie when action packed was low and imagine how a normal scene would be. When I got back up to the main entrance, I took a feedback form, filled it in and dropped it in the feedback box. I don’t know if anyone will read it or care, but I just had to do it. Now I am back home, disappointed and pissed off. The Marina Mall cinema totally ruined my movie rush. I was planning to start booking tickets online and make this a weekly thing but now I don’t think I will since its just better off watching a movie at home on my sound system.
What did I learn today? Marina Mall theater is one of the worst I have ever been to, and that KD1 for a large popcorn at the cinema doesn’t seem expensive after passing by Starbucks first.
To read the letter I emailed to the people in charge click on more
Who here is going to watch Star Wars tonight? I am going to the Marina Mall showing at 12:00AM.
Where is it playing tonight? Here is the list:
Marina 12:00 AM
Muhallab 12:15 AM
Al-Fanar 12:30 AM
Al-Kout 12:30 AM
Al-Sharqia 12:30 AM
I was watching Everybody Loves Raymond on my Tivo when a black screen with copy on it came on for a micro second and disappeared. So I paused the tivo and went back frame by frame to the black screen. I then took a picture of it and though I would share it with you. I love finding stuff like this.
Just got a flyer from GameWorks with the following message:
Play all you can play in 1 hour for KD3.500 every night from 9PM to 11PM. Valid till May 31st.
KD3.5 doesnt sound bad. Probably will try it tomorrow night before starwars.
As I promised, here is an example of a picture of the day before post processing. Here is the post on miskan.com with the picture post processed. I still need to post a guide on good post processing but I have been really busy.
I was passing the Sheraton round-about today when I noticed there was something going on infront of the old Kuwait door. There were some people dancing and stuff plus they were being filmed. So I took a picture, click here to view it.
The Scientific Center is one of the coolest looking places in Kuwait, so I would like to know who is the smart guy who gave I don’t know who, permission to build a building right infront of it?
Today was unbelievable, I had more work then I could handle and thats never happened to me before! I had to be at a full day photoshoot which started at 10AM, at the same time I had to be at the office at 11AM to meet a calligrapher. At 1PM I had to be at another location with another account handler to plan another shoot for tomorrow then I also had to be at the office to work on a logo that is due today and also an ad for one of our clients which is also due today. Luckily other team members offered to help me out and I was able to accomplish most of my jobs. Crazy stuff, I didn’t have lunch yet even. Now I got to finish up a quick job here and head out to another photoshoot at 6. No time for anything today.
Nibaq told me he was going to watch Star Wars III at the movies on Tuesday, so I decided to check out the KNCC website for showtimes. Turns out there is a showing on Tuesday at 12:00AM at Marina Mall so I just bought 2 tickets and reserved our seats online. It was the first time I tried using their website and it was also the first time I bought tickets online. Its a very easy feature to use and I am surprised we have this technology in Kuwait.
1) First you need to sign up on their website, a very easy and quick process.
2) Then you look for the movie you want to watch.
3) Once you find a movie you want you then have to find a showtime that would suit you.
4) The next step is to reserve your seats. This is the best option, they show you a map of the theater and then you can choose where you want to sit. Very cool.
5) You pay for your ticket online using Knet, Credit Card, M-Net or a Smart Card.
6) You receive an email and SMS message confirming your order.
Very easy and very simple. I now might watch more movies because of this.
I take a few shots during the day and at night I post them on Miskan.com. What you don’t see though is how the pictures looked before right out of the camera. I shoot everything in RAW format which basically means the pictures are stored on my memory card unaltered. The pictures aren’t compressed in any way, no white balance is applied, no sharpening, no nothing. Its pure. When I open up the pictures in Photoshop, I have to set up the Raw options before the picture opens up. Its basically a window where I can control various aspects of the picture from brightness and contrast, to exposure and the white balance. It time consuming since I have to open each image and post process it till it looks good. Each one of my raw files are also over 5MB (on older cameras they are twice the size). The advantage is I get to control the settings, not the camera. Most of my pictures are usually shot under exposed because you can always brighten a picture but you can’t darken an over exposed shot. Shooting in RAW also means I am now more picky with my shots, I don’t want to get home and have 50 pictures I need to open and adjust one by one. I just don’t have the time for it nor the computer processing speed to do it quickly. Below is a shot I just took now in the office to give you an example of the importance of post processing.
In this first picture you can clearly see the white’s are grayish, the floor is dull and the whole picture lacks decent contrast.
This picture is the first one but it’s been post processed. I increased the brightness, contrast, a bit of saturation, set the white balance to neon and then proceeded to manually set the white balance till it contained a decent amount of magenta.
So in conclusion, don’t expect to get good pictures if you don’t post process. Remember when in university you took photography? Remember how in the dark you spent time experimenting trying to get the right contrast and shadows etc.. this is the same thing. If you don’t do it right don’t expect excellent results.
update: I think from now on whenever there is a cool shot I upload onto Miskan.com I will post the original unprocessed one here just to show the importance of post processing.
