My Favorite Lyrics

Have you ever heard and song and a particular lyric stood out to you right away?  I think all of us have had the feeling at least once.  For this assignment use one of those lyrics that stood out to you and make it into a visual.  Use some kind of background that represents the lyric and place the lyrics over it in some way.  Be creative! But make sure that your visual product evokes the same kind feeling that the lyric of the song does.

Music has always been one of the most important things in my life.  However, I am not musically inclined which hurts my soul everyday. My parents don’t listen to country music which I truly discovered in high school and fell in love with.  To this day my father still asks when my “country music phase” will be over.  I have just found country music to be the most story telling of the genres of music, which I truly appreciate. It has always been so easy for me to connect songs to certain situation or memories, which is why when Springsteen by Eric Church first hit the radio waves I fell in love.  It is the ultimate summer anthem that makes you nostalgic every time you hear it, which is ironic considering it talk about how all types of music brings up memories.

I chose my favorite lyric from Springsteen to portray in an image. Considering the song Springsteen is supposed to be set at a concert I figured a concert image would be the best to chose to accompany the lyrics. I downloaded a black and white image of a concert from the internet.

I uploaded the concert photograph to Canva.com

I went to the text menu and selected a text style I wanted the photograph.

I changed the text color to red.

I copied the text of the work Melody to change to Memory.

From the Text Menu I inserted a smaller subheading text.

I copied the subheading text to do the lyric before melody and before memory.  I changed the font to Great Vibes.

I upped the font size of the smaller text to make it more proportionate.

I then adjusted the location of everything on the page.

The final thing I did was add the title Springsteen through the text menu to the lower right hand corner of the page.

And because how could I leave it out? Here’s Springsteen!

Can You See What I See?

Find or take a photo of an eye. Take another image of whatever you want, and overlay the image onto the eye. Make the image in the eye smaller so that it looks like a reflection in the person’s eye. Turning down the opacity of the image in the eye helps give a reflection sort of look. Let us see what the person in the photo is seeing through their eyes.

I decided that I would use my best friend Morgan’s eye to take a picture of because her eyes are the prettiest shade of blue and green (and she was sitting right next to me).  We are both very involved on campus and take a difficult course load pretty much every semester.  Since we spend a lot of time in the Hurley Convergence Center I thought it would be appropriate to picture that reflected in her eye.  I think this shows what a majority of involved students at Mary Wash see everyday as they try to balance their activities and school work.

I imported the photograph I took of Morgan’s eye into Canva.com, as well as, the picture I took of the Hurley Convergence Center.

I then went to the Elements Menu and searched for a circle.

I chose a circle that allows you to insert a photograph to make it circular.

I inserted the photograph of the HCC into the circle.

I then adjusted the size of the circle to cover the majority of the eye.

I then turned down the transparency of the photograph of the HCC

After I saved the image I realized that the edge of the HCC circle was to distinct in the photograph.

So I pulled the Photograph into Photoshop.

In Photoshop I used the spot healing brush to soften the edge of the HCC circle.

Flickr. has been down all day since I have been working and will not let me upload anything to it at this time, so I just inserted the photograph straight off my laptop.   However, once Flickr. is up and running again I plan to upload this image to Flickr.

For how little I know about editing photographs I think I did a fairly good job at showing what Morgan sees through her eyes on what is pretty much a daily basis.  Let me know what you all think!

Take a close up picture of something as see if people can guess what it is. Try doing the skin or outside of something that would make it hard for someone to guess!

This is my first Visual Assignment and I’m happy with how it turned out. I spent a lot of time taking pictures and thinking they were too easy to guess before I took this one and figured it was a little more difficult to figure out.  I simply took the picture with my phone and uploaded it to flickr. prior to embedding it in this post!  I’m at work so it had to be something in my immediate environment. I had to work around the lighting in my building in order to get a good picture, but I think I managed pretty well for my first attempt.  Can’t wait to see what you all guess it is.

I chose to complete the Colorize Your World assignment.

