GAME ON: Rainbow Brite hits the big time

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but for some reason had gotten totally distracted and forgotten about it until now.

Every so often I check to see how people have been linked to my photos. One day I found that some of my Rainbow Brite photos had been linked to this online game. I was intrigued and decided to check it out. Continue reading

Oh where, oh where do my flickr photos end up?

Today I decided to look at my Flickr stats and  see where people have used my flickr photos on the internet.  All my photos are Creative Commons which means that they are available for download/use  with the condition the user credits me as the photographer.

The search results were surprising at times. My pictures have appeared personal blogs, professional websites, in articles and on tumblr. Some of the websites are in foreign languages, like German or Spanish, and the rest in English.

For most of my photos, I think it’s pretty cool that people liked enough them to use it across the web, especially since this increases my exposure as a photographer. But for some of my other photos….it’s just odd. I’ll explain more about that in a bit.

Below is a collection of some my photos that I’ve found on various websites through this search.  A couple of my photos are popular and can be viewed on various websites, especially the Superhero Valentines. The Superhero Valentines are super popular. Several articles discussing online dating have used them, like the Spanish Website  Delgada y Guapa and The Dating Weblog.

Buscar pareja en el internet by Delgada y Guapa

This next photo comes from an interesting article by Damon Young on the website “The Good Men Project“. In this article it is posited that women and men CANNOT be simply “friends” (especially if they are roughly the same age) because invariably one person or both of them will feel an attraction to the other, thereby voiding the whole “platonic love thing.” I enjoyed reading this article as it discussed various good points.

Another popular photo is my “Irreconcilable Differences” photo which is one I have also seen on a few websites, like Strom.Idealo (website in german) and Frikelia (website in Spanish)

German Website

Spanish Website -->

Now in terms of websites that use my photos, I get a lot of photo views from Squidoo. Squidoo apparently automatically generates photos from Flickr for various articles. As a result of this, I’ve gotten a lot of hits on the photo of my friend’s tattoos under the category “Finding Cute Tattoos, on the photo of my wombat stuffed animal under the category “Pet Wombat”, and lately, a photo of mine with a quote from Alice in Wonderland  under the category “Life Quotes for Facebook.”

 

However, out of all my photo usage, I really like the following two. The first is a collection on Tumblr devoted to showing how beautiful curly hair can be. I like it because there are so many great photos on here, that it’s an honor to have my photo be among them.  My friend who is featured in the photograph, Gigi, thought it was pretty sweet too 🙂

T

Curly Hair -- my photo 2nd from right

The next comes from a blog post by Ashlee Sadler discussing Introverts and Extroverts. The photo seems to fit surprisingly well with the topic of discussion.

Ashlee Sadler's blog

 

Now I come to the part where I discuss the photos I think are oddly placed. Let’s start with this photo:

 

This photo of mine accompanies an article about how online marketers should use lists to promote their websites. Why do I have a problem with this?

I dislike this photo immensely. I only posted it on Flickr because of the few photos I took for the daily shoot for the day, it was my best which isn’t saying much. So the fact someone actually used it somewhere else on the internet is embarrassing. Not to mention: it’s a personal list. A random, hastily scrawled list that if someone actually took the time the read, they would be like “what the hell is she writing about?!” So taken out of context and used for this web article about online marketing lists, it is super odd to me and way too personal. >.< Obviously  I shouldn’t post personal things under Creative Commons unless I am okay with them being used, but honestly, this photo? Never in a million years would I have thought that someone would be desperate enough to use such a crappy photo. Lesson learned for the future.  :/

The next photo also seems out of place to me.   It’s part of a collection centered on  crutches, which works because my photo has crutches in it, but at the same time, it’s weird because it is surrounded by all these photos of an intense looking emo girl. It is just a such a disconcerting jump going from a very goofy photo to a set of serious ones. Unfortunately, I can’t find the link for this site now, but I shall post it once I find it again!

 

My photo: the only bright one in the bunch, or top left

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So what has all of this taught me? People will use your photos in somewhat surprising places. Expect this if you are are posting on the Commons. Also, appreciate when people link back to you so you know exactly where your photos end up. 🙂

Tour of Wanderlust: Photo Sesh 2

I’ve finally caught up on all my dailyshoot  photos for the past few weeks!  For the most part it hasn’t been that big of a deal to take a photo everyday, but posting them up on Flickr has been difficult. I’ve been traveling all over the place with my Australian friend and haven’t always had a computer with me or internet access. But now that she is gone, I theoretically have more time to pursue photo shoots and/or actually post my photos daily.

