Nature Shots (March 2nd)

My mentor suggested i add a few more nature-ish shots to my portfolio. what better way to do that than go to Muir Woods?! We just had a kinda made a last-minute trip and brought our gear. my camera isn't the greatest, so it was a bit difficult for me to capture nice quality images because my camera sensor cant record too great of a dynamic range, but thankfully i was able to post-process a good amount of images so that they were a bit more accurate as to what my eye was seeing. it was a quick run, but we managed to squeeze in about four hours of total shooting time, plus another two hours of my personal time editing my photos. the photos are uploaded to my portfolio under the nature section here
*NOTE, total hours at this point is 15.5 hours*

February 23rd

I've been shooting in my garden and around the neighborhood,  hoping to get nice images to create a nature-type section for my photo portfolio. I've done about three hours worth of shooting in my neighborhood alone,  and got the idea of not only including  still images in my portfolio,  but maybe being able to incorporate time lapse videos as well.  So I set up a little studio in my kitchen and chose a daffodil bud that was almost ready to bloom.  I set up an interval timer to take a picture about  every minute or so, and framed up the shot in my camera.  I used a single desk lamp to light the flower,  as well a makeshift softbox to evenly distribute the light on the flower, reducing the harsh shadows. I did this using an unfolded plain white napkin. Here's, rough edit of an overnight shoot consisting of over 500 still images played back at 25 frames per second.  Hopefully I will be able to shoot other nature-type time lapses to create a longer video with an overall theme.
*edit* in case the link didn't work,  here's the url
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUwE6H0gzfQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

February 3, 2013

So I didn't meet with my mentor this day, but he told me that for future projects, I should familiarize myself with adobe lightroom. So i downloaded the program, and spent a few hours learning the interface.  I'm not a very organized person with my photographs, so I pretty much have folders of pictures all over the place.  And from what i've found, lightroom requires you to be fairly organized.  I thought there would be an easy way to just kinda drag and drop photos to edit, but from what i found over my time using the program, you have to assign folders to import from specific locations, and you also have to create output folders (in an organized way).  So after a few hours of organizing, i was ready to start editing.  Thankfully, the actual adjustment settings were very similar to adobe photoshop, so i didnt have to learn a whole lot of how things worked (adjustment-wise).  So overall, things went well and this new program is really teaching me to organize myself digitally with my photography.

January 29th, 2013

The first meeting with my mentor went a little better than expected.  I met him at his house when he got back from shooting a project, and we basically just went over the guidelines of my senior project.  We talked about what i could possibly do for my physical presentation, and what i wanted to get out of this whole project.  When I first got there, i didn't really expect the meeting to be as productive as it was.  We went through different ideas of what i could do, and what would be the most suitable for a final presentation.  And towards the end, we even got to show off both of our previous works, and what we're proud of.  I even got to share my technique for different things he wasn't sure of how i shot.  So overall, i think the first meeting went a lot better than expected.  What i thought would be about 15 minutes turned out to be about an hour and a half of just throwing around ideas and different shots.

Searching for a Portfolio Website

So obviously with one of my main goals from this project being the creation of a portfolio, I have to find a suitable website that's affordable and fits all my needs. I spent a total of about three and a half hours going through different websites.  To get a feel for all the options, i created TONS of sample websites/free accounts.  After all the pros and cons, i finally settled on a website called Folio HD.  once i made my payment, i finally got to put the finishing touches on everything! Im really pleased with the way things turned out, and cant wait to start posting more randomness on it. My website can be found here.

1984 Chp. 1-3

Through the first few reading chapters, Winston Smith's greatest conflict is trying to hold back his feeling of rebellion for Oceania. Oceania is a highly monitored state filled with big brother propaganda and telescreens.  These telescreens not only televise propaganda, news, and hatred for enemies, but it also contains a camera that watches civilians every move.  Winston shows his disgust for this totalitarian society by writing "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" repeatedly in his secret journal.  Winston's hatred for the government is also shown during the two minute hate when he seems anger not at the enemy, "but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police.."  Winston's feelings for Oceania are also expressed through his repetition of describing the ways Big Brother is watching.  He later goes on to claim that "nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your head."  This goes to show that he feels extremely violated and has put up with this watch for long enough.

Stranger Than Fiction

The Author of a story is the person who physically records a story by writing it, while a narrator is a person that the author chooses to almost sort of voice the story.  The narrator is the all-knowing teller of the story, who is actually in the story.  So basically an author writes, while a narrator speaks to the targeted audience.  In the film, the author was the actual person who wrote the film, but the narrator was Karen Eiffel.

In my capstone paper, i tried my best to provide a fact-based work of writing with as little bias as possible.  Although i feel strongly on some topics, that was a bit of a challenge.  I think that in this way though, the readers will most likely agree with what i wrote and hopefully feel more passionate about scientific research.