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This week, I completed several assignments. For a quick reference, see the links below.

Visual Assignment Part 1: Reflection

Visual Assignment Part 2: Photo Safari

Visual Assignment Part 3A: Five Frame Story

Visual Assignment Part 3B: Your Favorite Photo

Visual Assignment Part 3C: Mixing 2 Worlds

Visual Assignment Part 3D: Draw It

Visual Assignment Part 4: Summary (this blog post)

What did you learn?

Many of the concept mentioned in this week’s lesson were things that I already knew. For example, pictures can be used to support stories, taking an amazing photo doesn’t require expensive equipment, luck plays a part in catching that perfect shot, etc. One thing I did learn was that creating the perfect shot is challenging. This is not something I have experience with, so I struggled with it this week. I wouldn’t say that I have learned how to manage all the elements required to get a great photo, but I am in the process of learning. This is something that will require practice. I also learned that a critical analysis of my own pictures will help me grow in the area of photography. By studying what I did wrong, I can figure out what to do right.

What was harder than you thought it would be?

The photo safari was the hardest part of this assignment. It’s funny because it was probably the quickest part. I don’t particularly enjoy creative assignments such as this one. It borders the line between scavenger hunt and set creation. Neither of these things appeals to me. I had hoped that I could just go through my house and find items that were quite literally what the assignment asked for. That wasn’t the case though. While I managed to take most of the photos, I wouldn’t call them good photos. Passion and interest and important for successful completing photo assignments.

What was easier?

The visual assignments were all pretty easy. It was nice to have easy things to do since there were so many required assignments. If they were more difficult, I might not have had the energy or drive to complete them.

What drove you crazy? Why?

While the assignments aren’t difficult, they are time consuming. I don’t understand why each week there are so many blog posts. The assignments often are multipart assignments which are quite tedious. It takes a bit of time management since my schedule is so full. I start my days at 5:30am, get on the road by 6am, and drive until 8am when I arrive at the archaeological dig site. Then I work from 8am-3:30pm. Afterwards, I grab dinner and drive home. Normally, I get home between 6pm or 7pm. Usually, I go straight to a shower after greeting my kids. By the time I’m ready to work on these digital studies assignments, it is already after 8pm. I often stay up until 1am trying to complete bits and pieces of these assignments each day. This leaves me with only about 4 hours of sleep each night. Saturday, when I am fully exhausted and needing to recover from a week of very physically intense work, I can’t because I need to complete these assignments. For example, today, pulling all the pieces of these assignments together took more than four hours and I’m still not quite finished.

What did you really enjoy? Why?

The only part I really enjoyed this week was taking the photo from an unusual perspective. I don’t know why I haven’t done that more often in my photo sessions. Usually, I only grab an unusual perspective when I see a face. I have pareidolia, which is when my mind sees faces in normal items. It’s not just faces, but I can imagine hair, coloring, clothing, voices, how they would speak, everything. Maybe one day I’ll use that creative input to make comic books or something. The characters my mind sees in a manhole cover, for example, are quite original. So, while I am familiar with the idea of using a different perspective for my photos, I haven’t tried it in the way presented in this lesson. I will definitely do more of that in the coming weeks.

I’m a little nervous for next week’s lesson on design. I feel like things are only going to get more complicated from here. Hopefully I can keep up!

Prompt: Take a photograph of something (If you take a picture from the internet, make sure to be nice and cite the original) and transform it through GIMP, Photoshop, etc, into a drawing.

This is a 2 star prompt.

Last week, I started my archaeology field school. My class of six people is working on a Rappahannock tribe site connected to the Nanzatico. We started with digging shovel test pits. Then we mapped out units to dig and set up our dig space.

We only dig the plow zone, which is the first foot or so of soil. The shovel the dirt from our dig unit into buckets. It is a long and slow process.

We take the buckets and dump them onto large screens used to sift the dirt. One person stands on each side of the screen and meticulously looks through every single dirt clump. As we sift through the dirt, the small grains and pebbles fall through the screen to a wheelbarrow below.

The goal of this dig is to find Rappahannock artifacts. Maybe these artifacts are connected to one of the previous site owners, Ned “Gunstocker,” or maybe they are connected to other indigenous groups or colonizers. We found lots of ceramic pieces. We even found a native bead. But the best find was a projectile point.

Everyone was soooo happy about that find. Even if we find nothing else, this will be the highlight of our archaeological dig.

Despite some of the frustrations with GIMP, I still wanted to experiment some more with it.  I liked the idea of trying to make a drawing from a photo.  The photo I selected was the first Wonder Woman promo photo released on Gal Gadot’s twitter.  Being as her character is fairly ancient, it would be somewhat fitting to convert the photograph into a sketch.  I initially began exploring filters myself, and while I could find ones that make your photograph resemble an oil painting, etc., I could not find one that resembled a pencil drawing.  I conducted a google search, which eventually led me to this video.  This made life so much easier.  Previous I had followed step by step written instructions, which were helpful, but occasionally I’d get lost between steps.  By watching someone else demonstrate the process visually, I could more easily follow along and see exactly which choices were selected, etc., especially in regards to using layers and adjusting settings.  It seems to me that a lot of GIMP requires some trial and error, as I couldn’t get my photo to quite match the look of the tutorial’s example.  However, it’s a fairly good imitation, and the background in particular captures that pencil drawing look I was striving for.

Collateral Damage

I picked this photo because of the word HOPE because as long as you believe, there is hope.The image just catches your eye because it is large and trimmed so neatly.

I do a lot of praying when it comes to this class and if you have faith in prayer, you have hope. :)

I took the original image and uploaded it from my computer to pixlr

And turned it into a drawing

I have also enclosed my steps Photo to Drawing in a word document.