Picture 02

So for this picture, I used soft chalk pastels. For the jacket, I didn't get the checkered design that was originally on the jacket, because I was trying to blend the pastels and such. It ended up kind of black and reddish and I actually kind of like it. With pastels, I feel it's a bit more abstract at times, because of blending and rubbing colors together. 

For his shirt I ended up taking some of the color from the jacket on my finger and just kind of rubbed it on, and added a bit of black and brown, and wrote the letters with black. For the background I just used yellow for the door, and light blue, dark blue, and dark green for the blue fence and outline of door.

Picture 01

This is my first picture that I coloured.

I tried to melt crayons for this. I started out using a pencil eraser to put it on, and also the tip. I would coat it with the wax, and then use it kind of like a brush. I tried to use different textures, to make it look more interesting. 

To melt the crayons, it was an interesting process. At first, I just put a black crayon in an empty paper sorbet container, and put it in the microwave. It melted, but it kind of dried after a little bit, and I ended up using it kind of like an actual crayon when I put it on a pencil and used it like I said. We tried putting oil in the cup we microwaved it in, and it worked for Caeden, but for me the bottom of the cup fell out. It was sad.

But it worked out pretty well. I liked doing this project! 

For my first picture, I'm going to try and melt/soften crayons and color my picture.


For the other one, I'm going to try and use pastels or crayons and color it.

My 10 Pictures

Kony 2012

1. Summarize the documentary KONY 2012 in one paragraph. What is it about? (one paragraph): I think it's about a man named Joseph Kony who started a army in Africa of children that he stole. People are trying to make him become more known so the government will realize the people do care and so they will keep and possibly add to the military advisors they sent there to help the Ugandans. 
2. Why did the filmmaker choose to make this film? What does he hope to achieve? What is his specific goal and what is his strategy for making it happen? (1-2 paragraphs): I think the filmmaker chose to make this film so that people would learn more about Kony. So they can learn all the mean things that he's done, so he can be come "famous" or "infamous" and be more known in this world. I think they also hope to achieve for Joseph Kony to be caught and stopped and his army to disperse and not exist anymore. I think one strategy is that they put the Documentary on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Myspace, etc. and once people saw it, they were touched and they shared it with all of their friends. I think they thought it would be kind of like a chain reaction. They are also going to have a day in which in almost every city people are going to "Cover the Night" as in they are going to cover their city with posters and such so people will probably wonder who this "Kony" is and google him or something. 
3. What is your personal opinion on the strategy he is using to raise awareness? Is it effective? At some point, people get tired of seeing "the same old posts" about an issue. Some of you have already asked the question "what's the point of this video?" What is the point? Even if you're personally tired of seeing links and posts about it, do you think there is value in saturating the media like the film proposes? What would you do different? (1-2 paragraphs): To be honest, I don't know how I would take on a problem like this and how I would try to do it better. But I think if the purpose is so that the Government see that the people of the country care, this is a good way to make people care. If they see a video about children getting killed, the man that's killing them etc. people will probably care, or at least want or pretend to care. And for someone who doesn't know how to make a difference, buying a bracelet or t-shirt or putting up a poster doesn't seem like too much to do to help a cause. I think people are eager to "help" the world in some way, even if they don't know very much about the cause. I think there has been some controversy on whether the money and donations the organization (Invisible Children Inc., I believe) is used in best ways. Because about a third of the money is spent with the films they have made about Kony and Uganda and such. I think that these videos are good ways to get people's attention, especially the young adults in the country who are on the internet a lot of the time.
4. What do you think about about the idea of making a "bad person a celebrity?" Are there any negatives to this approach? (one paragraph): I think it's kind of an interesting idea, because I think if Kony was famous as Angelina Jolie or something they would be extremely well known (obviously). But I'm not sure if he actually could become as famous as her, although we could try. I think maybe the bad part may be that now that it will be very famous there will be a lot of people against it...There are a lot of haters out there.
5. What is the difference between raising awareness and between a call to action?: I think raising awareness is when someone wants people to know about doing something.
6. What is an issue you feel strongly about - strongly enough that you would want to not only raise awareness, but call people to action? Be specific - in other words, don't just choose a topic like 'eliminate world hunger.' It doesn't have to be a global issue, but it should be a specific, definable one where you are proposing a specific solution. What is a specific way to focus on that topic? Ask yourself the following questions:What is the issue?: Um, I think I would like to help people (specifically teens and young adults) who either have extremely low self esteem and/or self-harm themselves or have attempted or been on the brink of suicide.Where is it?: I think it's all over, really.Who are the people affected?: I'm not absolutely sure about everyone, but I've noticed teens and young adults, I think. Why should people care about this issue?: Because it's really sad that people don't feel like anyone cares or that they're not good enough or that they don't deserve to live, or if it's way too painful to live through so they want to end their lives.What can people like you do to solve the problem; to help? What specifically can people do?How could you use the media to call attention to the issue? How can you get people's attention?: I think that if they notice someone who look like they're feeling down, or getting bullied on, they could just go and talk to them and help them a bit. If you just notice someone acting strange ask if they're okay or not, that could help, I think.  I think there are already people who know about ti, but maybe a video like the Kony 2012 that could help. 

Tool Palette Customization: With this tool you can change your tool palette! You can move things around, add different tools and/or delete them!

Burn Tool: You use it to naturally darken parts in the picture. You can change the highlights, the shadows and the midtowns.

Sponge Tool: You use this tool to change the colors. You can either saturate the part you want, or de-saturate it!

Clone Stamp: You use this to clone parts of the image! You select one part to clone, and then paint over another part so it looks like the first thing you selected!

Versions: Every time you save your picture, it goes to versions! So you can go back any time you want to what it previously looked like the last time you saved!

