VisualAssignments2152 – Assignment Bank

Visual Assignment Pt. 4: Summary

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This week, I completed several assignments. For a quick reference, see the links below.

Visual Assignment Part 1: Reflection

Visual Assignment Part 2: Photo Safari

Visual Assignment Part 3A: Five Frame Story

Visual Assignment Part 3B: Your Favorite Photo

Visual Assignment Part 3C: Mixing 2 Worlds

Visual Assignment Part 3D: Draw It

Visual Assignment Part 4: Summary (this blog post)

What did you learn?

Many of the concept mentioned in this week’s lesson were things that I already knew. For example, pictures can be used to support stories, taking an amazing photo doesn’t require expensive equipment, luck plays a part in catching that perfect shot, etc. One thing I did learn was that creating the perfect shot is challenging. This is not something I have experience with, so I struggled with it this week. I wouldn’t say that I have learned how to manage all the elements required to get a great photo, but I am in the process of learning. This is something that will require practice. I also learned that a critical analysis of my own pictures will help me grow in the area of photography. By studying what I did wrong, I can figure out what to do right.

What was harder than you thought it would be?

The photo safari was the hardest part of this assignment. It’s funny because it was probably the quickest part. I don’t particularly enjoy creative assignments such as this one. It borders the line between scavenger hunt and set creation. Neither of these things appeals to me. I had hoped that I could just go through my house and find items that were quite literally what the assignment asked for. That wasn’t the case though. While I managed to take most of the photos, I wouldn’t call them good photos. Passion and interest and important for successful completing photo assignments.

What was easier?

The visual assignments were all pretty easy. It was nice to have easy things to do since there were so many required assignments. If they were more difficult, I might not have had the energy or drive to complete them.

What drove you crazy? Why?

While the assignments aren’t difficult, they are time consuming. I don’t understand why each week there are so many blog posts. The assignments often are multipart assignments which are quite tedious. It takes a bit of time management since my schedule is so full. I start my days at 5:30am, get on the road by 6am, and drive until 8am when I arrive at the archaeological dig site. Then I work from 8am-3:30pm. Afterwards, I grab dinner and drive home. Normally, I get home between 6pm or 7pm. Usually, I go straight to a shower after greeting my kids. By the time I’m ready to work on these digital studies assignments, it is already after 8pm. I often stay up until 1am trying to complete bits and pieces of these assignments each day. This leaves me with only about 4 hours of sleep each night. Saturday, when I am fully exhausted and needing to recover from a week of very physically intense work, I can’t because I need to complete these assignments. For example, today, pulling all the pieces of these assignments together took more than four hours and I’m still not quite finished.

What did you really enjoy? Why?

The only part I really enjoyed this week was taking the photo from an unusual perspective. I don’t know why I haven’t done that more often in my photo sessions. Usually, I only grab an unusual perspective when I see a face. I have pareidolia, which is when my mind sees faces in normal items. It’s not just faces, but I can imagine hair, coloring, clothing, voices, how they would speak, everything. Maybe one day I’ll use that creative input to make comic books or something. The characters my mind sees in a manhole cover, for example, are quite original. So, while I am familiar with the idea of using a different perspective for my photos, I haven’t tried it in the way presented in this lesson. I will definitely do more of that in the coming weeks.

I’m a little nervous for next week’s lesson on design. I feel like things are only going to get more complicated from here. Hopefully I can keep up!

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Visual Assignment Pt. 3B: Your Favorite Photo

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Prompt: It’s simple. Choose your favorite photo you’ve taken and tell everyone why you love it so much.

This is a 1.5 star prompt.

This is my favorite photo. Yes, it’s a photo of myself. Usually my favorite photos are nature pictures. Rarely do I have a favorite photo of myself. in fact, I don’t enjoy taking pictures and often avoid being the subject of any photo.

I took this about a week after returning home from my study abroad trip in Paris, France last year. I was sitting on my couch, in front of the living room window. I decided to talk a couple selfies, just wasting some time. In my mind, I was envisioning the Mona Lisa, which I had seen at the Louvre not too long ago. The actual Mona Lisa wasn’t an impressive picture. At least, not like people make it out to be.

I took a couple photos, just sitting there. The pose was the same but I changed my expression slightly. Maybe a smile or a slight move of the head. Ultimately, I fell in love with this selfie. The lighting contrast is good. I don’t even mind it that some hairs are out of place because it’s a natural photo. No enhancements, no filters.

I’ve got a big nose and big eyes. Often, in photos, my eyes go right to my nose. It has always annoyed me. But here, my attention is drawn to my eyes. I love that. Plus, my gray hairs aren’t super obvious due to the lighting. That is nice because sometimes my gray hair makes me look a lot older than I am. Right now, this is my favorite photo.

