Visual Assignment – What’s In Your Bag?

We were tasked with showing the contents of our western character’s bag this week. Since my character is a drifter, I assumed he would have few items, mostly practical tools and weapons.

in my bag2

The wild west is a dangerous place, and wanderers have to fear outlaws and the law itself. The rifle is a Winchester 1886, the revolver a Smith & Wesson Schofield, and a standard Bowie knife. Of course, you need a waterskin in the dry and dusty desert, as well as some money made from various odd jobs.

I cut out these objects in Photoshop, then placed them on a wood table texture. I could have put in more effort to make them look like they were placed there, but I procrastinated this week and I’m pretty short on time.

Visual Assignment – Splash the Color

My second assignment this week is called Splash the Color. This assignment is to remove all the color from a photo, and then restore the original color to single object in the picture. I picked it because it’s an effect I’ve seen done many times, but never actually done it myself. I looked through some of the previous submissions for inspiration, then took to google. Eventually, I was led to this amazing picture by 5oulscape on flickr.

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From the start, the picture already has amazing contrast between colors. I thought if I removed the color from everything but the house, it would be as if both the sky and the land were swallowing it up. The process itself was simple using Photoshop: select the object you want to stay colored with the pen tool, then invert the selection, and finally use the black and white adjustment option.

Splash the Color

I think the end result is pretty cool, although it does almost look like I just photoshopped a house into this landscape. I’m going to have to try messing around with the coloring settings to see if I can get rid of that effect.

Make My Day

Today was the best day ever, yeehaw! This little lady is not normally one to have a man by her side. I strongly believe in not needing a man, but today I met the guy that I might spend the rest of my life with. As I was walking down to my house I bumped into a guy by mistake and my saddle fell to the ground. He was so kind it, he picked it up and we  just started making small talk. He asked me on a date, and it was the most perfect one.

First we went to breakfast, at the cowboy cafe. I got pancakes, french toast, and eggs.

cowboy-cafe-dubois-wyoming

Then we went on a horse ride where he taught me how to do some tricks.

Couple riding the range at Santa Margarita,California

Then we square danced until our feet hurt.

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But the most memorable part of it was that at the end of the date, he leaned in to kiss me.

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*I thought this was a little hard, finding western photos was kind of difficult. Specially about a guy and a girl on a date. I felt like I had to find a girl and a guy wearing cowboy boots and super typical western style.

Emoji This

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*I had a lot of fun with this project, I asked four friends to pick their favorite emoji and imitate the face. Then put into a quote what they think “their” emoji would say. They enjoyed this project as well. I thought it was a great way for you and your friends to be creative!

We’re The Real Life Brady Bunch!

*I thought this assignment was fun but definitely took up a lot of time. I had to use face in a hole because I don’t have photoshop or anything, but it was really fun looking up silly pictures of my good friends and putting it all together. Then I thought of being creative with the title instead of just being the Brady Bunch.

It’s a Small World After All

For my last star for the week, I decided to complete the Larger Than Life Assignment. I really only needed 0.5 stars.. Why aren’t there any assignments that are worth 0.5 stars!

Take a picture of an everyday object and make it look larger than life.

I used my phone to take this picture, so the quality is not the greatest, but I used great angles! What made this assignment enjoyable was that I was taking pictures during work (in the DKC), and Martha walked in and exclaimed, “What are you doing on the floor!” She was a little confused as to why I was on my hands and knees, trying to get the perfect angle of objects, until I explained that it was for ds106. “Of course it would be for ds106!” Then it clicked.. I ended up taking pictures of a couple different objects, but as it turned out, the first picture I took was the best one, and the one I actually used for this assignment.

Afterwards, I thought it would have been cute if I had a little mini LEGO man to set on the edge of the chair, adding to the effect that it was a giant chair! Anyways, enjoy a chair made from Giantville!

 

Larger Than Life

Silky Smooth

For 2.5 stars this week, I completed the Shiny Like Silk Assignment.  This was a really fun assignment! It honestly did not feel like homework at all.