For this assignment I used an image of a couple of giraffes (according to the caption, they are in love) that I found on google. I chose to use giraffes for this assignment because I think they are pretty amazing. While they are not my favorite animal (that is a penguin, in case you were wondering), I have had the chance to be eye level with a couple of giraffes at the Virginia Safari Park. Climbing up to their height and interacting with them was an extremely memorable experience! I was able to visit the Safari Park where I could feed them out of my hand  last summer, and I am excited to be able to go back in a couple of weeks with my daycare kids!

I really like the way this image turned out. I chose to recolor the image with two complementary colors. I am really happy with my color choice on this photo because of the way the orange giraffe pops in comparison to the background.

How it was made:

I started began with this picture of a giraffe couple in love and inserted it into PowerPoint by using copy and paste.

Next, I used the format picture tool bar and recolor the image.

I selected the purple image on the middle row of the recolor section, which created the image below.

Next, I copied the image and pasted in a duplicate. I recolored this duplicate image to a shade of orange by using the same process as above (i selected the orange image in the middle row of the recolor section). Then, I 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 chose to remove everything but the one giraffe on the right side of the image.

Once you have removed the background, simply click outside of the image to have the background disappear.

*Note: You may need to click and drag the top image to line it up with the original, purple image.

Everywhere we look, we can see marketing tools that have been strategically designed and placed. One of a company’s biggest accomplishments is to have their logo be both widely and instantly recognized.

The creation of a logo that is capable of being well known is a process. With that being said, even the smallest differences in the details of images and can change your impression drastically. So what happens to the logos that we have come to know and love when their fonts are changed?

I chose to alter the amazon logo.

I love amazon. I am certain that they have everything that you could ever need. I mean, it tells you right there in the (obviously carefully planned) logo that they have everything from a-z. I am fairly confident that I could function day-to-day with things I ordered from amazon – especially with prime. You click a button and in two days it’s on your doorstep. More often than not it takes me at least two days to brace myself to face the cluster that is Walmart.

But what happens to the logo when you choose a less than stellar font?

This.

While this still implies that they have everything from a-z, the logo as a whole is not nearly as satisfying. Check out other alterations to famous logos that have been done. 

How it was made:

I began by opening my trusty friend, PowerPoint, and typing out the name, amazon. I tried several different fonts and decided to use Wawati SC Regular. Then, I copied in an original amazon logo and cropped the image to remove the word and leave the arrow. You can also use the remove background tool as seen in It’s a Dog’s Life! Next, I simply moved the arrow to its proper place – starting at the first a and pointing to the z. Finally, I saved the image as a jpeg and uploaded it to Flickr.

What does everyone love to do at UMW to destress? to have some fun? just because it’s a Tuesday? The red spin chairs in the convergence center, of course. Not only are these chairs favored by all the people at UMW, but they could definitely be the highlight of a visit for pets.

Do you miss your pet while you are in school? Do you ever wish you could bring your pet to school with you? These questions were posed in the ds106 assignment bank. When I read the description, I knew this task was for me because I definitely do miss my pets when I am away at  school. As I started to think about my dog, Riley, and her rather vibrant personality, I tried to think of places on campus that reminded me of her limitless energy. Once I thought about the famous red spin chairs, I knew that is where Riley would love to spend an afternoon.

Here you can see Riley taking her turn in the red spin chairs, with a look of pure joy on her face as she enjoys her time in the chair.

How it was made:

I stuck with my good friend PowerPoint for creating this image, as I still find that to be an easy tool for overlaying a couple of images. I started with a photo of the red spin chairs, which I inserted into PowerPoint.

Next, I inserted the photo of Riley, which is a close up of her sitting on my dad’s lap.

Then, I selected Format Picture>Remove Background, which can be found in the tool bar at the top of the screen.

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.

Once you have removed the background, simply click outside of the image to have the background disappear. Finally, I clicked on the image and moved it onto the chair, and then rotated it to make her appear to be sitting in the chair.

If you love HGTV (Home and Garden Television), please raise your hands.

Apparently, we’re not alone. Look! Here’s proof.

Even though I’ve completed my fair share of HGTV marathons (and will never stop so help me), I’ll be the first to admit that it’s pure mind-numbing crap. Let’s be real here. If you’ve seen one episode you’ve pretty much seen it all- the script doesn’t vary too much.

