I searched for ‘glitter’ in Flickr. I greatly enjoy glitter. A lot of people hate it, but I like sparkly things. This…looks nothing like it.
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I searched for ‘glitter’ in Flickr. I greatly enjoy glitter. A lot of people hate it, but I like sparkly things. This…looks nothing like it.
Assignment (Visual) 13: Take a concept, one word, and plug it into Flickr and take the first 50 images and average them using Photoshop or similar program.
I was inspired by a graceful, though fuzzy image of a jellyfish grabbed from a friend’s underwater footage. In my mind’s eye, I could see the jellyfish replicated so that it appeared to leave an effervescent trail as it floated toward the viewer.
That didn’t happen.
Everything went swimmingly until I discovered the environmental map and imagined how cool it would be to have a source of light in the image — one that cut through the darkness and illuminated the jellyfish. Two hours later, I was really in deep water. So deep that I started taking a protocol in hopes of learning from the ordeal. Here’s a sample:
6:56 Somehow can’t get back to light effects.
6:57 Realized how to turn off color tools. Select move tool.
6:58 Cannot add environmental map again. Better to abort. Deleted all.
Believe me. It was not easy to delete all that work but I felt confident that I had learned enough the I could redo what I’d done right and avoid the pitfalls that got me into my untenable situation.
The gamble paid off. I remembered the basic process and made some improvements along the way. But, it’s still not the jellyfish trailing efferevesence.
So I’ll just call it my “jamfish” that teaches me to deal with the frustration of not being able to realize my vision but keep the faith that someday I will.
Visual Assignment 13— Averaging Concepts using Flickr (3 stars). This is a really cool way to make an abstract piece of art. The instructions for this assignment called for using the first 50 images produced on a Flickr search to create an “average” image. The end product reminds me of an abstract watercolor painting!
I chose to make the subject of this project: Lilies. I love lilies! They are my favorite flower. In addition to growing them in my gardens, I have pictures of them hanging in my home and tattooed on my body. Not only are they beautiful and fragrant, but their symbolism is powerful to me. Remembering Greek mythology, the ancient Greek gods were not known for their monogamous relationships. Zeus, the king of the gods and the god of thunder, was no exception. Although the Greek hero Hercules was a son of Zeus, his mother was not Hera, the goddess of marriage and children, and the wife of Zeus. A mortal woman gave birth to Hercules. Zeus drugged Hera and took Hercules to nurse from her while Hera was sleeping. When Hera woke up, she saw the baby and pulled Hercules off of her. Some milk spurted from her breast, forming the Milky Way. A few drops landed on earth, resulting in the first lilies.
For centuries, lilies have been associated with innocence and purity. Lilies also represent female sexuality. In addition, an orange lily represents hatred and tiger lilies indicate pride and wealth while the pink stargazer lily is a symbol of prosperity. But I digress, and return back to the true subject at hand, the lily images.
I started by using Bulkr, a Flickr app, the search and select the first 50 photos that came up on a search for “lily”. After downloading the images to my computer, I discovered nearly half of them were missing, having a “no longer available” placeholder instead. Bummer. 
So I selected and downloaded the next 50 photos is the search but now I had too many. I deleted all the placeholders. Still too many images. So I decide to take a little creative liberty with this assignment, and deleted the photos that contained people, dogs, or other random images that did not focus on the lily flower. When I finally narrowed the images down to a total of 50, I opened Picasa and created a collage.
Then, to “average” or the images, I edited the collage from the “Picture Pile” setting to “Multiple Exposure” in the drop down menu to superimpose the 50 images one on top of the other.
The results looked like this:
Pretty neat way to create an abstract piece of artwork from a collection of images. This image provokes a sensation of peace and joy to me, with its pink and green tones and its watercolor painting design.
Innocence and purity? I think I’d need to see a whiter, lighter blend to create that effect.
Female sexuality? Yeah, I can see that.
What do you think?
Hey guys 
Here’s my 2nd ds106 post for this section?
This time around, I decided to do a Visual Assignment called Averaging Concepts using Flickr. The assignment was to:
Take a concept, one word, and plug it into Flickr and take the first 50 images and average them using Photoshop or similar program. Step by step instructions available at http://is.gd/ku3UF
The Process:
I went ahead to flickr to go chose my 50 images. When I had to chose my concept, I wanted something colorful so that the image wont just be a blob of gray or black image. Therefore, I went ahead and chose “Neon Lights”. So I selected 50 images that were colorful and portraying neon lights and saved them on to my computer.
Then, I used an application called Picasa to make my collage. First, I selected the 50 images I got for this assignment and put them into a collage.
Then I selected the Multiple Exposure effect
and it automatically created the final image for me.
The Story:
I really thought this assignment was interesting because I never knew you can create such an image with so many different pictures. What I liked about my finished product was that it included colors I’m such a color freak (because I love colors) so I was happy the image wasn’t just a gray blob 
All of my favorite places have a distinct color palette tied to them in my memory. I remember Lisbon by the sunny yellow of its tram cars and the blue and white of its famous azulejo tiles, while I picture the island of Santorini being simply white buildings against a background of oceanic blue.
