I’m on a quest. That’s right, a quest.
Ever since Daily Shoot decided to make the shoot of the day the color yellow, I’ve decided to make Megan Mc my Rainbow Brite Model child.
What does this mean exactly? Well, I want to re-imagine Rainbow Brite as Megan and take photos of her and all her Color Kids Friends.
So far I’ve gotten Yellow (although no Yellow sidekick so I might have to re-do that one unless I count the Croc in the photo as her sidekick), Red and Green.
Now I’m on quest
My friend just showed me this really awesome photographer Carl Warner.
Prepare to be blown away by his awesome Foodscapes! Seriously, I wish I was as talented as him and had a nice camera like him too.
I feel that my previous post and Aliyah’s post about our radio show covered a good deal about our project, but I just wanted to do a few wrap up points:
1) Audio projects are very much solitary work.
2) Aliyah is a kickass partner!
3) Audio projects are super intense
Overall, a really great experience, but you would have to pay me a lot of money to do this again!
And now my radio show for those of you too lazy to click to Aliyah’s blog post:
[audio:https://imlikesoblonde.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ds106showfinal_freedom.mp3|titles=ds106showfinal_freedom]
Change of Emotion: the frustration and sadness that Audacity can cause. Special Credit to Megan Mc who let me take her photos!
Me!
So I’ve been trying to work on a paper for class all this week and every day since Thursday I’ve been saying: “Ok, today is the day I am going to get it done!” and then five seconds later I tell myself “Ok, I will start in a hour…” then three hours later “Okay I really, really will start in an hour” then nighttime rolls around and then I say, “Definitely tomorrow I will get this done.”
And so this horrible pattern has repeated itself until it’s now 3pm on Monday and while I have a lot of fab ideas, not much of it is down on paper. D:
Anyways, in the spirit of procrastinating I’ve decided to share some random/ odd/ weird things I’ve come across while trolling the internet for research/inspiration:
1. Ganguro: “is an alternative fashion trend of blonde or orange hair and tanned skin among young Japanese women that peaked in popularity around the year 2000” (Wikipedia).
I don’t know if you seen pictures of this, but this is frightening! They look like freaky barbie dolls. **shudder**
2. Tru TV Crime Library: Criminal Minds and Methods
This website discusses famous criminals and their crimes. You don’t really want to know about these all heinous crimes but you just can’t stop reading…
This website is really funny as the author shows examples of bad writing. My friend Zack sent this to me as motivation to actually get words down on the page. Of course, I wasted like twenty minutes reading this blog, but it was worth it because the post about the red herrings made me laugh out loud.
And now to work, for real.
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!
Last Friday night I was planning on going home because Saturday morning at 6:15am, I had to leave from my house to Dulles airport in order to catch my flight to Florida with my mom.
But things happened and instead,I decided to stay at my apartment and just wake up early Saturday morning and drive home. I ended up getting 1 hour of sleep and then left around 5am to go home.
The roads are nice and clear at 5 in the morning, but I still arrived home with only ten minutes to finish packing before we had to leave for the airport.
I had already packed a duffel back at my apt, but I decided it would be easier traveling if I used a rolling suitcase. I wanted to use my red carry-on suitcase so that I wouldn’t have to pay more $$ to check a suitcase under the plane (I planned on putting my toiletry kit in my mom’s suitcase), but my red carry-on was no where to be found.
In my search for it, I wasted about seven minutes and now had only three minutes left to pack before we had to leave. I ended throwing most of my stuff in a random purple rolling carry-on and put whatever else didn’t fit in it, into my mom’s suitcase and my backpack
My family was rushing me out of the door and so in my haste I grabbed my backpack and ran to the car. My sister and dad drove us to the airport and the whole way there I was quiet in the backseat because I was feeling grumpy and tired.
We pulled up to the airport and got out of the car. My sister helped my mom with her suitcase in the trunk, but I didn’t see mine anywhere.
“Hey, where’s my suitcase?!?” I ask, starting to feel panicked.
Blank faces. My mom asks, “What do you mean? Didn’t you put it in the car?”
“NO! I thought you did! You guys were the ones rushing me out the door! @$&$ &$*$ #(@#!!” I yell so loudly that everyone nearby turns to look at me screaming profanities.
My family started laughing and laughing at my stupidity while I got pissed off because I had no clothes for the next four days in Florida except for traveling clothes I was wearing and random items I had shoved in my backpack.
We didn’t have time to go back to the house to get my suitcase, so that meant I ended up going on a shopping spree in Florida.I love getting new clothes, but I rather not get new clothes at the expense of having a total blonde moment…
Morals of the story:
This past weekend I went with my mom to visit her sister in Ormund Beach, Florida.
Ormund Beach is just a town away from Daytona Beach and we just missed the Daytona 500 by a weekend, grr!
But we did get to check out Ormund’s Art Gallery (located next to the botantical Gardens) which was featuring an exhibit about the history of Daytona’s races.
The exhibit had a wall with a bunch of car drawings which was covered by a sheet of plexiglass. They had a bucket of dry erase markers next to the wall so kids could color in what they would want their own car to look like.
Car Wall
I thought this was awesome, and of course, I started to draw on it for fun. Soon a docent came over to talk to me and I ended up talking to her about why I was in Florida and what I was doing for school. I happened to mention DS106 and suddenly it struck me how this entire wall of cars was telling a story:
It was telling a story about who drew on the wall, where these people where from, what colors they liked, why they chose this car over that car. I like how all of these drawings came together to form a collective narrative about the people who had been here at the exhibit, a record of their past experiences.
This isn’t just a random part of exhibit meant to entertain children; It was a work of art in itself, as valid as any other piece of art hanging from the gallery’s walls. Except this art is more unique, it’s just a temporary story that lasts until the next spay of cleansing fluid.
That’s why I decided to add Jim Groom’s famous words “DS106 for Life!” above my car because this work of art represents what our class is all about: creating art and giving it a life of it’s own.
DS106's Ride
I don’t know how long this will stay up there (the docent says the things she likes stay up longer than the random scribbles), but I wonder how many people will see this and wondering “what the heck is ds106?” Maybe they will even Google it (it’s currently #2 on Google Search)
For those wondering why this specific car and colors out of all the cars and color options to choose from, it really came down to convenience: this car was at perfect drawing height, close to the marker basket and I like these colors.
So DS106er’s, here’s a challenge for you: show me another DS106 ride, or at least a better DS106 ride! 🙂