Are we there yet? I think I really just did to many stars this week I think that I am actually seeing stars right now. This post is the 4 star challenge something like the bucket challenge I guess. For the “Challenge me” I decided to create a camp poster for this Visual Assignment (4 stars).

To me it did not hold much excitement I don’t know if it is because it is the end of the week and I just have had all I can take, or I am just getting bored with the class (I hope it is not the later because I feel this class has a lot to offer me).

So this time I was some what attentive to to taking picture while I was doing the steps. But, first the back story (which is way more interesting then the poster itself). So this comes from a memory of a long time ago when I was around 17 or 18 years of age. I was for some reason really into basketball at the time so a series of even led me to the adventure of play basketball for parks and rec (because we where homeschool we did’t play sports at the school because if we did we would have to take at lest one class and my mum didn’t want that for us). Anyway, as time progressed I became obsessed and I thought I was decent enough (which was not true I later found out years later) to receive a scholarship. So, I begged my mum to put me in a camp so she decided to put me in a highschool camp. The highschool was Colonial Forge in Stafford needless to say I really hated that basketball camp. I was always picked last because no one knew who I was and I was not that great. I was also most of the time confused because there were so many people there as I write this I think this is one of the first times in my life that I did feel missed placed and not sure of myself. I don’t think that is a bad think but probably had more effect on me then is normal. Anyway, thats a pretty long story about the poster here’s how I made the poster:

I first opened google and searched “Free basketball downloadable images” (Always make sure to put “Free” or you will pay I am glad I don’t have personal experience with that). I found the perfect on and downloaded to my computer ( I chose this one because it had a basketball bursting through the wall to symbolize how great the game could be for people):

I then did my old routine of uploading into iphoto and cropping it (I really don’t think there is a better way of cropping is there?):

I then uploaded the photo into “Gimp” (See, gimp is my new “go-to” editing application I am not sure how to feel about it. I think I am feeling like “Know that I know better I do will do better” which translates know that I have “Gimp” Photoflexer is just ancient).The picture below is a shot of me opening the photo in a layer

I had to add an additional layer because the wording kept not adjusting properly on the original layer. As I am still figuring out “Gimp” it tool me time to figure out which lettering worked best with the poster and which colors did’t blend in with the background. Thinking about it know if I had a do over I probably would pick another image because my vision was that the lettering of the word “Eagles” would be like a forest green and the smaller lettering at the bottom to be a black color. I would want this because the word “Eagle” would draw the eye and the smaller lettering would have less of an effect on the eye.

As you can see in this picture I decided to go with the lime color, I did so all the information would be visible. As you can see in the finish product below that this is just another ordinary poster, but to me it is an ordinary poster with a lot of memories attached to it

I then saved it as I normally do no complications at all:

I like this program because it is very helpful what do I mean by that (maybe I should have said that it was smart)? well every time I try to save it it try’s to save it in a different type of file (I guess it pre set to save as a funkie extension  like fxc.) It box pops up and recommends that I switch prompts I love it ..I love it…I love it. What is a Fxc extension anyway ?

Recently my colleague had won tickets to go see the olympic’s. So I took the week off to have some down time and travel a bit. My time at the olympics was a short one but I  was able to see Gabby Douglas, A shining star going for Gold.This poster dose not do her justice, Gabby has a confident but humble attitude. And you know what they say about attitude, attitude is everything.

(This picture comes from the Visual Assignment Sports Poster  2 1/2 Stars)

And this is how I did it:

First I opened Google and Googled “Dominque Dawes gymnastics free Downloadable images” (at the time I didn’t know that I was going to pick Gabby Douglas for my poster)

Then I scrolled through the results there found a picture of which turned out to be Gabby Douglas. to take a screenshot of the picture I wanted instead of downloading it directly. I also did this to the smaller picture of her as well.

I then at the uploaded them to Iphoto to cropped

I cropped them both in the very same fashion.