Natural light, open concept, hardwood, curb appeal, countertops…

Sometimes the network is so formulaic you can’t help but groan. (And you still can’t help but love it!)

For this visual assignment, I decided to poke a little fun at the TV network we all love despite our better judgement.

This picture was taken at the Annual Gingerbread House Contest and Exhibit at George Washington’s Ferry Farm right outside of downtown Fredericksburg. Every year, children and adults compete in the historic themed event (this year’s theme: Where Did George Washington Sleep?). All the concepts are original, every piece must be edible, and all the gingerbread must be homemade. If you haven’t been and love local history, dessert, and/or Christmas, I highly recommend that everyone check it out next year. As far as holiday activities go, the contest ranks easily among my top seasonal highlights. Every year my friends and I attend, and everyone is encouraged to cast their ballots for the Best in Show award. In the picture you see me and my best friend Ryan carefully judging an excellent replica. If anything we take the competition a little too seriously; carefully considering the craftsmanship, skill appropriate for the age level, level of detail, architectural integrity, and historic accuracy. A little obsessive, yes, but there’s a lot of hard work that goes into these and electoral participation is not something I take lightly!

The process:

Canva.com is my go-to website for fast and easy picture editing. I use it for my job as a receptionist for our social media posts all the time, so at this point I’m very comfortable with it. To get started, first look for the green “Create a design” button on the left hand side of the homepage. You then have to pick the dimensions for the design- I selected “Social Media”, the first option, since I wanted a square image. Then, select “Uploads,” which will be the bottom button on the left-hand toolbar. Upload your image and crop it as desired. To overlay the speech bubbles, I clicked on “Elements” from the left-hand toolbar, then typed in “speech bubble.” Hundreds of options will appear, and you can select, drag, resize, and rotate the bubble of your choice onto your image. I turned down the opacity of the bubbles so that you could see some of the image underneath. I then selected “Text” from the left-hand toolbar, and placed the text boxes on top of the bubbles. I changed the text color to white for maximum contrast and readability. I then downloaded the image by clicking “Download” on the top right of the page, and uploaded the image to Flickr.

“Learn to love yourself, grab a picture of yourself in which your body language, actions, gestures, etc. suggest one thing and then play off that using a speech bubble. Ideally the result would make people laugh—but I must acknowledge there are other possible emotional responses that may be just as acceptable.”

My Spubble shows me on long and exhausting day of the Spring Concert, which was followed by Bluegrass and BBQ the next day. In total I worked 24 ho I have chosen to go into the field of higher education which is very rewarding and usually not as tiring as the last week of classes was this year.  Still even when I was exhausted I realized how happy I was to be going into the Student Affairs field as I saw students at our sold out concert have a great time.  That doesn’t mean those two days didn’t kick my ass.

The picture was actually taken by Dean Jones, so I had to contact her in order to receive the photograph.  After I received it I uploaded it to Canva.com,a website that I am super comfortable using after working in publicity in my organization in the past year.  I laid a large square over the picture and downed the transparency  to add a tint to the photo.  I searched for a speech bubble and found the one I liked.  I changed the colors of it to fall more in line with the shirts we are wearing in the photo.  I turned the transparency down on the speech bubble as well before adding the text over the speech bubble. I then downloaded the edited photograph as a JPEG from Canva and uploaded it on flickr. and embedded it into this post.

This visual assignment required that I take a photo of something and transform it into a drawing.

I tried this drawing filter with a couple of different pictures… I liked this one best. This here is a snapchat selfie from my time in Seattle this past October. Not sure how familiar you all are with snapchat but depending on your location you can add geo-tags to a snap picture or video. This was my favorite geo-tag from Seattle since it included the space needle. The pattern behind me in this drawing is actually a wall full of gum! You’re probably thinking gross right ? When you get past the gross aspect, the gum wall is actually pretty neat. Tourist come from all over the world and leave a piece of gum behind. I made sure to leave my piece behind as well, although though you won’t find it there anymore. FUN FACT: The gum wall was cleaned this past November for the first time in 20 years! Just my luck.

I found this time lapse video online incase anyone is interested in seeing how they got rid of all that gum. http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/how-much-gum-dotted-pike-place-markets-post-alley/

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/draw-it/