Day 12: Creative Differences

Now Day 12 of 366 Creativity Journal has come and passed a looooong time ago, but I wanted to take a moment and highlight the art of Marieke. Marieke is one of my friends who is doing this project with me and she happens to live in Germany. This means that for the most part I only hear about what she’s creating after she makes it.

Day 12 assignment was: ” Camouflage. Create or alter something so that it disappears into its background.”

For this assignment I ended up taking the easy way out and photoshopping an image of pedobear lurking in the forest waiting to snatch unsuspecting children.

 

In contrast, Marieke took a much more creative approach to the assignment. Using photos she took with her Diana Mini film camera on our #ChasingSummer trip she painted in the background of the photo.  I love the contrast between the print and the paint and yet how they blend in really well together. Definitely more amazing than my take on this assignment! : )

Miami SoBe

New York Subway

Times Square

365 Days Worth of Photos

Last Monday I finished my yearlong Dailyshoot challenge! For my final dailyshoot I took Sibling1 along and headed out west. I took photos in two different locations (abandoned house & empty field) before deciding how I want my final shoot to end. The result:

Victory!

Let me tell you, it was really hard taking a (good) photo everyday! Some days, especially when I was traveling, I would take so many good photos it was hard to decide which photo to choose as my dailyshoot. Other days, I had to scramble around just to find something to photograph.

It also was a lot easier to take photos when Dailyshoot.com was running. Once it became defunct in the beginning of October 2011, it took a lot more motivation to go out there and photograph something each day. It also was a lot harder to keep track of which dailyshoot assignment number I was on since I generally didn’t post the photos the day I took them. This lead to double posting assignments for one day and also not having my dailyshoot assignment #’s in the correct sequence.

Still, I had an absolute blast with the project!

Out of all the photos I posted for my dailyshoots, about 2/3 of them are pictures of inanimate objects, landscapes, & plants. The remaining 1/3 is mostly pictures of friends/family, animals and random strangers.

My thanks go out to all my lovely amigos who helped me with my project including: Megan Mc, Elena, Laura, Gina, Karen, Colleen, Marieke, KKY, Rose,  Kayla, Army, Aitak, James, Dan G, Quacclynn, Raven, Sabine, Mario Lopez, Tito, Steph, Ashley, Natalie, Aliyah, Jess C, Z. Efron, Clare, Isaac, Charlotte, Meghan, Jackson & Nikki, George, & last but not least, Jim Groom. (If I forgot anyone, let me know!)

Also, I am extremely indebted to DS106 as whole because it inspired me to start this project and to continue on with it for an entire year.

I used over 10 cameras to take these photos. During the course of the year I managed to kill two cameras  (my 1st camera died of old age (4 years old) :/ and its replacement later fell victim to accidental drowning >.< )

My favorite photos from the year are as follows:

Favorite Photo Shoot: The final Rainbow Brite Shoot  where I managed to get 7 friends plus Jim Groom to dress up in  crazy outfits and take silly pictures.

Favorite Model(s): All my models were truly fabulous! But definitely big kudos to Megan Mc, Elena, & Karen because they were the ones who volunteered to model in a lot of my photos.

Megan, Elena, Karen

 Favorite Photo of a person: I like how this photo is really focused on the dandelion and yet, it’s also all about the person in the background (Elena).

 

Favorite inanimate object photo: Love the image of the flame leaping into the balloon.

 

Favorite altered photo:  I like the extreme color contrast here.

Favorite Animal Photo: Bentley jumping into the lake. Great frozen motion shot.

 

Favorite photo of me: I ended up using a few photos of me for my dailyshoots and this by far is my favorite because it captured such a unique experience.

I was going to start year 2 of 365 photo a day project, but decided that with all the effort I am putting into “366 Creativity Journal project” I don’t really have time to do both properly. So year 2 of photos is going to have to wait a little while, but I definitely plan on coming back to it one day.

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.

 

“Tour of Wanderlust” : Photo Sesh 1

I was talking Colleen about all the adventures I was planning for this summer and she has decided to dub it “Tour of Wanderlust 2011.”

The “Wanderlust” part of the name is a joke from when we were trying to decide on the name for our literary magazine last fall. Someone suggested “Wanderlust” which we quickly rejected as a magazine name, but Wanderlust remained as an inside joke.

In regards to keeping up with the daily shoot while traveling, it was actually kind of difficult.  I had lot less internet access than expected. Also, didn’t have that much free time as we were constantly hopping from place to place!

I’m definitely exhausted from all that traveling around and looking forward for a short break before I join my ozzie friend Rose in NYC.

However, despite the chaos of my travels, I managed to snap some pretty good daily shoot photos. Out of the photos I’ve managed to post so far (still have about 9 to go), the only photo I don’t like is the toothbrush one. That photo was really scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of  “I just really needed to snap  a photo, asap!”

I might be posting more photos up from my trip, but depends on how much time I have.  After I catch up to all the rest of my daily shoot, I still have to post the final Rainbow Brite Shoot up from a month ago (wait, has it really been that long?)

Also hoping to catch up with my postcard project and hoping to blog some more about my trip.

So much to do, so little time!

A week’s worth of Daily Shoot photos

I really like this past weeks daily shoots! I actually remembered to take them the day they were assigned (always a plus!) and they are all so different which is cool.

 

I think the biggest reason why I like them all is because they perfectly seem to represent each day I took them. Normally that doesn’t happen.

These aren’t picture in the actual order I took them  but if we go through the list:

Friday– Computer (had computer issues and thought my computer was tostitos toast!)

Saturday- Fake Mustache one (my friend fell asleep before we were about to go out so I pretended to draw on her to wake her up)

Sunday- Bubble Boy (friends came over for dinner/ studying and then we took a study break to blow some bubbles.)

Monday– action photo (sister came down for a presentation I gave at Kemp Symposium and then she put on a mask I got in this really fab book about vampires)

Tuesday- Bunny photo (went to Passover Seder at my Roomie’s house and then her mom gave us all Easter basket too– They have jewish/catholic household, best  celebrations of the 2 religions 🙂

Wednesday— Sad Karen (SO MUCH HOMEWORK TO DO IT IS RIDICULOUS. Hence the all caps and the sad face D: )

Thursday– Blue Shoots (last day of classes ever since I’m a senior and I’m really going to miss all my good friends at UMW– it was nice to spend time with them AND work on a real project 😉

 

Let’s see what magic I can come up with in terms of taking photos during finals week! Wish me luck girls and boys….

Day 1 of “The Daily Shoot”

Today’s theme for “The Daily Shoot” was “make a photograph that features repetition.”

I’m the VP of the UMW Photo Club and as such, am a photography nut so I really got into the photoshoot.

I ended up taking over thirty photos, but settling on eight to publish. I would like to thank my roomie Elena who owns a Pisocero set, my roomie Natalie’s mom who gave me gingerbread marshmallows and my last roomie  Karen who lent me her S’mores.  Also thanks to  Megan Mc in this class(super helplful!) and Jabamba who provides an endless amount of amusement for me. 🙂

Now I’m off to do homework I should have done earlier!

Bow to the S'Mores