Going Home

My belonging are completely packed into my roommates car and my room is barren and freshly vacuumed after a crazy morning cleaning. I'm moving out to day back to my parents house for the summer. There are always pros and cons to moving but its not the end of the world. I'm excited to see my family for more that just one weekend at a time and of course for the chocolate chip muffins my mom makes on Saturday mornings. I'll also be starting a new job and catching up with old friends. All the good things that outweigh the fact that i'm leaving all of my closest friends here at UTD.

About this photo. I loved the color of the sky but there was an ugly tree branch covering most of the left side in the original image. I'm not very familiar with Photoshop but I used it to replace the ugliness with the beautiful blue sky from the other side of the picture. View larger here!

Photoshop Secret Revealed

If you are interested in manipulated photography or just looking like you can levitate then you will want to read about this little trick. All you need is a camera, a model(can be yourself), and an object with a hard surface. To achieve this frozen in mid air photo you need to take two photos. The first should be a picture of just the background you want with nothing else in it. For the second one you will need to place your object with a hard surface into the frame and find a way to sit on it in a way that you have as little of your body as possible touching it. Once you find your balance and the pose you want snap the photo and upload both into Photoshop. Open both images and overlay the second image on top of the first one. Then you simply use the eraser tool to get rid of the object you used to sit on. When you do this the object will be replaced by the original background and give off the effect that you are floating! It's a pretty simple manipulation that I would recommend to anyone who has a camera and access to Photoshop. Don't be shy give it a try.

*The image above was a practice shot I did in my room while trying out this trick. To get a more finalized looking image use a tripod and cooler location.

Film: American Gothic

Here is the second image from the assignment I talked about in the post below. I decided to try and replicate the famous painting American Gothic by Grant Wood but with a modern twist. I used my roommate and her boyfriend as models and headed out to the field behind my apartment here at UTD. I had discovered these strange looking wheat stalks a few days before and thought it would be a cool location to shoot this replica. It turned out to be perfect as you can see the triangle point of the apartments just like the barn top in the original painting. Since I was going for a modern feel I had the models wear normal clothing and traded out the pitchfork for a broom. I love the fact that you can look at my image and see just enough similarities to the famous painting that you recognize it as such but not enough that it seems like a complete copy of the original. To view the photo larger simply click here :)

Film: Cinderella

This image was part of an assignment for my black and white photography class in which we were to tell a story or replicate a famous painting ect. in one single image. I wanted to try and encompass a fairytale in one shot because my sister has numerous dresses, play shoes, and tiaras and I thought it would be fun. I was visiting my family in Huntsville, TX at the time and decided to take advantage of the many beautiful locations on campus at Sam Houston State University. I knew there were several staircases and buildings with a colonial feel so I decided to try to tell the story of Cinderella. I chose the scene where Cinderella runs out of the ball trying to get away before the strike of midnight changes all of The Fairy Godmothers charms and in the process loses one of her glass slippers on the staircase. I had my little sister dress up for the part and then headed out to the university to the location in the photo. My poor sister had to run down the stairs about 50 times but she was a trooper and did an excellent job. I love the grace in both the hand holding up her dress and the one deciding whether or not she has time to pick up the lost slipper. If you would like to see these details up close view here!

Final Project: Part1/10: Bored In Class

For our final project in my black and white film photography class we had to print 10 images that all followed the theme of our choice. I decided to tell the story of a little girl who is bored in class so she starts daydreaming about all of the adventures she could be having instead. This first image sets up the story and shows my sister bored at her school. There are 8 images after this one that show her adventures and then the last one show her being woken up from her dreams by her teacher.

*Photo Info*

Location: Alpha Omega Academy

Outfit: School Uniform

Another View

This photo has a fun story to it :) It's 3 days before Christmas Day and my family is in the Uplander driving to the Houston airport. We pulled out of our driveway in Huntsville not as early as we should have but still in enough time to get there and have about an hour and a half before our flight. All is looking well until we get about 20 minutes down the road and have to brake to a complete stop. The seven letter word we all hate: traffic. Bumper to bumper traffic a good hour from the airport. We sit for awhile thinking surely it will clear up in a few minutes. We were wrong and ended up sitting/semi-crawling if you could call it that for 45 minutes. Needless to say my mom was speeding once we finally were able to move again and we screeched into the airport drop off with 30 minutes till departure, hastily said good bye to my dad and raced into the airport to check in. We were all sweating bullets in line just knowing we were going to miss our flight. Somehow we made it up to the counter checked in our baggage and got our tickets. I remember a weight being lifted off my shoulders and rushing with my mom and sister to the terminal and then turning the corner and having the weight thrown right back on. We were stopped by a line the length of a worthwhile amusement park ride of people waiting to pass through security. We had failed.