I often wonder if I’ve just arbitrarily picked these colors based on the photos I took in these places, or if a place is truly dominant in the colors I associate it with. So to test this theory, I created an average of the photos I took in two of the places that have the most vivid color associations for me. This was inspired by a tutorial by Tim Owens, which I found through ds160.
Dubrovnik is a very vibrant city, but I will always remember its Old Town area very in distinct hues of ocean blue and terra cotta orange.
Here are some photos of Dubrovnik:
Here is the average photo of Dubrovnik:
Conclusion:
I’m impressed with the results. In fact, it does look like I remember it: the blue of the ocean on top, and the grey and terra cotta of the buildings below.
Chefchaouen was unlike any place I’ve ever been to. It’s famous for having its buildings painted in every imaginable shade of blue. What’s interesting about Chefchouen is that I don’t associate it with a vivid set of colors like I do with Dubrovnik. In fact, Chefhouen is all a blue-tinted haze in my memory. Therefore, I’m going to put my photos to the test.
Here are some photos of Chefchaoen:
Here is the average photo of Chefchaoen:
Conclusion:
The average photo of Chefchaouen is not nearly as blue as I remember the city. It looks rather generic, in fact. I’m surprised with the results.
I find it interesting how the average image of Dubrovnik nearly matched the color I had accociated with it. Chefchaouen, however, did not stand up to its fame as being a blue city.
I have to wonder if my perception of a city is influenced by the photos I have of it. Dubrovnik, with a very similar set of images, matched my perception almost perfectly. On the other hand, in Chefchouen I was not focusing my camera on the landscape of blue buildings. Instead, the blue was so ubiquitous that I was focusing on subjects like chickens and children. That may have thrown off my results of the average image.
In any case, I’m curious about your take on the association between places and color. Do you have a place that you strongly associate with a certain set of colors? Do you think your color association could be associated with the photos you took there? Please leave your answer in the comments.
The Assignment
For my second ds106 assignment for this section, I decided to do a Visual Assignments that seemed cool to do. It’s called Averaging Concepts Using Flickr by Tim Owens. The instructions read:
Take a concept, one word, and plug it into Flickr and take the first 50 images and average them using Photoshop or similar program. Step by step instructions available at http://is.gd/ku3UF
I’m going to do this assignment in a tutorial form with screen-shots of how I made an averaged photo of the concept “clouds” on flickr’s Creative Commons photos.
The Process
First, I went to flickr. I decided to use the word “clouds” as my concept for the 50 images I’m going to average.
There is a software which allows you to download all the photos you selected on flickr mentioned in the URL above but I didn’t download it so I saved it one by one (and yes I had a lot of time doing this assignment ).
After I was done saving all the 50 photos on “clouds” I opened Picasa, a photo-editing software because I don’t have Photoshop on my PC.
I selected all 50 photos and clicked on “create collage” which is the button right below the file name of your saved photos (it looks like an orange photo with a green plus sign on it).
Right after that, it directs you to another page and you’ll see that the page is filled with the 50 photos you selected. You go to the settings menu where you will see the multiple exposure option at the button.
When you click that, your averaged photo is ready (it will take some time to complete this action)!!
The Story
So, my averaged photos of “clouds” is this:
Clouds
As I guessed, the photo came out blue and some white in it. The photo looks really nice and because it was my first time doing something like this, it was really fun. I might want to try averaging photos that have different colours just to see how it would come out.
Hope you guys were able to understand my tutorial!!
brutal show, if you like VNV Nation, of course, so took 50 pics (well, 59 but removed 9), averaged them, some contrast enhance and this is it!!!
support band were Frozen Plasma, great!!!
For my last Visual Assignment, I decided to pull out the stops. I anchored down and did some serious bulkr downloading and Picasa creating. If you read my previous posts on averaging collages, you’ll notice I found a rather boring element of uniform “fogginess” in the finished products, with the exception of one collage I saw which was made from the first 50 results of the search for “Blue” on flickr. This got me thinking. I decided to make an averaged picture for each of the seven generally-accepted colors in the rainbow. This set begins with my results for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Indigo, and Violet. I then made a 7×1 grid collage of those averaged pictures in order from Red to Violet. I still wasn’t too satisfied with the final result; sure, it looked like a rainbow, but a dull one. So I decided to explore Picasa’s other image-editing tools. After tinkering for a while, I tried the “I’m feeling lucky” button, and the rainbow took on a vivid, luminous quality! I’m very pleased with the finished product, and I consider it my favorite of the Visual Assignments.
Via Flickr:
I took the average of over 50 Minecraft screenshots. This is what Picasa gave me.
I particularly like how well the HUD stands out. This almost makes it look like you’re playing the game in some eerie fog.
Again, I thought I would enjoy this more, but the only thing I like about the averaging in this image is the way the HUD stands out. Still looking for a good average. I have an idea brewing, but it will take some time…
