For this visual assignment, I created an image where I changed the setting of the original image. The entire assignment can be found here.

My original image is from my prom in high school which I transformed to me on the red carpet with a couple stars photo bombing the back of my picture!

 then turns into 

As a photo bomber myself, I decided to make this assignment around a “photo bomb”. I could have just added myself into the image next to some celebrities but I thought this was more fun.

As I was trying to come up a theme for this assignment, I was scrolling social media and all these prom pictures were coming up on me feed from all the high schoolers I follow. Thats when I decided to go back in time and pull up my prom pictures from 4 years ago. The red carpet is the perfect place that this image of me all dressed up would fit. So the story behind this image is as follows. The paparazzi were constantly taking pictures of me and a couple of my friends decided to jump in the background of the pictures. They are so fun back there making faces and being goofy! Can’t wait for then next award show so I can do it all over again!

To make this image, I uploaded the image into Pixlr.

I then selected around my body using the Lasso tool in the left sidebar and inverted the selection. This made it so the entire background was selected and then I was able to clear it.

After clearing and making the background transparent, I was able to select over my image and copy it.

I then pulled up the image of my choosing for the background and pasted myself into it. After pasting I zoomed in on myself so I appeared larger than the celebrities in the back.

I touched up a few places I had missed using the same Lasso tool. This created my final image!

Credit for image of Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez here.

Shredding the Gnar

Are we there yet? Design Assignment : 3 Stars

A cutout of me surfing pasted onto a spider web. I am literally surfing the web another phrase for browsing the internet. It’s a bad joke I know, but it tells a pretty good story.

I wonder what a person born before the Internet Age would say if you asked them the definition of the idiom “surfing the web.” Many of us millennials often forget that our grandparents and our parents were born before the Internet age.

My dad and I are always teasing each other about life before the internet. The early telephone system was particularly primitive and operators had to physically connect parties to each other.

For nolstagia’s sake check out some old comedy sketches poking fun at these old fashioned telecommunications by Lily Tomlin:

As you can see it would be impossible for Lily Tomlin or someone from her generation to understand this photo because they do not yet have in their vocabulary the idiom of “surfing the web.” I would like to show this photo to a someone pre internet and see what he or she thinks. It would probably be quite different to one of us. Another interesting experiment would be to show this to a foreign language class and see if they understand the connection. You could show it to a 4^th year foreign language student then 5^th year and so on and find out exactly what level it takes to understand this. “Surfing the web” is an idiom and it is very difficult for foreign language students to really understand these types of double entendres.

Tutorial:

ClippingMagic.com

Credit for Photo

Are we there yet? “Take an existing image and change the concept in where you are at and what you are doing.” http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/are-we-there-yet/

1) Find photo you want to use

2)Find background you want to use

3)Head onto Photoshop

4)I went to select and then clicked select and mask then outlined everything I wanted to move

5)I dragged the outline to my new background and positioned it over the people

6)DONE = SAVE

So some background: I have been to the Grand Canyon but it was before my sister was ever born. THEREFORE this is me sharing this experience with her in a fun way! I got the pleasure of calling her into my room and attempting to convince her that she has in fact been there and I have the photos to prove it. Of course, upon showing her I just got an eye roll (teenagers, man). This was still fun to make!

This is a story of two sisters trying to enjoy their summer. The older one has a car and was given the freedom to go anywhere! Vegas? Cali? Miami? No. The Grand Canyon! The youngest at first objects to this. The summer is already so hot, why go there? The oldest tells her younger sister to shut up and go with it because she has the drivers license (and that she was born first, because sisters will be sisters). She also loves succulents and knows that there will be cacti and they are basically grown up succulents. They end up taking a road trip that involved snacks, loud music, jokes, and crappy gas station food. When they finally got there it was night time so they had to find a sketchy motel to stay in. The oldest wakes up the youngest and says they have to leave soon so they can climb to the highest peak to do a daring stunt: piggy back ride on the edge of a cliff. This may not seem crazy but as you can see from their evidence, they were two steps from death. However, they did survive and make it back home in one piece. Oh, and with a few baby cacti.

This was an overall fun piece to do. I had to fiddle with Photoshop a little bit to figure out how to select the picture and not the background but I think it turned out okay. I think I don’t like how the original photo was smaller than the new background because I think the quality looks pretty bad but I guess I have made worse! And honestly I am so proud for thinking of this photo AND the Canyon in less than 10 minutes (I am not very creative lol).

Are We There Yet Assignment

If I didn’t believe in Global Warming before, there can be no doubt I believe in it now! These past few days have been sweltering…and that is coming from someone who has spent the majority of her life in high desert heat! This weather has been no joke and I’ve been struggling just walking around in it. When I read this assignment, I knew exactly where I wanted to be. Alaska.

I’ve been to Alaska once when I was about 10 years old on a cruise and I enjoyed the scenery. However, I never imagined it on my vacation. This weather in Virginia right now had me seriously reconsidering. I am dying for some cold, crisp air. Some mountains and glaciers would do the trick!

I selected an image of my boyfriend and I (of course I would have to drag him along for the trip) that we took in front of the Garden of the Gods rock formation in Colorado this summer. I then looked up pictures of Alaska via Google images and I placed it in GIMP. Putting my Alaska image to the back, I took our Colorado picture and used the lasso tool to cut us out of the picture.  Next, I pasted the image of us onto the Alaska backdrop and voila!

I loved this assignment because it gave me an opportunity to imagine my boyfriend and I in a peaceful icy climate, out of the thick Virginia heat. And of course, the location I picked: Alaska, is colder than any of the two fans I currently have on in my room or any air conditioner I could buy. A girl can dream though.