With absolutely no way to make our flight and being 3 days away from Christmas being at my grandmas house all we could do was sit down and stare at each other. My mom was distraught and went to talk to the women who had given us our tickets.

After an epic battle against time and crowds we finally could all relax. My mom was able to trade in our tickets for a new flight the next morning at 6:30 a.m. for no extra cost since we had redeemed our other tickets before the flight departed! We decided to play it safe and stay at a hotel close by that offered a shuttle ride to the airport in the morning. That next morning we got to our terminal in plenty of time to board the plane to Chicago, Illinois. Our adventure was not quite over here though. Since we had to change our flight around we had to fly to Chicago and then to Knoxville, TN and THEN drive the 2 & 1/2 hours to my grandparents house in Sylva, North Carolina. It was a crazy adventure trying to get there but of course worth it.

This photo is from the airplane window overlooking Chicago :)

Ballet Feet

A little background on this photo first. These are the dancer feet of my graceful roommate Samantha who has been taking dance classes in a studio since she was 3 years old. She has performed in numerous competitions, spring shows, and features of The Nutcracker and Alice In Wonderland performing lead roles in both. Unfortunately her dancing has come to a halt since we both came to college and she started her rigorous double degree plan of Biology and Business. Although she hadn't danced to her full potential in about a year and a half when I took this photo and a set of others she has still retained her poise and grace. I took these pictures for the Digital Photography and Design class I took last semester here at UTD. Our assignment was to tell a story through a set of 6 images. My story was that of a dancer and the steps they would take to warm-up, dance, and wind down during a typical practice. This particular photo above was not part of the 6 but I loved how it turned out and put it up on my flickr. It has since been and remained my number one rated most interesting photo on my photostream. Interestingness is calculated by the site based on who looks at your photo and how many times it has been viewed, number of favorites(if you like someones photo you can favorite it by clicking the star at the top left corner), and comments you receive. Interestingness is not only calculated just between your personal uploads but site wide as well. People whose photos rank high on the interestingness scale can become labeled the honorable title of explore. Explore, as a result, gathers the best pictures into one spot so you can easily find new inspiration and creative artists.

Here are a couple other photos from this shoot:

Samantha
Samantha #2

The City

For spring break I went home to Huntsville, TX to spend the week with my family. We spent one day at the Downtown Aquarium in Houston, TX. It's a fairly small aquarium but it covers all the basics plus a few oddities including a parrot and a white tiger exhibit. Why are there tigers at the aquarium? I have no idea. A better question is why they offer a sleepover deal called Wild Dreams Overnight where the first program activity listed is sleep within inches of the tigers. Now granted the tigers are obviously behind glass walls but still I don't know how you could sleep comfortably with tigers pacing back and forth behind this thin wall of separation. Besides this craziness we had a good time and ended the day with a ferris wheel ride where I took the picture of the city above.

Here is a picture of my dad at the tiger exhibit:

Film: Park

Film is my new obsession. I love shooting, developing and printing it. Below are my personal pros and cons to each of these three processes.

Shooting
Pros: 1. You can purchase film to be either color or black and white.
2. You get to load and unload the film into your camera yourself.

Cons: 1. You have no way of knowing what you actually captured until the film is developed.
2. If you loaded your film incorrectly into your camera then you could shoot a whole roll and have nothing show up as a result.


Developing
Pros: 1. Going through the process. From rolling the film onto the developing
reels to pouring the various chemicals to develop the film is a very
cool experience.
2. Getting to see the developed negatives after the processing and seeing
what you captured.

Cons: 1. If you develop your film with the wrong temperature developer you can ruin your entire roll. There's nothing like shooting and developing a whole roll only to see a blank stream of negatives.
2. Light. If your film is exposed to any light all of your images will be
ruined.