 

 

 

 

My top 3 favorite photos from this collection are as follows:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love going off on spontaneous adventures. For this photo my sister and I chased a lightning storm out by Dulles Airport where we spent some time watching the storm and trying to snap a good shot. It was a challenge to set the right shutter speed and also to take the photo at precisely the right moment to capture the quick strike of lightning.

I love this photo because every time I see it, I laugh. The pairing of the two, with the goat’s head and Rose’s face and lobster hat, is definitely unusual. It’s not one of my most artistic photos, but I think it’s a contender for the funniest photo I’ve taken for dailyshoot!

I rarely turn my photos into sepia tone, but for this one I felt it was appropriate; I also needed a monochrome photo. I like how the roof line draws the viewer’s eyes across the photo. I also like the contrast of the sky with the water barrels.

 

“The Rainbow Knight:” The best mash-up video ever

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfu_Zn5zkX4

I was introduced to this video yesterday by a friend who found it through Tumblr. The video uses clips from the new My Little Pony TV show and puts them to the soundtrack from “The Dark Knight” trailer. What the artist creates in this video is probably the best and most hilarious mashup I’ve ever seen. Seriously, who would ever think My Little Ponies could be ever be associated with something as “dark” as a Batman movie?
I think this video relates really well to the article we had to read by Brian Lamb called Dr. Mashup or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix. Lamb defines remixes and mashups in his article and says “a mashup…involves the combination of two or more works that may be very different from one another.”

He further goes on to say

“It is common to assume that remakes or reworkings are inherently lesser forms of creation than something that is “original” and that free reuse somehow degrades the value of the source. Modern copyright law and the intense social stigma associated with a term such as plagiarism speak to such assumptions.”

I think the problem with this assumption is it’s not taking into account the creativity of the artist who created the mashup. It really does takes a lot of talent for an artist to create a successful mashup. For example, as I mentioned earlier, it doubtful many people would think to put My Little Pony with a Batman Trailer. The artist had an original idea and carried out their original idea using sources that were already available. The reason why this mashup is so successful is that it combines two very different things in a funny and well put together way.

Through this mashup, the artist is creating “new art” that people can appreciate as being separate in many ways from the original source of the material. I think that instead of the original owners of the source material getting all uptight about copyright issues, they should feel flattered that someone felt so strongly about their work that they are making an homage to it.

I think it would really awesome if someone took my work and expanded on it because they thought it was cool. This is why most of my Flickr photos have a Creative Commons License so if someone wants to use it, they can go right ahead as long as they link back to me so I can see what they did with it.
Now let’s switch gears a little and talk about the article by Melanie McBride, Praxis 2.0: Escaping the edu-travelogue.
She says in her post,

“As a consequence of my school board’s policies on creating works from copyrighted material, I had students use the internet archive as the source for their remixes. The reaction was: “this sucks. The music/video/etc I want to use is not here.” While I’m not allowed to encourage students to break the law I am permitted to tell them what they can and cannot do at school versus what they may or may not do with their own tools, in their own homes, with their own internet providers – and share with them the potential consequences of doing so. If, after viewing the consequences they choose to break the law it is not because I have encouraged them to do so but they have chosen to enact their own political and civic identities outside of school. But, again, what we do in the classroom is mediated by the law. It is a far cry from what is happening outside of school. And they know it.”

I think that this argument is very valid because often times the material that we would want to use is not always something that we can actually “legally” use. But if you look at a lot of mashups and remixes that exist, a lot of the good ones are created using copyrighted material. Of course, the question of legality comes up, so it is definitely important for teachers to discuss what constitutes as breaking the law versus not breaking the law. We’ve already talked about the benefits of creative commons usage several times in class and I think it’s is something that is important to discuss.

Definitely now and in the upcoming years, copyright issues are going to continue to pose a challenge for those people interesting in creating remixes and mashups.
Relating back this article to #ds106 itself, I think that the work we are creating is definitely our own and this is what McBride would call “traveling.” We’re not just learning about other people making creative content like twitter stories and radio shows, but we are actually creating it ourselves.
Before reading these posts, I probably would have been hard pressed to explain the distinction between remixes and mashups. However, if you consider the old school radio play that Aliyah and I put together, that could be considered a remix. Several other things I’ve put together in class could also be considered remix. But just because not everything is from my own creation, doesn’t mean that I don’t have original or interesting ideas.

Reflection on Daily Shoots thus far

As of tonight I have uploaded  81 photos for 53 daily shoots to Flickr. This does not count the other photos I have uploaded to flickr or all the other photos I have taken but not uploaded.