Full Screen: You can go full screen with this tool! You click a button and your pixel matter fills the whole screen.

Auto Save: Auto save saves your photo's changes! So if you quit Pixelmator and didn't save your picture, it was auto-saved, and all your changes are still there!

Install Pixelmator: You can install pixelmator onto your iPad! Just go to the app store, and you can buy it, and download it, easy!

Dodge Tool: You use this to naturally lighten parts of the picture! You can lighten the highlights, shadows, and midtowns.

Smudge Tool: You use this tool to smudge things! You can make cool textures and make things smudgy with it!

Healing Tool: You can select things in your image that you don't want there. And the tool makes those things disappear and gather things near it to make it look like it never existed.

Eyedropper Tool: You use this to pick out colors. You put the tool over a color you want to replicate and use it.

Red-eye Tool: If you get red eyes in a picture you take, this is what you use! You select the tool and place it over the pupil, and it takes out the red, and makes it look like a normal eye.

Layer Groups: If you have lots of layers, you can use this. You put layers in a group so it's not as messy.

Cropping Images: If you want your image smaller, or want to change the size you use this. You can make it bigger or smaller but you use this to take out parts of the image.

Exporting Images: You use this to put the image in other places, or change the file type. You can put it on the web, but you can make it a certain file type, if you'd like.

Opening Images: This shows you how to open an image in pixelmator. You can use the photo browser palette, drag it, etc.

Polygonal Lasso Tool: You can select a shape with this tool.  It mostly makes straight lines though, so it's good for cutting out straight/angular objects.

Magic Wand Tool:  This is also a select tool. It selects an area of color and you can do what you want with that.

Marquee Selection Tools: With these tools, you select things. You can select squares, circles, so many things, it's quite exciting, really.

Lasso Tool: This is another selection tool. It's more flexible than the others, and you can select weird shapes and things with this one.

Gradient Tool:  You can make gradients with this tool. You can make circular ones, horizontal ones and vertical ones!

Quickly Remove Unwanted Background: This is helpful for removing backgrounds. Sometimes you don't want the background, and just want a single piece of the picture.

Article Response

I absolutely agree to the article! As I was looking at my picture, I think (as mentioned in class) that I definitely made the skin to smooth and blurry, and the eyes waaaaaaaaay too creepy and bright. I think that I did pretty well with making the picture feel warm, but the biggest thing was making her look like an actual person. But what the person said in the article made a lot of sense to me.

What I Learned

In the video, the parts I learned the most from were near the endish half of the video. I've never really done anything with masks before, and so I think nit was a good learning experience to do that, and it DID make the skin look pretty alright. I also didn't know how to select a certain part of the picture (the eyes, in this case) and make them a new layer so I could edit them. I think those two things were the main things I learned with this tutorial.

Edit

Before:

After:

In this article, I learned a lot. I hadn't really thought of all the little things that you can do to effect your picture. I didn't realize that portraits could take so much planning and posing and etc. I really hope that I can remember this for the next time I take portraits of people.

A couple that looked kind of cool me, was the texture, over expose, posing and unfocused and colors. They all were very interesting looking. I want to be able to take a photo that actually looks good and also focuses on these different things. Just to experiment with stuff would be really fun. 

My photos

For this one, I was trying to make it a close up picture, and I wish I'd gone a little closer, 

but I couldn't get very good picture like that. So I took it, and I blurred the background, made it more in focus and changed the exposure and levels. 

I meant for this picture to be kind of a texture-y picture.

 My model wrinkled her nose and in real life, it looked all wrinkly and texture-y, but in the picture it was hard to capture that. I tried sharpening it and I changed the colors a little. 

With this picture, I tried to make it dark, but with a lighter part of her face, kind like in the example on the article how there was a light part of her face and dark background. I lightened her a face and darkened the background. I went to a dark dark dark area to take it, and I took a candle right by her face, to make it stand out.

This picture is a shadow of a hand. I put it in front of a light and everything, but it wasn't super dark, so with editing, I made it darker and more recognizable for what it was. I like how there's the speckle-y background and fives it a few cool layers. 

What I Learned

First off, I thought this was a really fun and interesting project. I like editing pictures, I think it's really fun. But I realized while I was editing my photos, that it can be better not to edit the picture too much. I tried to not make it look fake, but I liked making Ellie's eyes look really blue, so that might make it a little unrealistic. But I learned how different tools can effect different things, like too much contrast can make things look kind of weird, although I really like messing with things like contrast and exposure. But it seemed that you can only use a little bit of each thing without going way overboard.

Edits

Articles

First Article (the one about beginning photography):

It's funny, it seems that all the things that this photographer said is what Jonny said! What a coincidence! 

But I think that what he says makes a lot of sense. I especially liked that last part, because I like pictures that have a lot of detail, and focus on one thing rather than everything, I think. 

I really noticed how with the two picture of the branch, the one with more focus on one thing, I liked it far more. I stood out to me more, I guess. But it might be because the branch is the part of the picture that was in focus. But I think that with my camera that I use, I have it on auto. So next time I take pictures, I think I'll try to set it to one of the setting he suggested. 

Second Article: 

I liked reading about all the different ways to have better composition. It's quite interesting to me to see different ways to add different elements to the picture. Like, how adding lines in the picture can make it more interesting what interesting to me, because it seems kind of logical in my mind, how your eyes automatically follow the lines. Another thing that I seriously agreed with, was to simplify things. 

I think that having too many things in your picture can make it feel too busy and overwhelming. I like it when pictures that draw focus to one thing in the picture, instead of far too many things. All these different tips on composition was so interesting! I hope to apply it to the next time I take pictures. 

Christmas Pictures