Printing
Pros: 1. You can determine the size of the image you want to print to take up the entire sheet of paper or to be smaller and leave a border in order to frame it.
2. Once you find the right settings on the enlarging machine to produce a
good print from your negative you can make as many copies as you want and
they will come out identical.

Cons: 1. Finding the right settings, how much light and how long that amount of light should be exposed to the light sensitive paper, is a pain. I always have to cut test strips of paper to find the right balance before I print
a full size image.
2. Again with the light, if you're paper is exposed to light it is ruined.

You can see more of my film prints on my flickr :)

Mad

I titled this photo Mad because of the look on my cat Daisy's face. It is priceless. You can tell she does not want to be wearing that hat but is too lazy to resist the charade. The little girl is my sister Jamie. She found the hat Daisy is wearing while we were shopping at Old Navy and just had to buy it as a birthday present for our cat. Sounds like a great gift right? What cat wouldn't want a hat made for dogs for their birthday? Anyway Daisy let my sister dress her up and although she was lethargic about it she was cooperative. My favorite part of this photo is the look on Daisy's face.

One of Five

I took this photo the other day while sitting at the pool! This momma duck and her 5 baby ducks were swimming in the pool! I was glad to see them here because I had actually seen them a couple weeks before crossing the road by the phase 8 apartments on campus. Two of my friends and I had just come back from a crazy day of shopping when we stopped at the stop sign about to turn into our apartments and this duck and her eight baby ducks crossed the street right in front of us. They were adorable! We let them cross safely and then followed behind them in the car to see where they were headed. We figured out they were trying to get to the pond behind where we live. By this time it is raining and we have been watching the ducks try to find the entrance to the pond for about 10 minutes. We got out of the car and tried to lead the ducks in the right direction. We finally did but it took 30 minutes! Needless to say we were excited to see the ducks again the other day safe and sound. My favorite part about this photo is that the baby duck is glaring straight at the camera.

Upside Down

Down the street from my house there used to be an apartment complex in the shape of a square enclosing an average size pool in the middle. These burned down a few years ago and they were completely torn down living just the bare concrete foundation and the pool in the middle. Since this area has been left abandoned since, my brother has turned the space into his own little skate park. It works well because there are multiple levels of foundation and most of the concrete is smooth and flat. My brother and I were at the burned down apartments so I could take pictures of him skating. He skated for awhile and then went and sat my the edge of the "pool". I use pool lightly because it's basically just a hollowed out rectangle decorated with graffiti and the remnants of the water that used to fill it. The water is really dirty and swamp looking- awful for swimming but great for photography. Since the water was so dirty I was able to photography my brothers reflection. The photo above is the reflection of my brother. I edited the photo in Lightroom adjusting the clarity and saturation and rotating the image so that it looks like I took it from underwater. Also my brother had thrown a rock in the water right before I took this creating a cool fun house affect on his reflection. Look closely at his head and you can see it. My favorite part of this photo are the specs in the water that transformed into shooting stars when I rotated the image.

If you want to check this photo out in a larger size click here!

Americans Have Too Much Stuff

I was flipping through channels earlier and came across a show called Hoarders. It's about people who are chronic dis-organizers and have a problem throwing things away thus their homes are filled with mountainous heaps of trash and a multitude of other useless junk. These people are living in a ravenous sea of clutter. A sea whose waves are growing larger by the day with every new piece of rubbish they bring into their homes. The floors have not been seen in years and some rooms have completely been closed off because they are completely incapable of being used. How does this happen? How do people accumulate so much that they have to devote entire rooms to their garbage?

It's sad truly sad. How you live affects your lifestyle. Sound like an obvious statement but it's something most people don't understand. If you live in a messy environment then other areas of your life are going to be messy. This works the other way around too. Haven't you ever noticed that those people who keep a clean appearance physically and in their homes are also organized, punctual, and productive? It's true. How you live affects all aspects of your life. These people had let their lifestyle take over and destroy their lives.

How do they gain back control? Get rid of the trash! A simple task yet to hoarders it seems impossible. This woman on the show had to work up the courage all day before she was able to part with a disgusting looking over sized teddy bear that she couldn't even remember where she has gotten it from.

