Don’t tell my mom, but I miss my pets the most.  Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I do miss them a lot.  One day, I might pack my pup with my clean laundry and sneak him back to UMW with me.  He could sleep in my dorm room, follow me to class, and be the official ball dog for UMW Field Hockey.   Since I can’t really do that, I chose to do the assignment, Bring your Pet to School.  The assignment says to place your pup anywhere on campus using any photo editing software.

On my iPad, I used the app Photoshop Mix  to add Bennie to my team photo.  After opening the app, hit the (+) to add a photo of the team then again to add a picture of my dog.  Next, I clicked on the dog picture and opened the cut out feature.  From there I was able to use the auto feature to remove the background and the smart feature to clean up anything left over or accidentally removed.  I then drug the image of Bennie to where it would make the most sense in the picture.  I just love seeing him on campus!

Growing up, I loved ISpy books.  They were big books filled with page after page of close up photos of random objects laying on a surface.   Each page had a riddle with items to find in the photograph.  It sounds easy but sometimes the close up photos made a simple object look like something unrecognizable. 

That is the point of this exercise, That’s Not What I Expected.  The directions ask that we take a close up picture of an everyday object and post to see how many people correctly guess what it is.    I used my iPhone and tried to get as close as possible to a very familiar object.  It was challenging to get the camera to focus properly at such a close range.  I experimented with holding the camera at different angles.  This is the final result.

Do you know what this is?

One day last Fall, I received a random call from a teammate asking me to come over to see the puppies she was fostering.  Well, of course I ran over because who doesn’t love puppies?  I could not believe my eyes when I saw this one little guy.  He looked EXACTLY like my 14 year old Dachshund/Yorkie mix (aka Dorkie) named Jet, back home.   With much less pleading than anticipated, my dad drove to Fredericksburg from Smithfield to adopt our new pal Bennie.  Yes, Bennie and the Jet.  Sadly, Jet passed away a couple of weeks ago.  That is why I was excited to make a pet collage for one of my assignments.

The assignment only asks to use current or past pictures of a pet to show how cute or funny they can be.  This was a no brainer for me as pet pics are my favorite!  I chose to use pictures of both Bennie, the new dog, and Jet so you can see the similarities.

I have been wanting to try the app Be Funky .  I downloaded the free app onto my iPad.  There is also a free version for your laptop.  Creating the collage was simple.  I opened the app, chose the Collage Maker tab, and got started.  First, I chose a template that I liked, mine has space for 7 pictures.  Then I clicked the (+) inside one of the picture boxes and began selecting photos from the photo app on my iPad.  After all of the photos were uploaded, I was able to position the pictures where I wanted in the template.  I was even able to crop, retouch, add effects, etc.

I did not add effects and chose to use a simple blue border because I want the focus to be on the pups.  Sweet Jet is in the center and Bennie is all around.  My favorite is the picture of the first time Bennie and Jet met.  There is even a guest appearance by our high-strung Chihuahua mix, Moe.  My pets are part of my family.  It was nice to make a family portrait.

On contemplating the places where I find peace, I wanted to find a way to collage my favorite pictures. I found an app for my iphone called Collageable. Here, I found a template I liked and selected 5 photos the speak to me. The app makes it really easy to upload and then save you final product as an image to your phone. Then, I uploaded my collage as an image here.

The first picture is of the Lotus Shrine at Yogaville in Buckingham, VA (the yoga capital of the United States). Other peaceful places are hiking with friends, College Heights pool, snuggling with my puppy in my apartment and laying out at Outer Banks beach in North Carolina. A common theme in my places of peace is nature, animals, and connection. What’s your place of peace?

As a pit bull mix, I have a reputation on the streets, but I’m really the sweetest boy ever. When I was asked to tell a story, I knew the exact one. On a dark and stormy night, I rode home in my mom’s chariot with the wind blowing through my ears. We slept in mom’s bed and I knew that it was my job to protect her. The next morning, I heard voices coming from the box mom always watched…but here’s the kicker – I saw a monster with wings outside the see-through box! It was making a high-pitched noise and it was coming for us, I knew it. My ears perked up (silly mom was none the wiser) and I looked out the see-through box to protect and attack (it’s not in my nature, but you never know). I barked as loudly as I could and the winged monster flew away. I laid back down knowing I had successfully saved a life and would hopefully get a bone later.

If you’d like to tell your own thrilling tale – upload your most heroic pictures into a WordPress gallery and create a paragraph to tell your daring feat. Bark, bark!

I always knew my soundtrack for the apocalypse would be Zombie by The Cranberries. I was in my kitchen when the sirens went off and I enjoyed my last moment of normalcy before The End. The picture on the left is the last picture I took before….oh, you know how this story ends.

It was important for me to remember what I looked like before the Eaters came. That’s what we call them now, well, what we called them before it was all we knew. See, I’m a zombie that just learned how to use Juxtapose and Dropbox (not exactly Night of the Living Dead). And you know what sucks? Zombies still have to go to school. My professor gave us this assignment. I guess to remember who we were before it all went down?

Anyways, if you’d like to try for yourself, here’s what I did:

1. Find a picture from before (i.e., you aren’t green and dead)
2. Get bitten my an eater or go to makemeazombie.com
3. Download Dropbox and save both pictures
4. Left click on both pictures and select “copy link”
5. Enter these links at Juxtapose
6. Copy the embedded link and put into your homework assignment
7. Viola! You have successfully recorded a before & after, Eater.
8. Brains not included.