Final Project, End of the year stress, etc.

Well it's getting to be that time of year again. We officially have only have 10 days of classes left, and in two weeks I will hopefully be on my way home. And as exciting as all that is I've come to realize how little time I have left to finish off a lot of work. I've decided that for my final project I'm going to take my photographs and manipulate them to create new images by blending several of my photos together. I've been sort of struggling to figure out something I really wanted to do within the time restraints but still having something I'm happy with in the end. The idea came from looking into different photoshop tutorials and I came across this particular one that kind of stood out to me.

http://photoshoptutorials.ws/photoshop-tutorials/photo-manipulation/create-a-moody-landscape-photo-manipulation-in-photoshop.html

So I'm looking forward to getting into the project, which is something I haven't been able to say a lot this term with digital !

Follow the Useless

That constant sleepy feeling...

This semester has been interesting thus far and although I'm enjoying some parts of it, I have to say I am lacking that extra drive to get up and do things. That along with the fact that I haven't been excited about the majority of my projects doesn't help. I really don't know how to get back into all this or how to make myself excited about this semester and I think until I figure somethings it's going to become more and more difficult to get work done.

Video Project *sigh*

I thought there was no way I could dislike a project as much as I disliked our sound art project but of course I spoke too soon. Video- to say the least I'm not enjoying this project. I enjoy editing so I imagine once I finish the shooting process I won't mind putting the project together but my main issue is I can't come up with an idea that isn't going to be lame! Plus I don't really know what the criteria for the project is really, I know that my idea for a video is going to be completely different than the next persons. So I've settled on what I want to do and, surprise surprise, I went back to my original idea which was to make a music video for a friends song. Justin Hickey is my best friends boyfriend and is extremely talented. So I got a couple of his tracks and choose one and recently convinced my roommate Heidi to act in it for me. And frankly that's my idea and if you don't like it, tough ! My main goal for this past year is to make art that has a purpose for me. I want to make pieces that I'm satisfied with and that I want to share with more people than my classmates. Out of my four years here I have more artwork that I'm not happy with than pieces that I'm proud of. And I believe that the reason for that is that I'm going by more so what my prof wants than what I want. But the thing is in a year when I've graduated the only person I'm going to be making work for is myself so why listen to them now? I listen to the things that they each say when it comes to technical issues and suggestions about the content but I simply think that just because they don't "like" the final product doesn't mean it's not good.

Well there is my rant about my video project that more so turned into my rant about teachers and my art !

What Is New Media?

"New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community formation around the media content."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media)

Honestly the term new media is something that tends to be a bit complex. I've just started reading this article and so far it seems like the author has a lot of issues with the term. New media encompasses art made with the help of a computer. For me, as a photographer, digital artist, and printmaker, I've used a computer in the majority of my work and see the benefits of the resource.

My main issue with this article thus far is I'm seven pages in and all I've read is basically a history lesson on how the computer came to be. Honestly I never enjoy reading articles for a class because they always tend to be extremely long and I never enjoy reading them. So I'm through the first 10 pages and I'm taking a break for now and enjoying the rest of my night without reading the rest of this !

Auxiliary Meeting

Well I've officially had my first auxiliary meeting of the semester and thankfully it seemed to go okay. I spent thanksgiving at home and spent quality time with family and friends while also getting some shooting done. I spent Sunday with Bradley who drove me around some pretty narrow streets in St. John's so I could get some panoramas of the harbor and the downtown area. And Monday was spent with my Dad driving me around Pouch Cove and down the "cape." So needless to say I had a pretty eventful weekend.   

Since I've been back I've been doing a lot of editing and of course once I start I cannot seem to stop. I'm glad that I picked something for my forth year work that I enjoy doing because I don't think I'd be able to force myself to spend a lot of time on something that I wasn't having any fun with. 

However I have been running into problems (as you can see above). Because I've been working with HDR panoramas it's more difficult to stitch them together. Because of the file size I've been having issues taking the photos into Photomatix. I've figured out a way to stitch each separate image into an HDR file with the same adjustments but it does it in a way that I cannot see them so when I go to put them together in Photoshop there are parts of the image that don't look right. I've come to realize that this is not going to be very easy so wish me luck!

Midterm Break

Midterm Break is here already. It's hard to believe that it's almost Thanksgiving already. It feels like the semester just started. One thing I'm beginning to see is how difficult it is to write 2 blog posts per week. As you can already see I've started to fall a bit behind because to be honest nothing exciting is going on with me right now. My life revolves around school, work and sleep. The only time I think about blogging is when something bothers me and I feel like I shouldn't use this blog as simply a way to vent because well no one wants to read that.

We had our first critique this morning on our sound projects. I still haven't fallen in love with sound art. I think that there are people doing interesting work but it isn't something I would chose to do. I think that it can work along with other pieces but it's simply not my cup of tea. I've started thinking about my video piece. And well I thought sound art was difficult for me now I have to come up with a video idea? I've been considering doing a music video for a friend but that's a lot of pressure! Considering I watch a lot of television you'd think I'd have some ideas of things to do but I can honestly say I'm stumped.

I'm leaving to go home tomorrow morning and although I am looking forward to it I have a huge amount of work to do while I'm home! Fourth year photo's, personal photo's, video piece, all in five days and add in a wedding and attempting to spend time with everyone which basically means next Thursday I'll be even more exhausted. I thought the point of mid term break was to take a BREAK? Ha! That never happens.

I think I've officially run out of patience...