10 Reasons Why Flickr Is Awesome

Why Flickr is Awesome:

1. Outstanding Community
2. Allows you to add contacts and find your friends
3. Allows comments and notes to photos
4. You can favorite photos
5. You can tag photos and add people to photos
6. Extremely easy and user friendly sign-up
7. Allows you to add your photos to groups (up to 10 if you have a free account and 60 with a pro account.
8. Partners with Picnik for easy editing
9. Pro Account is only $24.95 for a year which includes limitless uploads
10. Ads are easy on the eyes and non-existent with a pro account

I've been using Flickr since August 2009 and upgraded to a pro account last month!

Mix It Up

In Kevin Kelly's article Becoming Screen Literate he mentions the massive amounts of uploads on the photo sharing site Flickr. He says there are 3 billion photos on the site of which 200,000 alone are of the Golden Gate Bridge. With this incredibly large number of photos Kelly points out "there is really no reason to take a new picture of this bridge. It's been done." This is his key point. Why not use the resources we have and add to them to create something new? Millions of people have already been asked this question and answered via mash-ups on the web. Mixing and re-inventing anything and everything that is out there and posting their creations on Youtube.

One such sensation was the recent Pants on the Ground epidemic from American Idol Season 9's Larry Platt. This 62 year old man's audition song was a catchy but ridiculous chant that quickly spread across the internet reaching millions in lightning speed. Those living on the West coast saw "Pants on the Ground" before American Idol had even aired because of those on the East coast who saw it first and catapulted it to the web. Soon everyone was familiar with the song and began replicating it like Jimmy Fallon and Brett Favre.

Now you might be thinking "What's the point of pants on the ground?". Well their isn't one with the song itself but as soon as the song was aired, multiplied, and replicated it changed from pointless to powerful. This explosion of exposure used pants on the ground to connect our society. People who had never met before could now start a conversation with the words pants on the ground and have complete understanding of what the other was talking about(unless they somehow missed this epic sensation- very unlikely). Anyway, mash-ups and remixes help create unity among people while using resources we already have. Kelly points out:

"After all, this is how authors work. We dip into a finite
set of established words, called a dictionary, and reassemble
these found words into articles, novels, and poems that no
one has ever seen before. ...What we do now with words, we'll
soon do with images."

This phenomenon has already begun and taken off. The results are endless as we can see on the constantly growing video warehouse YouTube. People can now create something by using other's material and putting a new spin on it. Through these mash ups we can see several different points of view on one topic. I think mixes are a fun way to get something new out of something old.

Blurring The Line Of Reality

Virtual reality. We've all been exposed to it right? You put the helmet or glasses on and instantly you have been transported to an entirely different setting altogether, possibly even have traveled back in time or sped ahead to the future. While this experience is highly entertaining it makes me wonder why we are so caught up in fake realities. Are the lines between what is real and what is not blurring?

In Remediation by J. David Bolter and Richard Grusin they discuss how media is devoured by the consumer through three forms: immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation. Immediacy is the state of feeling as if the medium in which you are getting media has been erased and you are really there in the media not just watching it. Hypermediacy, on the other hand, reminds you of the medium and allows you to get a better sense of reality. You gain this better sense because it allows you to look at media through several different views and thus gain a more sensitive understanding of the media.


An example of immediacy are 3D movies. Directors want so badly for you to forget you are watching a movie and feel like you are living it that they make objects pop out at you and seem more real. This "realness" makes it easier for us to become part of the story and more invested in the movie.

emac 2322 Free sells. end of story.

Chris Anderson, in his article "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business", voices that "The Web has become the land of the free." Once an item hits the internet it is a ticking time bomb until its value becomes zero aka free. How does this happen? Well, musicians for example have used this fact to earn money by giving away a sample of their music for free. It's only a matter of time before their music is distributed on the internet for free anyway so why not embrace it and make the best of it. With this attitude in mind they can give away music free online to build up a fan base to better sell out their concerts and sell merchandise therefore earning a profit. He also talks about the distinctions between cheap and free and how these words can make a world of difference to the consumer. People are far more accepting to something free even if the product offered is sold for only 1 cent. Anderson also quotes Stewart Brand saying "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive.." The fact that consumers want information to be free and producers obviously don't want it to be free is a constant battle especially with how technology has transformed the ability for information to be free.

