–>> To Find More “Where I Come From’s” <<–
Archive for the ‘Assignments’ Category
Find Me in the Beach = )
Monday, June 11th, 2012autobiography
Monday, June 11th, 2012
–>> For More “Cover of Your Autobiography” <<–
My Dream
Sunday, June 10th, 2012So I created a picture with some of my dreams. First is the background which is a soccer field and i chose this because I have always wanted to play soccer so my dream job would be a professional soccer player. The next picture is of golf clubs and that is because I enjoy playing golf and my dream would be to be a good golfer because at this moment I am not. I would really like to have a Yacht and beach house because I really like going to the ocean and being around water. I used paint to create the image I just copy and pasted them on, the fun part about this assignment was thinking about what my dreams are and what pictures to use to describe them.
The Real Ben Franklin
Sunday, June 10th, 2012I really liked this assignment I think its a fun idea. My thinking behind this photo was that I just wanted to have fun with the assignment and use some of the tools on the website that would make a funny picture of Ben Franklin because all the pictures you see of him are always so serious. The website I used was http://www.befunky.com , it has many tools and funny animations you can use to edit your photos and most of it is free there are premiums items that you have to pay for but I found the free ones to be enough. I used a tool to change his eye color then I tried using a wrinkle reducer but it did not look good so I removed it. I then added glasses and a gold chain to make sure the photo had the right amount of ridiculousness in my opinion.
Making Pictures Better
Sunday, June 10th, 2012Week 3 has went extremely well. Learned a lot of new things about becoming a better photographer and how to make simple changes to make a better picture. Let me share with you some of things I learned.
One thing I learned was you can make a picture better by getting into silly positions. That then allows for the viewer to view everyday things at a different angel. I took a picture like this last year on my vacation in Orlando, Fl. I was leaning in the backseat of my mom’s truck and took this picture as we entered the theme park. Normally, people would see this at a straight angel and very beautiful, but not this time. This picture is out of focus and tilted.
Another thing I learned was take your camera with you everywhere you go. For example, this week I was baking cup cakes for no particular reason. At 1:06 p.m I had finished my cupcakes and decided to take a picture of them. There absolutely nothing special about these cupcakes, but it was just a random picture that I liked. And now I can always look back on that specific date and time and say, “I remember I baked cupcakes on that day.”
I also learned to capture the emotion of the place in which you take the picture and how the color of the photo can also show the emotion. Again, I had a picture from Disney World, and in the picture you can sense the excitement in the photo. In the backgroung of this photo you can see people off to the right smiling and a man with a backpack on,(my mother in the orange on the other hand, looks pissed), and you can tell they are ready to enjoy and explore the park. Also the banner in the picture say, “Let the Memories Begin.” So along with the banner, the excited people, and the man packed and ready, you can clearly tell that people are excited and curious to see what the park has to offer.
The color in the photo is very unique as well. The sky is very blue and the clouds are very white, which symbolizes a beautiful day. The garden made into Mickey’s head is also amazing. The colors that they park chose to us made the image of Mickey stand out and that lead to more excitement to take picture in front of it.
The last thing that I am going to talk about is how to take advantages of tools that you have and how to make a photo yours. It’s so simple to take a picture and just be like “oh this is cute.” NO! That is not enough, make the picture yours. Change it up and make it more exciting. You can easily do that by again, taking advantages of tools you have. For example, I just took a simple picture of me. And I said to myself, “This is cute, but I want to make it different.” So that I did, I went into a photo editor I have called PICSART and clicked “monochrome” and my picture went from regular to spectacular.
I’ve learned so much more about how to become a better photographer, but I used my daily creates to show that. Hopefully I will have other chances to show off my new photo taking skills. For example, getting a high tech camera where I can change lenses, or being able to travel and take street shots, or being able to catch more eventful things by being patient. I’ve learned some wonderful techniques about how to become better and I plan to use these techniques often.