I have officially accomplished 14% of my 365 photo goal. Wow! I am surprised my motivation has lasted this long. 🙂

Sometimes I get really cool photos in seconds and have to do little editing work, and other times I have spent an hour or so doing photo shoots with friends (such as people in this class like Megan, Colleen, Aliyah and my friends outside the class who might as well be in it.) Some days I don’t have a lot of time to take a photo which means the one I do end up uploading is ok but could have been better.

I really love doing crazy photoshoots with friends because they turn out really entertaining (e.g. Rainbow Brite Photo shoots, The Masks, Water Water Everywhere).

I’m also slightly obsessed with Picnik which is an awesome/quick way to edit photos for free online and then download to your computer

I love the comments I get on Flickr because they are generally very encouraging/ entertaining. Thanks ds106sers and all the randoms that have commented.

So now I leave you with all the awesome photos I have thus far. You have any favorites?

 

 

 

 

My Final Project(s)

So for my final project, I’ve actually decided to do two projects! Before every student in the class starts hating on me for doing two projects let me explain why I am doing this.

My first project is continuing on with the Daily Shoot assignments. As I have mentioned before, I am a photography nut and really enjoy the challenge of the Daily Shoot assignments. Sometimes I think I come up with really great stuff, like “The Masks” set, and other time I capture just an okay photo. But I’ve decided that it’s a personal challenge of mine to make this my #365 day project and take a Daily Shoot photo everyday for a year.

I feel like this might be a little tough for me to keep up with since I tend to get distracted easily, although so far I’ve lasted 32 days!

I keep meaning to post about this experience of taking the photos, but have been swamped so far by other  class assignments. However, I promise that this week I will def have some reflection posts up!

Now for project #2: Postcards.

Last Spring Semester I studied abroad in Townsville, Australia and experienced some of the most  crazy/awesome/intense/amazing experiences of my life. It was really hard for me to leave Australia and last fall semester I was really sad to be back at UMW for various reasons. Now that I’ve been back over a year from Australia, I think it would be an interesting study to parallel my life week by week over in Ozland versus my life week by week here.

I decided the best way to do this would be by creating my own postcards, because in real life I am a postcard/letter writing fan and each week I send numerous postcards and letters to my besties. I was also inspired by the awesome postcards from LOTR created last semester.

I’ve made a couple of postcards for my US life the past few weeks and have just started working on the ones from Ozland. I plan on posting them sometime this week, so look forward to that!

5 Card Flickr Story


Five Card Story: Snowy

a ds106 story created by Cali4beach


flickr photo by ashleymeganlove


flickr photo by ravnclaw89


flickr photo by les.epinards


flickr photo by nessman


flickr photo by ravnclaw89

Today I got the phone call I’ve been dreading. Kyle was coming over in thirty minutes to pick up his cat.

OH SHIT! How am I going to tell him that Snowy ran away! CRAP!!

I decided I needed to make a cup of chamomile tea to calm myself down as I figured out what to say.

Suddenly, Jesus Jim Groom appeared before me in a razzle-dazzle color whirlwind.

“Be calm, my child” he said. “Bake Kyle some sugar cookies and all will be well.” Then Jesus Jim Groom disappeared in a puff of purple smoke.

Better get started on baking those cookies!


Survey the World- DS106 Radio Poster

As with most of the assignments I end up doing, they happen because I get distracted with my original idea with another idea, or a few more ideas. (ADD much? Or just inspired by greatness? O.o?)

So how did I end up making this poster for DS106 Radio?

OR ELSE!

DS106 Radio

Well it started with Patrick’s blog post about the assignment he created for creating your own album cover. Check it out for step by step details.

I loved the photo he ended up using because it’s the Santa Monica pier which I grew up near when I lived in California 🙂 and because of this I decided I should create my own album cover. I did the Wikipedia article randomizer to come up with the band name and after refreshing a few times  (the article titles I first got were really bad. And I mean REALLY BAD) it came up with: Casper Jørgensen (Casper is a Danish professional racing cyclist FYI)

Then I used the random quote generator and ended up with the phrase: “Survey the World”

Now for the photo, I tried using what Patrick suggested for getting photos from Flickr,  but I kept getting “All Rights Reserved” photos, so I headed to the Commons. The photo I ended up with wasn’t so random because I kind of scrolled through the photos, but I thought this was the funniest. Love that it’s part of an Australian war memorial and that the cat looks like it’s “surveying the world”

Now that I had my three ingredients for the album cover it was time for photoshopping. I was putting all of this together when I suddenly had a flash: Instead of putting Carl Jørgensen on this album cover, why not make a poster for DS106 radio? It would be more fitting for our class and all the radio lovers would go nuts for it.

So now instead of having another visual assignment under my belt, I have a design assignment done, woo woo! 🙂