Tag Archives: ds106

Day 20: A E I O UUUUU UUU E I O AA

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Day 20’s assignment: “Buy or make some clay (see instructions on page 238) and then use it like you never have before.”

I decided that it would be easier to buy clay in an assortment of colors rather than make it on my own. After work I made a trip out to Michael’s and bought a rainbow pack.

Now what to sculpt?

I was inspired by my friend Kayla who has a penchant for mushrooms and various other plant life. From there it developed into “I’m gonna make this into something out of Alice in Wonderland from the scene where the caterpillar is talking with Alice.”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgbntWU7pG8

I only made a few pieces since it was getting late: 3 mushrooms plus the mushroom with the caterpillar (constructed with the help of Sibling1). Then to take photos of my creations I used an 2011 Australian calendar as the background in the attempt to make it look a little trippy.** The top scene is a picture of the Great Barrier Reef and the bottom scene is one of the Australian coast.

Lost one of his arms in an accident 🙁

 

I think for a future project I am going to make a trippy diorama to display everything I made today.

*Speaking of Australia, I just imported my blogs from my UMW blog Barrier Reef Brief to here. Check, Check, Check it out!

Day 19: Row Row Row Your Boat

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Day 19’s assignment: “Create something that float on water (It doesn’t have to be a boat.)”

After deciding I couldn’t think of anything that floated on water beside a boat, I decided to once again brush up on my origami skills.

Too bad I could only remember the kid version of the song where Barney is thrown overboard, rather than the actual lyrics…

After teasing my dog Bentley about it (he really wanted to play with it), we headed off to the creek by my house.

Poor B will never have the boat to play with.

Ready for takeoff

The boat trip lasted about 5 seconds. 2 seconds after the launch, the boat hit a branch and filled with water. It managed to float a little bit more downstream before completely filling with water and sinking.

Bye Bye Boat

Next time I will try to construct my boat out of something more sturdy than paper.

Day 18: Crafting a Skull

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Day 18’s assignment:  “Work with the things you find in your (or a friend’s car if you don’t have one).”

Luckily today I ended up waiting in the car for a while before a doctor’s appointment. After rooting around for a bit I managed to find an unused dog bag.

 

I played around with various ideas then  decided to put a water bottle inside to give it a shape. I finished it off by using a pen to make some eye sockets.

The finished product:

 

 

Day 17: Eye Spy

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Day 17’s assignment: “Make something inspired by and/or that goes over and eye (yours or someone else’s)”

First thoughts: Clearly I am going to make an eyepatch today! Hmmm.. what materials should I use for this…

Later that day: Or maybe I should do some crazy eye makeup on me or a friend……

Much, Much later that day: Or maybe I will make Harry Potter Nerd Glasses out of cardboard and then spray paint it tomorrow…

Well into I-should-be-asleep time: I am going to make a mask!  1) Find Mask templates based on the Stravaganza books by Mary Hoffman 2) Print it out and color it in 3) glue to cardboard and cut it out 4) Coerce sibling into modeling for me.

Voila!

 

 

 

Day 16: Potato Print Cards

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Day 16’s assignment was: “Make a unique print by cutting up a potato or sponge, and use it to stamp on a material of your choice. ”

If I had ever done a potato print, it’s been eons ago. So I decided to carve up the potato in a few simple shapes: heart & smiley faces (thanks to my sister who helped me with these ones).

Then I dug out some paint supplies and got to work making my own cards to send to friends.

For the background color I used a sponge. Then once the background dried, I added the potato stamp. Now this could be tricky because one jostling movement could ruin the entire card.

Out of the seven or so that I made these are my favorites:

Now... who will I send this to? 😛

This first one came about by accident when I didn’t space my hearts evenly enough. From there it was a matter of thinking how could I fix this problem and then deciding the last heart looks lonely. Since it was forever alone, it stood to reason he was in the friendzone.

For this next one I decided I wanted to have a lot of angry smilies and one happy smiley. Since my sister is a fan of saying “Don’t drink the haterade!” I thought it would be appropriate for this card.

 

I like the simplicity of this. No captions needed.

Day 15: If George Washington was a pirate

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Day 15’s assignment was:  “What can you do with a just a dollar? Use a dollar bill as your medium or inspiration today. ”

Since I had done origami for Day 3 I decided that today I would have to do something different.

During my Chasing Summer trip a few months ago, I went to a bar in Key West whose walls were covered from floor to ceiling in defaced dollar bills.

Hundreds upon hundreds of dollars lay within grasp, however they were totally worthless. It was a cool idea, but also seemed like such a waste just to scrawl a name on there or something like “Vegans Rule”.

I decided that if I was going to deface a dollar bill today, I might as well make it funny (Also, I was inspired by a 9gag.com post)

After a visit to Crime and Punishment earlier today, I modeled George Washington after a buccaneer. Of course, he needed a catchphrase to go with his amazing moustache…

Day 10: The Watery Grave

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Day 10’s assignment was : “Use only water as your medium or inspiration today.”

Due to various events this day I waited until the last possible minute to create something for the assignment. Which, consequently meant that I wasn’t thinking clearly when I decided to balance my camera on top of a water glass to get a photo.