To complete this, I went to the website, weavesilk.com, which allows you to create your own pattern, whether it’s reflected, geometric, or completely free form.  I had stumbled onto this website over the summer, using StumbleUpon, so I already knew the concept of the site!

I actually made a few different designs today, but then chose my favorite!

Silk design 

 

In another one that I made, I was kind of going for a balance between Fire, Earth, and Water – All three must coexist in nature in order to keep the world at peace, and one cannot thrive without the other; kind of like the circle of life..  

Silk design 2

 

Alphabet Food

This week, I chose to make an A-Z food collage for 2 stars!

Going in to this, I thought, “Oh this’ll be super easy. I love food!” However, there are some letters that are very rare in the food world, like J, Q, U, V, and X.  For these, I had to turn to the almighty Google for some ideas.  Once I found all of the food images, I saved them onto my computer, and then created a collage using PicMonkey.  It is a free online collage maker, but if you want some of the super cool features, you have to pay for an upgrade.. I just used the free version.

PicMonkey comes with some preset layouts, or you can create your own.  Since 26 is not a nice number when it comes to square collages, I decided to customize my own!

In order to do this, I just dragged and dropped the images where I wanted them, after I had uploaded them.  It took some trial and error to find a layout that I liked, and for it to work how I wanted it to.

For each of the letters, this is the food that is shown:

Asparagus

Banana

Caramel

Doughnut

Eggplant

Flour

Grapes

Honey

Ice cream

Jackfruit

Kiwi

Lemon

Mango

Nectarine

Olive oil

Pineapple

Quinoa

Rice

Strawberry

Tomato

Udon noodles

Vanilla bean

Watermelon

Xanthan gum

Yoghurt

Zucchini

 

Mmm I’m hungry now..

 

Food Collage A-Z

Wait, I Have Siblings?

For 4.5 stars this week, I completed the Multiply Yourself Assignment.

Take two or more photographs of yourself in one location. You must not change the position of the camera and take care that the light does not change either. Use a photo editing software to arrange yourself two or more times on the same location. You may use masks and layers or simply the selection tool and the paste command. It may be helpful if you have already experience with photo editing.

I started learning Photoshop over the summer, so I already had a little background in the software. I used a tripod to keep the camera steady and in one place, then set the timer, so I would have enough time to get to each position.

Once I had all of my photos, I opened them in Photoshop as layers.  I then created masks for each layer, in which I was the only thing that you could see.  Creating the masks was the easy part, but then getting all of the shadows to line up was the hard part. There were some of the images that there was a shadow in it, so it was hard to try to get the shadow into the final photograph.

There were some errors that I found after I had completed the photo, but hey, it’s not like I’m submitting this to a World’s Best Photo Contest or anything — This was all about the learning experience!

If in reality there were this many copies of me, I wouldn’t know what to do! I’m an only child, so that would turn my world literally on end (or upside down)…

 

Many Noras

 

The Cotton Candy Forest?

For 2.5 stars this week, I decided to do the Color Changer Assignment.

Take any picture in the entire world and change the color hue of the picture to completely change how it looks! Then post it on flickr to show the world!

I chose a photo from when I studied abroad in Germany, and visited the Black Forest during Spring/ Summer 2014.

In order to manipulate this photo, I opened it using the software Adobe Bridge. This is like the pre-cursor area to Adobe Photoshop, and I actually find it a little bit easier than Photoshop.. All of the changes you make in Bridge and Camera Raw are non-destructive, so you can save the photo as a new file, and have the original as well as the edited version!

After opening Camera Raw, I navigated to the hues tab, and changed the highlights to a pink hue, and the shadows to a blue hue.  I then adjusted the saturation of each to get the ending result! I love image editing, but I find that it takes FOREVER to get through all of the photos that I take.. It was a lot of fun to play around with the colors until I got something that looked pretty cool!

Before:

The Black Forest

After:

 The Cotton Candy Forest