Visual Assignment–Time of Day and TDC 149
Friday, June 8th, 2012My second attempt at one of the Visual Assignments from the DS106 repository is Time of Day, which appealed to me because of the image appearance and because I wanted to try some more work with layers and combining photographs.
Take a picture of the same spot outside several times in a day, then merge them all together in a way that shows the differences in appearance over the day.
When the Daily Create for that day turned out to be take a picture multiple times over the course of a day and represent it as one picture, it seemed an obvious choice. So I set up a small camera on a tripod and took a picture every hour at 6 after for 12 or so hours.
This was my finished product with the earliest photo in the strip on the left and the latest in the strip on the right, but it didn’t come easy for me.
Time of Day
The editing of these images (I ultimately used 8 of the 12) was particularly difficult one for me, mostly because of my unfamiliarity with Photoshop.
Scott Plunkett‘s tutorial for the assignment gave me a good approach for what I needed to try to do (specifically to just cut off increasing slices and layer them on top of the base image), but he used MS Paint and I wanted to try to figure it out in Photoshop.
I tried multiple wrong ways to edit them down and managed to crash Photoshop three times and my computer twice in the process. I walked away and came back the next day. This is the process I finally figured out:
- I opened up all of the images I was going to use in Photoshop
- My base image here was the last image taken (on the finished photo, you can see the strip on the right side).
- Then I took the next-to-last image and selected the section I wanted to keep – I calculated that each section would need to be 1/8 of the photo (in this case, I was using inches, ~2.75 per slice). That meant that each section would be 2.75 inches smaller than the previous one.
- For each photo, after selection the section that I wanted to keep, I right clicked on the photo, chose Layer via Cut, which creates a separate layer with just the selected material. Then I right clicked on that layer (Layer control is usual in the right lower corner of the PS screen) and chose Duplicate Layer. For output, I used the pull down menu to choose the base layer photo. That places the cropped layer onto the original photo.
- Then I just repeated the process, in reverse chronological order, cutting more and more off of the succeeding photos until the last one was just a single 2.75″ wide strip from the far left size and layering them onto the base image with all the other images. The result, an image with 8 layers, saves as the image you see above.
Once I figured out the process, it was fairly easy, but it was a bit frustrating as I flailed around a bit. Still, I’m pretty satisfied with the result.
Hey. Have you heard about my band?
Friday, June 8th, 2012A lot of folks are doing some really fun album covers, so what the hell. Let me get in on the create too.
Here’s what you need to know:
Band name: Galeophobia
Wikipedia does not have an entry for Galeophobia, so if you have some time to kill perhaps you could fill that Wikipedia void. Wiktionary says that Galeophobia is (1) a fear of cats and (2) a fear of sharks. I have no idea how sharks and cats are related. There is also another term for the fear of cats. It’s called ailurophobia. But all of this is boring. Back to the fun stuff.
Album title: Part of Your Essential Being
I didn’t have a specific photo editor in mind. I knew I wanted to use something I’ve never used before. I did a search for web photo editor and selected Befunky, because it was kind of near the top and I am not discerning. It’s an easy tool to use though the font choices are limited. There are lots of photo effects though. I also like the fact that the tools can be used without registering as a user.
I’m pretty sure that Galeophobia is a metal band, so I selected some gothic fonts and made them as hard to read as possible, which is what metal bands are wont to do. I did the “Galeophobia” first and applied my changes. I wanted to change the positioning of the band name after applying said changes, but was unable to figure out how to do that without redoing the image. I then added the album title, played around the with coloring, and called it a day. Here it is:
First go
I was having fun though and I had some time to kill before graduation, so I decided to do another cover. Fun times!
another album cover, because a band has to have choices.
Movie Scene Creeper and a story
Thursday, June 7th, 2012Call me butter, because I’m on a roll! Wheeeeeeee!
Here’s a visual assignment that Jim Groom can maybe appreciate.
A long time ago (almost 3 years ago) I had this life where I watched movies and read books and listened to music. Then I had a baby (now a toddler), and I don’t do any of those things anymore, because my time is spent trying to raise this child to be a decent human being.