Well I think it's actually happened, I think I've officially run out of patience. I thought that this would happen a long time ago but audacity has caused me to want to rip my hair out. I think the program simply doesn't like me. I've been trying to put the rest of my sound piece together and it has crashed and I've lost it now three times. As if I wasn't frustrated enough with sound art...

I think I really just needed to vent about this so I am going to take a deep breath and try again.

Ken's Salvage Yard !

Leanne and I spent our Saturday afternoon twacking around Ken's Salvage Yard in the ran and I couldn't be happier about it ! My HDR work has been going well and I thought that an old dump would be the best location to find some great colors and textures. And I was right ! Below is one of my favorites and I glad to say I'm starting to build my portfolio. I'm going to be heading home next week and I plan on getting a lot of photo's taken then too.

On a side note I've started watching Boy Meets World again ! I used to love watching it as a kid and so I thought I'd watch it from the beginning. So that is currently what I'm doing while I edit my photo's. I get really addicted to editing once I start which I guess is a plus.

Photomatix

Well the highlight of my week thus far is purchasing a new program called Photomatix, which is the program recommended for HDR editing. The great thing about this program is that if you are a student enrolled in a photography program you can purchase the program at 75% off, which of course is exactly what I did. So I officially have the full program and have been trying to get a hang of the tools and how it works so that has been a bit of a challenge!

This is a screenshot I took from the internet just to give an idea of what it is I'm looking at. You have The ability to work straight from the photos or you can pick a preset and then simply tweak it from there. The program gives you the ability to take a group of photo's and have them look fairly realistic or you can go to the other extreme and completely change the look of the photo. I think that is what attracts me to these photo's. I've been trying to take Dave's advice and try to do a lot of writing about the "why" of my fourth year work and I've been trying to pin point why I want to work with HDR. I think that it has a lot to do with textures and the way you can capture the light in an interesting way. 

What has become clear is I still have a lot of work to do so I'm looking forward to getting some shooting done over the next while.

High Dynamic Range, aka HDR

I feel like every time I update this blog I don't know what to talk about. I guess that is simply because I don't think anything I write about would be of any interest to anyone else! And that's because all I talk about is school or television, which is exactly what my life consists of from September until April. So here I am again writing about 4th year. I had my first official meeting with my adviser, Dave, on Thursday and it went well as far as I'm concerned. My starting point for this semesters work is photography and I've been experimenting with HDR imaging which is something I really enjoy. I find it just adds something more to the photo by merging multiple exposures together into one image. Mostly I've been researching the process and with thanks to Michael Coyne I found www.stuckincustoms.com which is a really helpful site and provides great examples of HDR images. Also the program that is recommended for the process offers 75% off for students! So you can't really complain there.

My main thing is once I start editing I can't stop. It becomes an addition! But below I've added one of my own HDR photo's. It's not anything special, it is just one that I took randomly but I like how it turned out. I find it interesting how many different things you can to with the HDR settings. So I'm loking forward to tomorrow because I'm getting together with a friend to start working on building images for fourth year. So hopefully I'll have some more to post soon!

Critical Thinking

I've decided it is necessary for me to dedicate a blog post to the article we were asked to read for digital class. To be honest I dislike the way the article is presented to readers simply because I think it does show a hierarchy of thinking. I don't think this is the best way of convincing people to be more "critical thinkers." Over the years I've come to realize that people have different opinions regarding everything and although sometimes we disagree we all need to understand that people are entitled to their own opinion. Even though we do not always agree on things others do have valid points for believing the things they do. One of my main issues with this article is that I disagree with the idea that there are "stages of critical thinking development" that range from "unreflective thinker" to "master thinker."

With all this being said I do agree with some of the things said in this article for example the template for problem solving. I think that aspects like this can be helpful for certain types of things, for example my fourth year work. When dealing with an idea there is always that initial thing that draws you in. But the key thing is why you get drawn in and with this article it does cause you to ask questions about your idea by giving you points that you can ask yourself so your idea becomes more clear. One of the reasons this stands out is because it is one of my main problems when writing essays, I always tend to contradict myself by the time I'm finished writing a paper. So although I have issues with the article I do believe that there are aspects that are helpful.



As a side note, it's Thursday again! My favourite day of the week. And not only is TVD on tonight The Big Bang Theory starts tonight too!

4th Year, Digital and of course the return of The Vampire Diaries

Well with school starting this past week it's become clear that I have been right to fear fourth year ! It's this crazy mix of feelings, everything from nervousness to excitement and well everything in between. But I've been trying to embrace those feelings and just take things as they come. And well with the return of The Vampire Diaries tonight I find myself getting back into my old routine. For those of you who don't know much about me there is one thing you should know, I watch too much television and to be honest I'm okay with that. With the current digital project dealing with sound art I've been thinking about the emotive response one can get from music and then relating that mainly to television and movies. And most importantly how they use that to help provoke something from there viewers but they do it in such a way that it is not obvious to those watching. So I think that is something I will consider when I'm trying to decide what to do for this first digital project because I am completely clueless when it comes to what to do.

But The Vampire Diaries just ended and pardon me while I pick my mouth up off the floor. Thankfully though I can honestly say that was worth the wait!

Welcome

This is officially my first blog post and although I've been hesitant to starting a blog I'm glad I finally have an excuse to begin blogging. This blog is part of my Digital 3510 course and I'm glad that we are getting the opportunity to do something a little different. I've never considered myself to be interesting enough to have a blog but I hope to keep up with this and use it as a way to show some of my work and hopefully get some feedback. So I hope that everyone keeps checking back to see what I'm up to.