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My Favorite Photo

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This is my favorite photo I’ve ever taken mostly because of the the subject, my cat. Artie doesn’t often sit still long enough to get this kind of portrait of her. I also really liked the lighting. This was probably taken one day when I got home from practice just a few minutes before sunset, so snugly in the golden hour. She is also oriented well in the frame, with her eyes around the top third and looking into a third of empty space.

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My Favorite Photo

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Your favourite photo?

Visual Assignment: 1 and 1/2 stars

This is one of my most favorite phots that I have taken. I snapped it while walking on Sunken Road one morning on the way to class. The rain, the trees, the fall vibes, to me it’s perfect.

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Weekly Things

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“Another Day”

Well, I chose this assignment from the “Writing Assignments” section of the DS106 website. I kind of randomly picked something that seemed somewhat intriguing to me. This particular assignment focussed on natural beauty and being able to take a moment to truly take the world in for what one can see. It is 25 degrees outside, and absolutely miserable. This should go well…

I like to get outside and to see the world beyond face value. I like to take a much-needed break from what’s currently troubling me, and just zoning out. Thus today, I genuinely tried to focus on the outside world. I sat out on my balcony in the bitterly cold weather, looking up at the sky, as my neighbors stared at me assuming I was on crack or something. The sky wasn’t much to look at, and the air didn’t have much to draw from, and that’s fine. What matters is that when I did look out, when I did leave the world behind me, I felt something other than the momentum of the so-called bleak world we focus on in life.

Well, there’s that. I ignored the cold and did it anyway. The weather in a way made me focus more, as not an awful lot more crosses your mind when your body is in survival mode.

“By Any Sketch Of The Imagination”

I am an absolutely terrible artist. If that hasn’t been reflected by my previous visual assignments, I would like to make that perfectly clear now. I can make pretty good stick figures and whatnot, but any level of detail….. no. I decided for this assignment, that I would try and turn some image that’s significant to me into something that somewhat resembles a sketch. As I’m terrible with anything related to the word art, I decided this would provide a different perspective to some of the images that I hold dear to my being.

The picture I chose means nothing to me. I chose it simply because it was an interesting picture that I took at work. The original image was of a barn at a deserted farm. The original photograph almost makes it appear fake, with the curvature of the ground meeting directly with the hill behind the barn.

It still obviously is a computer-generated “sketch”, but I like the level of detail it added to the original image. It still looks somewhat surreal, yet realistic at the same time.

“My Favorite Picture“

I see this picture almost every day of my life. It’s my phone background and has been for the past several years. When I read the prompt for this assignment, I automatically knew that this was my favorite photograph and that this would be the one I’d immediately submit.

This picture means a lot to me. Even though I hardly stay in touch with the two others in it, sometimes I wished I did. When I left for college, the first time around, I was extremely naive. about it. I was at school in Southwest Virginia, and it was my first time “away” from home, as it was for pretty much everyone else. I found my tribe quickly, joined a fraternity, and was enjoying life. This picture is from a trip I had early on, to McAffee’s Knob, perhaps the most scenic point of the Appalachian Trail. We woke up at 4 AM to watch the sunrise over the mountains, and this picture kind of just materialized with the sunrise. It was one of the most surreal, and spiritual experiences I’d had in my life, and opened my mind to whatever else the world offered for me. That trip made me realize the person that I was, and made me think more deeply about myself. I left that school after my grades slipped significantly. I moved back up to Northern Virginia where my parents lived and changed my life by doing things I never would have done had I stayed in school there. In the end, that trip, personified by that picture, changed the trajectory of my life. There are many things in my life that I would change, but this wasn’t one of them.

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Week Two: Unique Choosing from Assignment Bank!

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This week one of the assignments we were given was to choose three assignments from three different categories on the DS106’s Assignment Bank website. The three assignments I chose was “Your Favorite Photo” (1 1/2 stars), “TV Show Gifs” (2 stars), and “Tongue Twister” (3 stars).

TV SHOW Gifs

For this assignment I chose to create four gifs from one of my favorite TV shows “The Vampire Diaries.” This show aired in 2009 and I was nine years old when I began to watch this show. This show became so popular that the creators created the spin-off “The Originals” which aired in 2013. The spinoff was labeled as one of the most successful spinoffs! The Originals became so popular that the creators created a spinoff off of the spinoff! (Yeah Ik! lol!) The spinoff from The Originals is the show called “Legacies.” Legacies aired in 2018. I have been watching this trilogy since I was nine years old and now I am twenty-one! I really love the plot, the characters, and pretty much everything about The Vampire Diaries. This show started in my childhood and I will always remember the fun times when I used to anticipate the next episode and the next season.

