I created a collage of the five places where I truly felt peace and posted it on Twitter. Here is a more detailed review of each spot.

The top left picture was taken on a pier in Amsterdam. The weather was beautiful as we waited for the ferry to bring us back mainland. The combined pleasure from the warmth of the sun and the sound of the water made us not want to leave.

The bottom left picture was taken behind the waterfall in Rangárþing eystra, Iceland. The bridge to get behind the waterfall was actually closed because of ice that day, so several of us from the tour group claimed down a rocky ledge to get behind it. I’m not sure if this was legal or not, but nobody stopped us. That was my favorite moment from the trip and honestly the most adventurous thing I have ever done.

The top right picture was taken outside of Westend in London. Our tour group had gotten us tickets to see Wicked and it was the first musical I had ever seen in person. It was and is the closest I will ever get to seeing something on Broadway. When the musical ended, I was crying because of how amazing it was. I vividly remember crying in the lobby as my mother purchased me a t-shirt to remember the night forever. I still have it with me.

The middle right picture was taken on top of a glacier in Mýrdalshreppur, Iceland. I don’t think I need to explain why being on top of a glacier was one of the coolest and most peaceful moments of my life. I CLIMBED ON TOP OF A FREAKING GLACIER.

And finally, the bottom right picture was taken in my family room. That brown lump on the leather chair our family dog, Colton. Colton is a rescue dog we adopted about three years ago. Whenever I see him all happy and relaxed, I instantly feel the same. You can’t help but be happy when you see his sleepy little face.

I used the Pencil Photo Sketch application to alter a photo I tool in a few different ways with very different results. I’ve included two here.

Can you guess what the original image was?

For my assignments this week, I have already completed a writing assignment so I decided to pick an assignment from the visual assignments. As someone who sends gifs in the middle of texting to express my reaction, I was intrigued by the “Say it Like the Peanut Butter” assignment which essentially instructed me to make a gif.

The instructions said to make a gif from a favorite movie of ours. I immediately thought of the movie, 10 Things I Hate About You. It’s one of my favorite movies simply because of the main character, Kat Staford.

I went on Youtube to find a video of my favorite scene then I used Makeagif.com to convert it into a gif. I gave the gif a caption to give the gif some context and I shared it on my Twitter page:

The movie, 10 things I Hate About You was actually an adaptation of Shakespeare’s, Taming of the Shrew, which is actually why I love the movie so much. The main character, Kat Staford who is an adaptation of Katherine Minola from the play, is one of my favorite characters of all time. She is very outspoken and fearless in how she expresses herself. She is very rebellious against things she doesn’t like about society like the patriarchy.

This clip does a phenomenal job of depicting the essence of her character. She is seen tearing down a school poster about a school dance that she taught was stupid and superficial.

This gif that I created reminded me of how I felt reading the email that was sent out from the university earlier this week. UMW sent out an email saying that to comply with Governor Glenn Youngkin’s policies, UMW is no longer mandating vaccines for faculty and no longer COVID testing non-vaccinated faculty members.

I found this so enraging. The fact that COVID is only on the rise and the fact that faculty members come in contact with so many students EVERY SINGLE DAY. To no longer require they be vaccinated seemed so irresponsible to me.

Therefore, I decided to incorporate my gif into my Twitter Feed and make a post about how I felt. This is the “Joy of Painting.” Our course’s theme essentially suggests that the work we complete is not like other assignments for other classes where we just complete a task to cross off of our to-do list. Instead, to view the work we do as pieces of art. With that being said that is the joy of DS106, the Joy of Painting, the joy of art. It allows us to use things we use in our daily lives as an outlet and as a form of expression. A simple gif that you’d send to your friend in a normal texting conversation can be art if you choose to make it so.

I see why this assignment is “a classic DS106 assignment” it allows you to think and create a story and make connections from what you see, what you feel, what you are instructed to do, etc. This assignment allows you to be creative and tell a story in such a simple and fun way. That is the Joy of Painting to me. The way you’ll grab a canvas to paint feeling like you’re gonna create something beautiful, the same can be said when you grab your laptop to complete a DS106 assignment.

When I think “pivotal movie moment,” I instantly think of this scene from Avengers: Endgame. The build up to this moment and the helplessness followed by triumph make for an incredibly epic moment. There isn’t much more to say about it other than the fact that this moment on opening night in the theaters was INSANE!

Visual Assignment #1

When I saw this assignment, I just knew I had to do it. If you couldn’t tell already, my love for orange cats is out of this world. For some reason, every orange cat in the world seems to come to my house and knows that we will take them in. To get a little bit of background information on Scooter, my YouTube video gives a short introduction of the fat boy. But as you can see, Scooter is definitely not starving, so he was perfect for this assignment. I wasn’t sure which photo or painting I was going to use for this assignment. I looked through the website FatCatArt, and got inspiration. I immediately knew which photo of my cat/painting I was going to use. Which it’s kind of funny, because where I placed Scooter in the painting, it looks as if the people walking in the painting are actually looking at him and wondering “what is this fat, orange cat doing on a Paris Street in the rain?” And if you watch my YouTube video you’ll know he literally scratches the kitchen cabinets to get food, so he’s gonna end up being on a Paris Street in the rain if he keeps at it (sarcasm of course).

As for the process I began by using my trusty Picsart app to cutout my cat in the original photo. I then used the painting Paris Street; Rainy Day, and cut out one of the umbrellas in the photo so my cat could hold one. I placed Scooter’s cut out over the photo and placed the umbrella in his hand. I messed around with the effects on Picsart so I could better blend my cat into the painting. And that’s it. Pretty simple, yet pretty extraordinary if I do say so myself.