Camera + Glass of Water= Watery Grave.

My face when my camera plunged into the water looked something like Day 9’s assignment:

WHAT HAVE I DONE?!

NOOOOOOO

And of course my backup camera works only half the time I try to use it.

All in all, today’s assignment was looking to turn out super crappy. The photos I got were laughable like the image below.

Totally Crappy

But, thanks to the power of photoshop/ picnik I managed to turn out a somewhat interesting photo….

Evil Eye

This photo was made in Picnik by  doing several edits such as adding a watery texture, changed the hue/saturation, as well as adding in the eye.

Monster Eye

I know I could do a lot more with these photos, but for now I am content to put the memory of drowning my camera behind me. I am attempting to rescitate it, but I don’t know if I will have any luck.

#DS789

2011 recap & 2012 resolutions

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2011 was a crazy year.

I graduated from college and had many crazy adventures in the US with international friends!

In 2011 I visited 23 states

In my entire life I have been to 32 out 50 states in the US

 

Most importantly, I took DS106 in my final school semester. DS106 has changed my life. I say this not because all of the internet skills I learned through this class, but because of my 365 photo a day project I started. I’ve been working on this project since Jan 31,2011 and only have a month left to go.

Out of all my resolutions for 2011, taking a photo everyday has been the only one I have kept.  The key here was determination and so far I’ve done an amazing job of sticking with it.

Now it’s 2012. What’s the plan for the new year you might ask? I have a lot of things up in the air right now, but two things are certain:

1) I want to travel as many new places/countries as possible this year

2) I am starting a new year long project based on the book “365: A Daily Creativity journal” by Noah Scalin.** Every day for a year I will be creating something new based on the daily prompts from the book. I’ve already kickstarted the year with by making this:

Two of my friends are supposed to be doing this project alongside with me as well (Katherine and Marieke) so I am excited that I am not going into this year long project alone.

As for other “resolutions” I ideally want to try blogging at least once a week. Once DS106 was over I’ve definitely slacked on the blogging and I’ve come to realize that I miss it. Also, I think I might want to keep up with a photo a day for a year. Now of course I am going to be taking a photo everyday of my 366 (because of leap year) creativity journal project, but it would be nice to continue taking photos of things outside of this.

I don’t know what’s going to happen in 2012, but I do know it’s going to be an creatively interesting year!

**SIDE NOTE: Noah Scalin’s 365 day project involved creating a skull a day. He did an amazing job on this project and if the things that I can create this year are a quarter as good as his, then I will be happy!

This is one of my favorites from his project :

USA VS. Germany: Renting out Graves

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Normally death is an abstract concept to a young person such as myself. Thinking about burial plots, funeral costs and things of this nature is something that I would never even consider.

However, while on my #ChasingSummer roadtrip through the South I got a chance to talk with my two German friends about the various Germany VS. USA differences.  One difference I found fascinating was about German grave sites.

Now the reason this subject came up in conversation was because of our stop in Charleston, SC. I was informed by my Aunt that my Great-Great-Great Grandpa was a prominent member of the community back in the day and even had a wharf named after him (Adger’s Wharf). My mom had asked me to go to his gravesite and take photos since she is interested in geneaology. So off I went to the cemetery dragging my two German friends along.

A relative from long ago

Here’s where it gets interesting. When we got to the site, my friends were astonished that although he had passed away in the late 1800’s his grave was still present. They asked me who was paying the rent on the space.

Hold on: Renting a grave site? What?!

They explained that Christian graves in Germany are rented out to the family for a period of say, 20 years. After that,   the family has to pay more money for the space otherwise their stone will be removed and someone else is put in the spot. After many years (let’s say 60 +)  the members of the family (if there are any left) might stop paying, thus allowing a new person from a different family to be placed in their stead.

Now I can understand this because the country of Germany is many years older and is a lot smaller than the US. But seeing as how people here generally stay in the place they are originally buried, this seems a little odd to me.  I told my friends that you can find graves here dating back to the 1600’s and that keeping the graves makes it a lot easier to trace family history.

We can trace our family back to settlers on the Mayflower

However, I can definitely understand why families might stop paying for the gravesite of the deceased after a certain time. For instance, take my Great-Great-Great Grandpa’s grave. If we followed the German system and it came time for renewing his rental “lease” I probably wouldn’t do it. I know nothing about him, I don’t live in South Carolina and besides he’s been dead for over a century.  Now if it came time for the rental “lease” on my Grandpa’s grave to be renewed, I would definitely do it since I grew up with him and it’s nice to “visit” him once in a while.

According to article I read renting a burial plot in Germany ranges from $900 to $5,000 (EU) for 20 years. Comparatively, in the US burial plots can be bought anywhere from a range of $1,000 USD upwards to $10,000 USD as shown by this website. It’s all about location, location, location!

I find all of this sort of funny because this is something I would probably never have known about if it hadn’t been for being at this place, at this time with some Germans.

It’s definitely something interesting to think about, especially if I ever set a story in Germany!

For more information about Germany’s burial practices check out this informative article.

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

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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. 🙂