They turned out very well, I took the files strait away and but them on my desktop by dragging and dropping. Them I then opened  Photoflexer and uploaded them there (one at a time).

The I pressed the “Upload” button for the first photo.

Then to uploaded the second image by pressing “Load Another Photo” I then scaled it and placed it into the corner.

I decided it needed a little fancy something so I added her name to the poster by clicking on the text button. A text box was then added to the picture, it took some time to get use to.

I moved the text into the right hand corner then I went through the process of saving the picture by clicking “Save” and going through the prompted you can see the process in 2 steps.

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And here we have it the finished result:

For my Spubble Assignment I chose to use a photo from the Running of the Bulls in Spain. The picture captures my reaction as well as the reaction of two Spanish children as we notice something happening on the streets. To be honest, I don’t remember exactly what we were looking at that caused me and the others to react this way. So I thought it would be perfect for the spubble assignment.

“I guess people do get gored at running of the bulls. Ouch!” I am supposing here that we are watching people get gored by bulls and are shocked because of it.

Tags: VisualAssignments, VisualAssignments190

For the Story Map Visual Assignment I chose to chronicle my journey through Spain. I went to Spain two summers in a row and have highlighted the places I explored while in the Story Map Below. One of my new found passions is learning to speak Spanish. I recently discovered my love for the language the first time I went to Spain in 2015. Click the link below to see the interactive map.

Spain 2015 and 2016

Tags: VisualAssignments, VisualAssignments1381

This visual assignment is the “Color Changer” assignment. It consists of changing the hue of a photo in order to change its appearance. I decided to use a photo I took of my house at my university with an incredible double rainbow in the background. I chose this photo because I had never seen such a well defined double rainbow. This photo was taken immediately following an intense thunderstorm. It was incredible how quickly nature can transform from a nasty storm to such an aesthetically pleasing sight.

Above is the same photo, which was edited using Iphoto. I chose this particular edit because it merges the ominous thunderstorm that just recently passed with the newly established sereneness and tranquility. The dark ground and dark sky represent the recently passed storm whereas the rainbow and light houses represent the beauty following the storm.

Tags: VisualAssignments, VisualAssignments1701

This Visual Assignment Bring Your Pet To School was fun and rewarding. I used Photoflexer to manipulate the dog. Getting use to using Photo flexer is time consuming but in the end you learn a lot about the program in general.

By: Adriel Brooks

Here are 4 photos from my room, just some stuff that I thought I could talk about a little more.

Top Left: These stacks of notebooks are notes and other papers from every single semester since I started at UMW. I keep them all just so I can maybe look at it many years from now and see all the notes and assignments I did back in my college years and convince myself that I was a hard working student back then.

Bottom Left: These items here represent my Alma Mater. The big ole “R” on the left is from my high school, Riverbend High School in Fredericksburg, VA. I have two DECA pins on there as well. I honestly have no clue what it stands for or what the organization even is, something to do with marketing I don’t know. I just signed up cause my parents forced me to cause I guess it looks good on your resume, though I have seriously never talked about to anyone other than on this blog post. So yeah, I was “a part” of DECA for 2 years. Then I have two bars on the left of the “R” which again I do not recall exactly what they are for, something to do with my GPA. Whatever though, they are shiny and make me look like a accomplished high school student. Then the gold tassel was for having a GPA above 3.0 (there were those other kids who had the not gold tassels, we do not speak about those kids). Then on the right is my current school, University of Mary Washington. I am a Computer Science major there and I throughly enjoy what I do. I am graduating this Spring and will hopefully get some more cool shiny things to put on it.

Top Right: This photo is of 3 high school diplomas, each belonging to my 2 brothers and me. We all graduated from the same high school so I guess it is kind of cool. Ok whatever, I couldn’t find anything else worthwhile to take a picture of in my room so just stare at the useless diplomas. Anyways, both of my older brothers are Computer Scientist and I was influenced at a pretty young age to do computer science. I thought I wouldn’t like it cause I felt a bit forced into it being influenced by my brothers and all. Though I am a senior Computer Science student and have held two Computer Scientist internship positions. I seriously love Computer Science, and love learning new things in Computer Science even more.