I also wanted to include the Live Photo of Scooter, because it’s hilarious. (Also we did get him unstuck, just had to take a picture first).

Visual Assignment #1

Ok, ok, ok, I know it sounds crazy, but Baby Groot was in my room! Look, that’s totally him! (my photo is on the right, reference on the left) And it makes sense right? It’s snowing outside right now so he probably came in to get out of the cold. He ran off after I took the picture, but I’m gonna try to lure him out with some pant food as soon as I can google what juvenile sentient alien vegetation likes for dessert. Maybe Oreos? 

Visual Assignment: It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane

“Have you ever seen that picture that *might* be the loch ness monster, but it’s probably just a floating log? Well, now it’s your turn to perpetuate a myth – the myth of superheroes. Go out and take a picture of something that you know isn’t a superhero, but could be. Is that Superman, or just a bird? Is that Antman, or do you need to do a better job cleaning the kitchen? Who’s to say?”

https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/its-a-bird-its-a-plane/

Just to forward, this whole thing is very very silly. It doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but I like it. I like the idea that a little alien tree found its way into a UMW dorm room and is avoiding the resident who is trying to befriend him with human cookies. I think it’s rather cute. It could be the beginning of a great comedy about two very different people (and tree) becoming best friends getting into all sorts of trouble. Just imagine when the student goes to school and Baby Groot tries to tag along. No one can see him, he’s an alien! If the government found out, he’d get taken away and experimented on! The student must distract the class while Baby Groot dances on the window sill, has to smuggle him into the UC to get food, the possibilities are endless! So I think it’s kind of a funny story. It makes me smile and that’s all I will ask it to do. 

Now, making this little story was rather easy. After finding the assignment, I started daydreaming about what superhero I could do. I thought about trying to catch a photo of Jack Frost because it was snowing outside, but when I started thinking about the plants in my room and what superhero they could be, I had it. Once Baby Groot was a possibility, I was not going back. I used the camera on my phone to take the picture. Believe it or not, it took a minute for me to take an appropriately shaky picture. My first few tries were way too static and clean-looking. This was going to be best if the alleged sighting of Baby Groot was suspect at best. Imperfection really is an art. I couldn’t figure out how to make the two photos appear side by side on the blog page, so I just took a screenshot of them in a google doc and used that. If the wall is too high, dig underneath it.

You know me, chief investor of shovels,

Spiders are capable of a great many things. For example, take Misumena, otherwise known as Flower Crab Spider, is an amazing type of spider that is capable of changing its color to match the flower it is hiding in. It is one of the few spiders in the world with this remarkable ability. Below you can see a picture of one of these spiders hiding on a flower.

By using photo editing one can make the crab spider easier to see. Below, the spider, which is now gray, can be seen against the background of the bright orange flower.

This was my second assignment from the assignment bank this week. The prompt was Splash the Color. I choose it because I thought it would be something that would be cool to learn how to do, and as I said in my last post, I am interested in learning more about photo editing and these assignments are a great excuse to do so. It was very frustrating near the end because there was one button I could not find for a while, which was the add mask layer one. However, in the end, I was quite pleasantly surprised at the result and thought the struggle was worth it.

It was also enjoyable to make because I like spiders and other creatures one can find outdoors. I also think some spiders are unappreciated and that people are often afraid of them, despite the fact that most spiders here in Virginia can’t harm them. I also wanted to share the fact that Flower Crab Spiders can change color because I thought that it was a really cool fact about them.

To accomplish this, I used Adobe Photoshop and copied the image twice to serve as two other layers. I desaturated the second layer and then used color range on the first layer to select some of the shades of orange from the flower. Then I added a color mask and was able to use a pen tool, and using black and white, un-color and color whatever I wanted.

Sources:

USA Spiders-Misumena – Flower Crab Spider

This source provided me with the information about the Flower Crab Spider I used above.

The Color Splash Effect – How To Make A Photo Black And White Except One Color created by Brendan Williams.

I used this video to learn how to accomplish this feat.

Forests can sometimes have a dreamlike quality to them, but what if you could make one more dreamlike?

Sometimes walking in a forest can feel like this-

Even if in reality the forest looks like this-

Feeling as if you have stumbled into a fantastical world is part of the joy of walking through the woods. They have a habit of shifting and never looking the same twice. The edits I made to the original photo show how magical and mysterious the woods can seem and may help people recall how wondrous it can be to trek through the woods.

For my first assignment from the assignment bank, I chose Switch up the Mood. I selected it because it is enjoyable to play around with photos and see what you can do with them. Still, I have never really sat down and played with all the various ways my phone allowed me to edit photos. For example, until this assignment, I had never changed the noise reduction or the black point on one of my photos. In the future, I hope to explore photo editing even more.

I started with the second picture featured above. It’s of the forested area you pass going on one of the little bridges at UMW. I already thought it looked rather pretty and whimsical, but I figured I could make it more so. To edit the image, I used the editing software that comes with the photo app that is pre-downloaded on my iPhone. Then I used the Dramatic Cool filter. I lowered the exposure, brilliance, contrast, warmth, and tint while raising the highlights, shadows, brightness, black point, saturation, vibrance, noise reduction, and vignette. I thought the edits I did gave the woods a much more dreamlike quality since there was more color and the edges were more blurred. I also thought the blurred edges made it look more like it could be something out of a painting, relating it back to our class theme, The Joy of Painting.