Now that Anderson has voiced how information wants to be free and therefore it has become a free resource, Malcolm Gladwell, states that information cannot want anything. Information cannot think but people or in his example Amazon can and they are the ones who fight to make information free. Although these two authors differ slightly about what "information" wants, both agree about the incredible amount of power the word free holds. I think that if Anderson discussed his six forms of "free" to Gladwell and Gladwell expressed his thoughts on how free can actually cost you a fortune then they could have a well rounded and healthy argument. They both have valid points and could benefit from embracing the other's perspective.

Both writers, though one negatively and one positively, address the effects of free information/merchandise in our technology driven society. Together they are addressing the same topic but seeing the outcomes differently but still agreeing the the word free itself is powerful. Whether is has good effects such as the Gillette reference or bad in the YouTube one about losing billions of dollars. I think we should be questioning how our world is changing with the ability to mass distribute more for free such as music. Music can be shared incredibly easily now and though it's not right it's happening and musicians should recognize that and learn from it using it to their advantage. Build a large fan base and then you are set to sell out more concerts and sell more merchandise to people who might not have given your music a chance if they had not had the ability to sample it for free.

emac 2322 What's in a name?

After reading "What Is An Author?" by Michel Foucault I saw his main point to be about what connects an author to their work. He discusses when a person is considered to be an author and then questions whether or not all writing produced by this person is a piece of work. How do you differentiate all of the words written by an author, or someone not labeled as such, from their work versus a personal journal? Both are written by the same person yet they do not merit the same value. Both do have something in common though, they are essentially stripping the author of their uniqueness. Foucault says "Using all the contrivances that he sets up between himself and what he writes, the writing subject cancels out the signs of his particular individuality. As a result...he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing." The role of the author is changing with our culture and moving from the worry of who said what to asking real questions about the actual work itself.

This idea that the author is disappearing is a little confusing for me to understand. Foucault says that the point of writing is to create a place where "the writing subject constantly disappears." What does this mean? Does this tie into the idea of the role of the author changing/disappearing? I like the question he brings up "What is a work?" A simple question yet there is no simple answer. How does someone decide what is or isn't a piece of work or better yet who is an author and who is not?

An example of this could be any work put out my an anonymous author. Without knowing who the author is you don't have to worry about distinguishing the writer from the writing and can focus on the content. Now that I've written this example I'm not sure if it really fits with what Foucault was saying. This reading definitely took a lot of focus to read through but posed some interesting thoughts and questions that I liked.

3 Steps to develop your own film: Part Three

Major Step 3: Printing in the darkroom

A. Print a contact sheet using an enlarging machine to display your
negatives onto light sensitive paper.

B: From the contact sheet you can determine which negatives you want to
print and the proper aperture and length of light exposure will work
for a final print.

C. Once light sensitive paper has been expose to light you then take your
print to soak in another series of chemicals listed below.

*Developer (here you watch your image appear)
*Stop (place image in the stop bath to stop the developing)
*Fixer
*Rinse (just a continuously flowing water rinse)

D. Finally you can go and set your photo on a drying rack and leave
to dry for at least 24 hours. Once it is dry you can use a pressing
machine to flatten the photo and then it is yours!

So many steps right?? Yes but I found myself wanting to start the whole process over again after the first time because I had fun and had something to show after all that work. If you ever get the chance to develop and print your own photos I recommend the experience 100%.

3 Steps to develop your own film: Part One & Two

I'm taking a black and white photography class at UTD this semester. We are learning to develop and print our own film in the school's darkroom. It's a long process from beginning to end but also fun and rewarding. It's a good feeling to see the end product after all the steps and procedures you went through to make it. Here's how the photo travels from the camera to the print on your wall in 3 major steps.

Major Step 1: Shoot some film!

A. Load film correctly (Make sure to not expose the film to much light or
it will be ruined)

B. Set the proper aperture and shutter speed settings based on the amount
of light you have and what you are trying to capture.

C. Shoot all frames on the roll and let the film rewind back into the
canister before you take it out of the camera.

Major Step 2: Develop Film

A. Roll film onto a developing tank roll in complete darkness. This
requires using scissors and a can opener in darkness.

B. Once your film is securely inside the sealed tank then you take it
through a series of chemicals pouring each one separately into the
for varied amounts of time depending on the chemical.

C. After you have gone through the series of chemicals you can then take
film to the drying vent and once it has dried cut the negatives into
strips to store.