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.