Meet Abbey.  She is kind and sweet and has red hair.  I saw Abbey this weekend and we had this conversation:

Me: I want to take pictures of your face.

Abbey: Ok.

Me: No, really.  I have my camera and I want to take pictures of your face.

Abbey: What? Wait, what?

But like I said, Abbey is kind and sweet.  She let me take pictures of her face.  See, I was going to color-splash her gorgeous blue eyes.  There is something so fabulous about her hair though, that I did that instead for the “Splash the Color” visual assignment.  I also fiddled with the saturation and temperature of the color on Picnik.  It was a little difficult to get her hairline and ends to look nice and not too harsh but overall, I’m pleased with the final product.

So here she is, color-splashed Abbey:

My name is very difficult to find on anything. In all my years of searching I have only found my name on one thing. I found it on a small solar powered flashing keychain in Virginia Beach and I still have it on my key chain. For this assignment I chose to walk around the Spotsylvania Mall (beacuse it is freezing outside). I took pictures of every sign I could find and then uploaded them to my computer. Since I have yet to find an easier way, I inserted the images into Word and cropped the letter I wanted. No two letters of my name came from the same image. Once I had compiled the images together I took a print screen and pasted it in GIMP. I cropped the image and saved it as a jpg on my desktop. After that I just uploaded it to my blog.

This picture is of my boyfriend and I before our senior prom. We took this picture in front of Hurkamp Park in Downtown Fredericksburg. Luckily I have always lived in Fredericksburg so the majority of my pictures occured here. Because of this, this assignment was relatively easy for me. I printed out the picture of us, drove downtown, took the picture on my cell phone, uploaded it to flickr, and the shared it with my blog. I love the idea of this assignment and really think that it turned out well.

The film opens with Mercer, dealing with the recent death of his mother, stealing a car to find his long-lost brother. He finds a cell phone in the car that he stole, and he starts talking to the owner of the car while he’s on his roadtrip.

“You’re a jerk, jerk, jerk…but I like the sound of your voice.”
- Kate
Through their conversations, Kate and Mercer get to know each other and become closer.

Kate’s voice becomes Mercer’s companion on the trip, and he starts to imagine her with him, keeping him company and helping him find his brother.

“Doesn’t anyone know anybody at all?”
- Kate

Finally, Kate finds Mercer and tries to steal her car back. Once they meet, their connection through the phone translates into a connection in person, and Kate accompanies him on the rest of his trip.

“It was the dream I had that night. You might’ve had it too. It could’ve passed through our feet.”
- Mercer

“I’m looking for Arlen.”
- Mercer
Throughout the film, Mercer makes various stops looking for his brother, who moved from place to place. When he finally finds him, Arlen makes a comment about their mother, not knowing that she died.

Kate, now there to accompany Mercer in person, helps him in his journey to find his brother and closure after the death of his mother.

Mercer and Arlen talk about their lives and the one thing they have in common, their mother. Afterwards, they go their separate ways.

Kate and Mercer drive back home after the long trip they took together to find themselves and each other.

The evolution of the iPhone is something that I have witnessed first hand. I got the original iPhone when it first came out. Since then, someone in my family has had every version that ever existed. Many of these phones died tragic deaths, from the washing machine to large falls to giant ocean waves. Losing an iPhone isn’t just losing your ability to make phone calls, it is so much more than that. I use  it for everything. Whether it is listening to music, taking photos, surfing the web, or checking my email. If I can’t do it on my phone, chances are I’m not going to do it.

It is always exciting to wait for the next software update to see what new things they are going to come up with next. Phones have come to do more than we originally ever thought possible. iPhones have not only changed themselves, but also changed the way that we use and think about phones. Phones aren’t just for making phones calls anymore. They are miniature hand-held computers with which we can do such a vast range of things. They are now customizable for each individual. They are a part of who we are and how we communicate in the world. They are not only a part of our electronic evolution, but also our social evolution as humans.

In order to make this image I first found individual images of each type of phone. I saved all of those images to my desktop and opened GIMP. I set the background size to approximately 600×2000. I then opened each image as a layer. Next I used the move tool to put them in the correct order. It took while for me to figure out how to get them the same size. When using multiple images you have to make sure to resize each layer individually or you will end up resizing the entire project. Finally I used a  the tool that looks like a magic wand to select the background area of the image I wanted to delete. Once you select the area by clicking on it you just press the delete button on you keyboard and it goes away. Since that tool is often not perfect, I used the eraser afterwards to remove the lingering background particles and clean up the image. This was the most challenging part. I took a great attention to detail and awhile to get the hang of, but in the end it worked rather well. Once the image was put together correctly I saved it as a jpg so that it could easily be uploaded to this blog.