I chose this photo as my favorite picture because I have definitely taken a liking to it. I have posted this picture on Instagram(profile picture and post), Snapchat, Google Photos(as my album cover), and Tinder. I even had it for my wallpaper, only for a moment. This picture was taken at my church on a Saturday afternoon. The sun was out and I was looking good. So I figured why not? I asked one of my childhood friends to take this picture for me. The reason why I’m bending it because most men bend when taking pictures. And the fingers on each side of my smile? I’m a fan of DaBaby.
To get this photo here I had to download it from my Google Photos and then had to convert it from .HEIC to JPG using a converter. After that, I uploaded this photo onto my blog post using the Image button. Lightning and angles in photography are very important because they can greatly change a photo. The lighting in this really brought out my clothes, my face, and my hair. This assignment is called Your Favourite Photo?
The DragonQuest series is one of my favorite game series of all time. The assignment, Honest Game Cover, wanted me to make an honest game title for the game’s cover. So for this assignment, I chose DragonQuest 11 which is a game that I’m currently playing. Now if you’re a DQ fan then you know that the majority of the game consists of grinding (which means the playing time spent doing repetitive tasks to either obtain an item or to build experience) and the quickest way to grind in DQ is to kill metal slimes. They have the most experience out of the game so killing them is very rewarding. The problem is… they’re very rare, have a strong defense, and are known to run away from a battle. So for the title, I basically explained the true objective of DQ games. Every DQ player can relate am I right?
For this assignment, I went back to Pixlr and used the Retouch tool. This tool allows blurring objects and that’s what I did to blur the title as you can see in the right photo. Once I felt satisfied with my result I added a text block and then wrote the new title. I fixed the text block so it could look balanced, align, and about the same size as the original cover. Color also mattered so I changed it to black so it was readable.
Get out is of the best horror movies in my opinion. Get out is about an interracial couple that goes to the girl’s family for a visit. But then the black guy realizes that everything isn’t as perfect as it seems. This assignment, Recreate a Famous Movie Scene, wanted me to basically pose as a part of a famous movie scene. And I decided to use this scene because it’s a very good movie and it was a solo picture. So the original picture is of Chris Washington (played by Daniel Kaluuya) who is stuck in motion due to his girl’s mother taking him to the Sunken Place.
First I went onto Google Images and looked for this specific scene. Then I went into my living room, set my tripod to a reasonable height, placed my phone on the tripod, and took the picture. My main problem was trying to have tears in my eye. I didn’t have any onions so I resorted to splashing water on my face hoping it will slide down my face at the right time. You can barely see it but I am indeed tearing up. One thing I could have done was to get closer to the screen.
This assignment, Five Frame Story, was an interesting one. For this assignment, I had to create a story but only use photos to depict it. The story I decided to depict was one that’s relatable to every student. For some reason whenever we want to sleep in for a little bit time goes ten times faster than usual. In the first frame, I’m looking up to see the time. The second frame show 6:34 a.m. In the third frame, I go back to sleep because I have enough time. I can sleep in for a while. My class isn’t until 8:00 a.m. In the fourth frame, I wake up to check the time again. The fifth frame is the killer where the time is 8:35 a.m. I am late. I had a couple of more pictures but this gives a good summary of what happens to most students.
What I did was lay in bed, holding the phone away from me. I set up my alarm clock so I could see it better when I take the picture. After I took the second frame I changed the clock to a random time and then laid back in bed. I turned my night light on so you could see me in the dark. Once these pictures were in my Google Photos I had to convert them from HEIC to JPG. Then I used the Gallery button so they could all be aligned with one another.
For this assignment, Places of Peace, I had to have at least 4 pictures that I considered were my places of peace. Places where I had time to myself and didn’t have to worry about anything. The biggest place of peace, as you can see, is my bed. I am there every day and always. The other places are the vocal booth at my college, the swing bed on my patio, and my workplace. The swing bed I used during the summer and in the morning I would wake up, go to the patio, sit down, and just look at nature. The vocal booth is where I do my podcast episodes and it is very peaceful(if you can get past the smell). My workplace is also my place of peace because whenever I don’t get any calls I spend time relaxing and preparing my mind for that day.