Original assignment (3 Stars)

Saving Private Ryan? More like Hanging with Private Ryan. I took a picture of my self dressed up. I cropped it into WWII Europe. The image is actually from the movie Saving Private Ryan. It’s definitely weird as the setting is all war torn. I’m actually really happy with how it turned out. I used online software to put myself in the photo

I was able to do this with the help of the site fotoflexer.com I started with my original photo take at The Great Meadow in The Plains, VA. Once you upload the photo select the ‘Geek’ tab. Then select ‘smart cutout option’. From here follow the tutorial by shading the area you want to keep green. The areas you want to remove  are shaded red. Do not worry about getting all pixels covered, the program will help at the end.

Save the results as a .png file. Now take the location photo by uploading that. Take the cropped are and drag it over the location photo. Saved the photo as .jpg so I could upload it to Flickr.

This was my first try at combining two photo successfully. I took the advice of the professor and downloaded GIMP. Although I did not use it. I am excited I didn’t have to buy Adobe Photoshop to do some of these assignments. There are free online versions out there.

Are we there yet? is an assignment that requires you to take a photo and to alter its context in order to change its concept.

When I babysit, one of the kids’ favorite things to do is to play dress up. The kids (a brother and sister) have every outfit from a chef to super heroes to a bride and groom, but the little boy’s favorite outfit is a fire fighter. Unfortunately, the outfit didn’t come with a hose, but he has no problem putting out fires with the siren. I decided to use this photo of the the little boy dressed up as a fire fighter and to actually give him a (very small) fire to put out – he is only two.

The original image:

The final product:

How it was made:

I began by opening PowerPoint and using copy and paste to insert an image of a landscape.

Then, I copy and pasted an image of fire and used the Remove Background tool (format picture>remove background).

In order to use this tool, simply click on the areas of the photo that you do not want to include. The tool will cast the unwanted areas in a shade of purple, leaving only the desired areas in their original color. Simply continue to click around the image until you have removed all of the background that you want to get rid of.

I then inserted another image (insert>photo>picture from file)

of a little boy dressed up as a firefighter, and I again used the remove background tool to leave just the child.

Then I inserted an image of water by copy and pasting.

Finally, I moved the images around on the screen by clicking and dragging until I was happy with the placement.

Not on my work computer, had to improvise!

The situation:

Young Man:  Urging his sister, the young woman, not to go with the man that has found himself next to her.

Older Man:  Spotted a young, pretty, and single plus one to take into the club with him.  He intends to use his obvious riches to persuade her that she will have more fun with him, rather than her brother.

Young Woman:  In the act of being seduced by a well dressed rich man, that happens to be going to the same club as herself.

Destination change:

from the slick busy city streets to the rumbling ground, and explosive heat of Vietnam during the war.  A curious sight of the futuristic Northrop Grumman B-2 spirit, a stealth bomber. No doubt the man of gold had something to do with this!

The reason behind putting that specific plane in there:  it’s fun to draw and stealth.

Original assignment details

For the Are We There Yet? design assignment, I created the image above of me supposedly relaxing on a cliff.

Behind the Creation

Apparently pictures like this are very popular nowadays where someone takes a shot of their feet hanging in mid air while they are looking down some high place. Unfortunately I am sitting here in my basement with no shirt on but then I was like “Hey, I have this picture of my legs and this picture of a cliff…why not?”. Now I can fit in with todays culture while being able to sit shirtless in my basement on a Saturday night

Here is the original:

The Process

To make this image, I used the same methods as I did for my Slipknot Entertaining the Kids assignment. I have the tutorial in there which is exactly identical to how I created the image above.

Are We There Yet?

Take an existing image and change the concept in where you are at and what you are doing. (3 Stars)

Obviously I am flying away from all of my responsibilities and stress in this picture, but ended up a little bit further away from Orientation than I was meaning to.  The picture of me is from my first year as an Orientation Leader having fun in spite of how exhausting the experience is.  This is one of my favorite picture I took over that summer and I’m excited that I could alter it to make it even more interesting.

I downloaded the photograph of me holding the balloons from Facebook in order to utilize it for this assignment.

I’m on a work computer and cannot download any special software onto the desktop so I uploaded the photograph to ClippingMagic.com to remove the background.

On Clipping Magic you mark the foreground with green and the background with red to distinguish them from one another.

Once I was happy with the background removal I downloaded the edited photograph onto my desktop.

I also downloaded an galaxy image from the internet.

Once I had all the pieces, I uploaded the galaxy into Canva.com and resized it to my liking.

I then uploaded the picture of me holding the balloons and placed it over the galaxy.

Changing locations without actually changing locations is quite a confusing concept. Well I managed to make that concept work through the “Are We There Yet?” design assignment. The assignment require that you change the concept of where the photo is and what actions are going on in the photo. Initially I had absolutely no idea of how I would accomplish this. Luckily, old photos came to the rescue.

You see, the original picture is of my little brother… who is no longer so little (he’s almost 17 now). He was a mischievous little creature who was alway getting into something. Whether you left a phone or an instrument, he had his little sticky fingers all over it. My mother’s friend one day came over with a mini-violin for him when he was about 4 years old. Instantly he picked it up and pretended to play. In this picture he looks like a total pro. Pictures are deceiving though… he never did actually learn how to play, but you would’ve never guessed that from looking at this photo!

This concept came to me while browsing through the pictures on my computer. I have always loved this picture of him cause he “LOOKS” so cute and innocent, even though he was the total opposite. I instantly thought it would be funny to finally make his little 4 year old dream come true. So I put him front and center of a chorus. Of course I couldn’t pick just any chorus… since old ladies “usually” love children I thought, why not?! I like how it ended up coming out. They all look so happy to be presenting this little nugget as their solo violinist !

Original Photo:

Finally an official violinist:

To find out how exactly I made his violinist debut, head on over to the tutorial I made.