Bottom Right: The last picture are of two OFFICIAL soccer (or football…who the hell cares what you call it anyway) balls. Let’s just say they both cost over $130….each. The ball on the left is from the 2014 FIFA World Cup final match, as is seen by the “Germany vs Argentina” label on it (if it is even readable). As a huge soccer fan, I very much enjoyed the 2014 World Cup since it was full of surprises and great matches. I was rooting for Argentina all the way through though unfortunately they lost to Germany, but I still enjoyed the match and the tournament so I bought the ball. The ball on the right is from a competition called UEFA Champions League. Any real European soccer fan will tell you that this is the biggest competition for all the top European club teams. It happens every year and I honestly just bought that ball because I thought that years official match ball looked really awesome. Also I bought that ball during the group stages of the competition, and it turned out that my favorite team, FC Barcelona, won that years competition. I never ever play soccer with these balls, they are too precious!

Behind the Creation:

I chose this assignment because these things and other things in my room do not look too special, however they all have a story behind them. I feel as if when you tell the story behind some everyday item in your possession, it adds some personality to it. Also, I don’t think I have ever given a tour of my room so it was fun for me to recall some of those memories behind those things.

The Process:

All the pictures were taken off of my iPhone 6 back camera. I took 4 separate pictures and then used the tool Layout by Instagram as seen below. From here I opened my “DS 106” album from the drop down menu on the bottom left of the screen. This displays all the photos in that album in the “Photo Booth” section, I only have these 4 as of now. Then I can simply tap on the pictures and it will automatically fill the layouts shown above in the “Choose Layout” scroll area.

When I select another photo, it then adds that to the layouts as well

I can now choose a layout by scrolling to the right and viewing all of my options under the “Choose Layout” scroll area. I selected all 4 of the photos and picked this layout.

After selecting the layout, I can now edit the sizes of each square using the blue bars along the border shown on the top left picture. I decided to keep the picture as is and hit “SAVE” on the top right which saves it to my phone. I then used a photo editor app called “Afterlight” to add some touch ups. I opened the photo in the app and used the options on the bottom bar to make edits to the photo.

For the “Selfie With Your Pet” assignment, I decided to take a photo with my best friend Bruce (he is a cat, yes a cat can also be a man’s best friend). So like the annoying jerk I am, I woke up Bruce from his nap to take this photo. Then I though I would be funny and try to balance him on my head for the selfie. Though as you can see from the picture, he was having none of it..

Behind the Creation

We found Bruce when he was a kitten outside with a really bad viral infection which caused the death of both of his siblings. He had nasal discharge all over his face which had crusted over and had practically sealed his eyes shut, barely allowing him to see. We have a lot of stray cats outside that usually scurry away when you go near them. Bruce did the exact opposite, he would come closer to you. We knew he was a special cat and knowing about the infection he had, our family decided to take him to the vet and get him some help. We never intended on keeping him but we just couldn’t help but fall in love with him, he was extremely friendly and playful (keep in mind we were his first contact with humans). We have kept him ever since and he turned a year old beginning of this month. He has some other medical issues that we have to deal with but I am sure he is strong enough to pull through. Below is a photo of Bruce a few weeks after he was born, this was before we kept him and before he got the infection.

The Process

Nothing complicated here, just decided to be a jerk and wake Bruce up from his nap and put him on my head. I shot this with my iPhone 6 front camera. The lighting could of been better, I was in my living room with just a small light on. The front camera on the iPhone 6 does shoot in lower quality compared to the front facing camera. The picture of Bruce as a kitten was also taken with a iPhone 6, though the quality is way better because it was outside in good light and it was taken with the back camera. Lighting is tremendously important when taking photos, though I was just trying to take a quick snap and did not really mind the lighting and what not.

Kona and I.  She is the best dog anyone could ever ask for and the best fur baby!