It took me a while to think of places that I have the most peace at. Once I figured out which places I took pictures of them and then uploaded them to Google photos. Once I converted them from HEIC to JPG I went to Collage Maker to put all of my pictures into a collage. They had a collage option which had four spots. As you see one was bigger than the other but I decided to use that to my advantage. I did use Studio Mode for the swing bed picture since it was dark and I wanted to bring out the bed more.
The final daily creates that I chose was to make a collage of pictures I’ve taken of my friends when they werent paying attention. I liked this assignment because it was easy but also fun and it was funny looking back at memories. It was kind of hard to find pictures because I normally take videos of my friends when theyre not paying attention but I managed to find some of my roommate and boyfriend. I created this with the app “Cute Collage” that I downloaded from the app store.
The great thing about studying abroad is that I have plenty of stories to tell, accompanied by a plethora of pictures and videos to tell these stories. The most difficult part is having so many photos that picking 5 to tell even one particular story! Even so, that’s exactly why I choose to challenge myself to the Five Frame Story (3.5 stars) as my final visual assignment for week 4.
For this assignment, I chose Akita International University’s annual school festival (aka AIU Festival). You may be familiar with the Multicultural Festival at UMW, but school festivals in Japan are on a whole different level. Unlike here where all our food and most of the venders are sponsored by actual stores, the school festivals in Japan (AIU included) are run mostly by students–they’ll even sell street food, sweets, and trinkets, mostly to raise money for their clubs and committees. The AIU Festival ran from October 13-14, 2019, and in these pictures, I will summarize as much as possible in as little as 5 pictures.
AIU Festival opening
The AIU Festival began 9am on October 13, 2019, a Sunday, with a performance by Traditional Calligraphy. The theme for the festival was ??? (“Izayoi”), which translates into “sixteen-day-old moon.” Unfortunately, I don’t remember the story or deeper meaning behind the name of the theme.
Many performances are done by a variety of clubs and committees, including the Yatose Team Arudan. Can you figure out where I am?
On both days, there are many performances by a variety of clubs and committees, including the Yatose Team Arudan, pictured above. Yatose is a Japanese style street dance mixing traditional Japanese music and J-pop. If you’ve seen UMW’s Eagle Bhangra, Yatose is somewhat like that in the sense that there’s a lot of energy!
Towards the end of the festival is a performance by the Kanto team.
Towards the end of the second day of the festival, the Kanto team performed. Kanto is usually performed by men with poles 5-12 meters long, bearing 24-46 lanterns, and weighing up to 50kg (as pictured above)! The men balance these poles on their palms, foreheads, shoulders, or lower backs while men and women play music with flutes and the taiko. In Akita, there is a Kanto festival held in Akita Prefecture in early August.
We end the day’s festivities with fireworks.
To end the day’s festivities, what’s more fitting than fireworks?
Of all of the food stalls, the Choco Banana group earned the most votes and won 6 kg of meat!
Last but not least was the closing ceremony. Like I said before, student clubs and committees have food stands, and they compete with each other for votes from the public. In the picture above are the winners for the most votes, and they won 6 kg of meat!
While I wish I could share my 4-part vlog on the festival as well as my hundreds of pictures, I hope these 5 pictures give you a good idea of what festivals in Japan are like, as well as how much of a blast I had when I was there! This made me think about the photography readings we had, and I got thinking about how I could use my photos to tell stories. This is only the start, so it’s rough, but I hope I’m getting somewhere with this.
For this assignment I chose to use 80’s icon Cyndi Lauper and put her on a stage that she is not quite used to singing on, Disney World! First I took a picture of her and traced it to create a cut out that I could then paste on top of another picture.
Welcome to my bucket list! For this I used Powerpoint to create a template where I could label my photos and display them in a pleasing manner. After making it I simply took a screenshot and embedded it into this post. I would love to go skydiving sometime (I almost went last year but it is a lot of $$$ let me tell ya). I have done a few 5Ks but never a color run and it looks so fun! Dan and Shay are my absolute favorite singers and I am seeing them next month so it soon will be a check off of my bucket list! Lastly, I would love to visit Hawaii even if it’s just a few days. I have heard so many great things about it.
Can you guess what it is? Leave me a comment guessing what it is and I’ll let you know if you’re correct. Think 80’s! For this I had an extremely hard time focusing my camera and actually found it more beneficial to use Snapchat and do it from there.