Back when I watched movies and read books and listened to music, the husband and I would visit our friend Matt Mills (who can be seen playing drums in the video below).
Matt Mills worked/works at Video Fan on Strawberry Street in this lovely city called Richmond. Here’s a picture of Video Fan that I didn’t take:
Matt Mills was a horror/exploitation/cult movie aficionado. We spent a lot of time watching questionable movies like White Dog and Tenement and gems like Spider Baby. He talked a lot of Argento and Bava. Matt was sweet enough to lend Will and I his Bava boxed set after my son was born. Unfortunately, I was too sleep-deprived to remember any of what I saw.
I do, however, remember the shadows in those Bava films. After reading the prompt for “Creep on a movie scene,” I thought about those Bava movies and I thought about this great picture I have of myself mopping up someone’s spilled drink at a party. The picture is a shadowy, dark, and creepy:
The original photo is in color, so I just did a quick edit in iPhoto and changed it to black and white. I then open the photo in Photoshop. I found the still from Black Sunday through a Google Image search. I downloaded that photo to my desk top and opened it in Photoshop too.
There was a lot of fumbling around in Photoshop, which I’ve never used before. I created two layers–one with the mopping photo, the other with the Bava still. The background from the mopping picture was deleted. I experimented with the brightness and contrast. Then I dragged the altered image into the Bava still. I looked like a giant compared to the characters in the Bava movie, so I sized myself down a little.
I’d like to repeat it all just to make sure I have the hang of it.
Evil truly does lurk in the shadows. Here’s the proof:
Muwhahahahahahhaha!
Trollin’, Trollin’, Trollin’
Wednesday, June 6th, 2012I spent some time visiting the blogs of fellow campers this afternoon. I stumbled across the Troll Quotes assignment on Marcey’s Blog and knew that I had to do this one. I decided to use a handful of pop divas. Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Cyndi Lauper look out! Here’s the result:
I found an image of Madonna by searching Google Images. The quote is supposedly from Lady Gaga. I haven’t heard Lady Gaga say this, nor have I read it in print, but it came up in a Google search, so it must be true.
I imported the Madonna pic into Adobe Fireworks. I then added the text and green stroke effect. All of this was added using Fireworks too.
Visual Assignment 1 — An Album Cover
Wednesday, June 6th, 2012An Album Cover — DS106 Assignment here
So here’s something fun for everyone to do, should be quick and easy, but try to make it pretty. First, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RandomThe title of the article is now the name of your band.
Swiss Emigration to Russia is my band name
Next, go here: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 Go to the bottom of the page. The last four to five words of the last quote are the title of your first album
“Contemplate What Is Happening” is my album title. [Appropriately enough for a digital media course, it's from a line by Marshall McLuhan.]
Lastly, go here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Select the 3rd image. It is the picture for your album cover.
I had several great images, but none of them were creative commons licensed. Given that I was going to be changing it around, I decided I wanted to have something with some clearer copyright. So I thought of the Flickr Commons, the partnership Flickr started with the Library of Congress (though its promise is mostly unrealized still). There I found this image (3rd in the random Commons Sampler). Given my band’s name and album title, it seemed perfect.
Views in Sydney and New South Wales, 1930-40 / by Charles F. Walton
Manipulate the picture, resize it, add some other color, whatever. Do the same with the band name and album title, put them over top. However you wanna do it. Make it look cool.
Then I dumped it into Photoshop, cropped it to a square, and used the Sun Faded Photo style to make it a little more yellow so that I could more easily put text on it. I did some new layers with the text of the band name, which I changed to red. I had initially thought I would try to place the title of the album on the hanging clothes, but “contemplate” and “happening” are awfully long words. So, instead I went with this, which I like better in terms of spacing. I also like the way “happening” ends up highlighting the two people just visible at the edge of the album cover. Contemplating what is happening is exactly what I hope this design causes people to do.
Swiss Emigration to Russia (2012)