For creating the gif, I decided to take the three main characters from The Vampire Diaries and images from the spinoffs to create a total of four gifs. I decided to use the website makeagif.com because I remembered using this website for my DGST 101 course. I saved three photos of Elena and uploaded them to the website. Then, I adjusted the speed so it would flow better. I repeated this process with every gif. I finally downloaded the gif and Wallaaa!!! #AnimatedGIFAssignments #AnimatedGIFAssignments2158

Your Favorite Photo

For this assignment I chose the photo I labeled “Fresh Sparkling Snow.” I took this photo during my junior year of high school for my photojournalism class. I attended Massaponax High School. My teacher was Ms. Marshall and she was one of the sweetest teachers. Marshall created photo of the week. Photo of the week is when Marshall picks the best photo for that week and she displays the photo up in the classroom. The assignment for that week was about an advertisement. I chose the lotion from Bath & Body works that is labeled Fresh Sparkling Snow which is surrounded by snow! #VisualAssignments #VisualAssignments2152

Tongue Twister

Seashells Tong Twister

For this assignment I had to say a tongue twister as fast as I could! I also had to include background music. I chose to use a snippet of instrumental music from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbkWDDmV7-M I chose this video because the tongue twister was about seashells and I wanted to pick music that relates to the tongue twister. Seashells come from the beach so I chose instrumental music of beach waves crashing on the shore. #AudioAssignments #AudioAssignments2119

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My Favorite Picture

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This assignments is pretty simple. You choose a photo you’ve captured and tell everyone why you love it so much.

I was trying to find a photo I took while in high school (2004) of a ferris wheel at Six Flags Great Adventure in NJ. That is my absolute favorite image I’ve captured. Unfortunately, I was unable to find it. Instead, I’m sharing a photo of my daughter that I took on her first birthday.

It’s really hard for me to take photos of her since she is a runner, but during this occasion I had her trapped in a swing. In this moment of the clicking of the camera to achieve this image, it seems everything lined up and the photography gods blessed me with a great photo that I love to look at. The way the setting sun shines on her head is perfect. It seems to create this glowing halo that continues to her eyes and makes them look clear. Her slightly raised eyebrow makes her look thoughtful about what I’m doing with my camera, while she remains content with her momma pushing the swing. Even the giraffe seems to be smiling. Also, on what was a really busy park day, I managed to capture her alone, with no other subjects in the frame. Something that rarely occurs during our visits to the park. The glint of her new bottom teeth is precious, as she knocked one out that very weekend leaving this as the last photo we have of her showing her perfect bottom teeth. All newer photos show a playful gap on the bottom right of her gums.

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Mi Favorita Pictura

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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?

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The best picture to exist

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This assignment, a relatively easy one, asks you to post your favorite photo and explain why it is so. It is called favorite photo.

This assignment isn’t worth a lot of stars, but I was excited to come across it because I do have a favorite photo that I would love to share with the world.

I know that I talk about my cats a lot and that I may be considered an annoying cat person, but my cats are really my first experiences with a pet and they have an interesting backstory.

I got the black cat (then kitten, Luna) in the beginning of September 2018. She was awesome but was really annoying and needed another friend to play with so I could do my homework.

A few weeks later, we went and got the grey cat (then kitten, Willow) who was labeled aggressive because they believed that she was a feral kitten.

They didn’t get along. Willow would hide, hiss, growl, and swat at Luna. We thought we were going to have to take her back.

A few days later, something clicked and they became best friends. They’ve been this way ever since.

I love this photo because it so accurately displays the personalities of the cat. Luna’s head tilt shows how she’s super outgoing and friendly. Willow is her timid sidekick who will give you tons of love when she wants it, but only when she does.

This was a spur of the moment picture when we saw both of the cats sitting together on the chair. I’m honestly surprised I was able to snap it. Any time that they are sitting together now, when I try to take a picture, they see that I am paying attention to them and move from where they are at so that they could get pet.

When I took the photo, I wasn’t trying to make it a “good” picture because I was so worried that they were going to move. However, I think it turned out well because the cats are posing as if it is a portrait, it is balanced, and their color stands out in the monochrome background.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed typing it. This assignment was worth 1.5 stars.

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Take me Back to Saranac Lake

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For my second assignment of the week I chose Your Favorite Photo! I’m really excited to be able to share my favorite photo in this assignment and talk about why it is my favorite photo!

Above is my favorite picture I have ever taken. This is the view of Saranac Lake at Saranac Young Life Camp. This past summer I spend a month of my life working and living at this young life camp. This picture if of a view I saw pretty much 3 times a day, because it was right outside of the dining hall. This picture brings back a lot of amazing memories from the month that I spent at this camp. All the friends that I made and the laughs that I had. I miss this place daily and wish I could go back tomorrow! I think this picture capture exactly what this camp is all about: the lake and being in nature.