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  1. @katiereif6

    Design Blitz

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    I went on a walk around downtown today to take photos for this. I’m going to be honest, I had a hard time finding anything that caught my eye. I had a hard time finding anything that I thought, “Wow, this is a good/bad example of that conc...
  2. @katiereif6

    Speed summary

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    Alright, I gotta make this quick because my internet is doing unkind things to me. First, I tried really hard to do my best with tuning into the radio, and I rearranged everything so I would be able to listen Monday night, but that happened to be the night of the fire drill in my building, and I ended up missing a few minutes, which sucks, I was really invested. Anyway, I did my best to keep up and do the post. I also did the daily creates: I did the audio reflection, and honestly Moon Graffiti about made me cry. My FSEM was about counterfactual history so it was right up my alley. That and the bleak tragedy of it, as you can see in my radio show ideas and music from another room assignment. I also did the fairly straightforward humming assignment, and the required radio bumper and story through sound effects assignments. I also did the similar movie scene through sound effects assignment, which I made way harder than it needed to be. I also commented here, here, here, and here. I know this was fairly brief and abrupt, but I need to get this in before my internet goes out again. Peace!
  3. @katiereif6

    The Radio

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    So tonight was the only night I was going to be able to listen to the radio show, and of course it’s also the day the RAs chose for my building to have a fire drill, so I missed the first five minutes of the show and was fairly lost and confused...
  4. @katiereif6

    Week 4 summary

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    This week was exhausting, mostly because I’m not as comfortable taking pictures as I am writing, so I stressed about it more and had to do some things multiple times because I wasn’t happy with the results the first time. At least I had the Daily Creates that were more focused on getting something out there than worrying about what exactly the “something” was. I started the week with a reflection on my current photography skills. Safe to say, I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. Over the course of the week, I tried out some new styles and focused on all the things that make a good photo good. The Photoblitz was actually a lot of fun. I really enjoyed doing it and got some neat shots out of the prompts. The stars were a lot of work. I started with an almost entirely different set of prompts that I switched out one by one because I realized I didn’t have a clue how I would answer them. “Larger Than Life” is the only one that stuck through. (It was also the easiest, I wonder if there’s a correlation?) I also did “That’s Not What I Expected,” “Apocalypse Training Camp,” “Switch Up The Mood,” and “Spot The Difference.” I felt a little limited because it was raining pretty hard while I was trying to do these so I was more or less confined to my dorm, but I made it work and did my best with what I had. I would also like to say that my classmates are better than I am, and I commented here, here, here, here, here, and here. For now, I am exhausted and would like to go to sleep. Toodles!
  5. @katiereif6

    Blitzfoto

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    I actually found this assignment kind of fun. Since it’s pouring rain right now, I was limited to what was in my dorm room instead of going outside. In some ways this made it easier, because I had a finite amount of space and resources and didn’t waste time traveling to a spot for a photo, but in other ways it made it harder because I had more constraints on what I could do. It definitely made it more challenging, but I think it also made it more fun. For an added challenge, I only looked at the prompt I was on, I didn’t look ahead. If I had, I might have made some different choices, but it’s what I did. My prompts were: I’m actually fairly proud of this first picture, where I was supposed to take a photo with the camera at floor level. I live in a double dorm room by myself, so I had a little extra space to stretch out. I took this photo from under the other bed, looking toward the window. I turned on my fairy lights for a little extra flair. I think the limited light makes the “wood grain” on the dresser have a cool effect. I just think this photo looks cool. Not gonna lie, not quite as proud of this photo. I was prompted to get something “in motion,” which is hard when I’m in a single room and my friends are too busy to help me. I was on my own as photographer and subject. I took my deck of cards and started throwing them up in the air while lying on the floor on my back. I reopened the windows to get more ambient light, but I don’t think it could save this train wreck. I had to take five or six photos before I got one where the cards were visible at all. I didn’t quite get the effect I was going for, but I was running out of time and spent way too long on this one photo. I wasn’t sure what to do for the prompt about straight lines. I’m a soft, squishy type. I don’t have a lot of straight lines in my room. I figured this shot, with my bed frame and ladder, had vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines. The next prompt was to make a photo out of clothes. I really had no idea what to do with that, especially since my floor, desk, and dresser were now covered in cards. I kicked a few cards out of the way to form this Invisible Man out of my winter gear. I took the photo standing on a chair looking down. Just like I don’t own a lot of perfectly straight things, I don’t own a lot of shiny things. This isn’t even mine; it was my roommate’s before she moved out. It also wasn’t particularly shiny, but it was the best I had. I tried to add water on top to get a reflection, but it didn’t work and just made a mess. I struggled to get a closeup while keeping in focus so that the shininess could come through. I took this photo with Ball Hall reflecting in it. Can you guess what it is? It’s the lid to a container of bay leaves! This prompt was hard because there wasn’t a prompt, it was just a statement. However, I am one of those people that glasses help, so I had a few pairs lying around. I took this photo of my plants but had my glasses be in focus in the foreground because that’s what it looks like to me when I’m not wearing my glasses. The last prompt was challenging because it seems so similar to the first one. Low angles make things look bigger, and ants are already on the floor. I ended up turning on my curtain of fairy lights that I have behind the other desk and sliding my phone underneath the tall part of the desk (whatever it’s called, the part that stands up over the flat work surface) and pointed it up. The result was kind of a neat shot of the lights and leaves. I finished just in time! Overall, this was a very messy but fun experience. My room is a disaster but I got some cool shots. I think I’m going to do more of these when I need to get my creative juices flowing. It definitely makes you think on your feet and come up with something fast rather than worry about quality too much, but it gives you enough time to pull something together that looks good. You’re not scrambling too much to just have something that it makes it hard to do anything creative or worthwhile.
  6. @katiereif6

    Larger Than Life

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    The prompt The photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/194821334@N06/shares/n989r8 (It refuses to embed, I don’t know why, but let me know if you can’t see it.) The prompt was to take a photo of something that makes it seem larger than it is. I was drawn to the chairs in the parlor downstairs in my dorm because to me, they’ve always looked like Steve’s chair from Blue’s Clues, just small. Not as big as his looked in the TV show. I shot the photo from the floor, angling it upward. I tried to keep the carpet out of frame so that it couldn’t be used as a reference for how big the chair was and make it seem bigger. As a happy accident, (hey, Bob Ross!) my finger under the phone put it at a Dutch angle, which is traditionally used in cinematography to show that something (i.e. a situation, character, etc.) is weird or wrong. So the accidental Dutch angle in my photo adds to the fact that something is weird, the chair is huge! The lens flare, another happy accident, makes it seem majestic and grand, adding to the largeness, I think. In real life it’s a normal sized chair, maybe on the small side.
  7. @katiereif6

    Week 3 Summary (Plus Some Title Flair)

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    This week was writing week, and writing is my jam. This week was also a hard week for me with my other classes, work, and trying to get my anxiety under control, so this was a good week to be something I’m already familiar with. My writing wasn’t anything groundbreaking this week, I don’t think. It wasn’t some masterpiece, it wasn’t dripping with creativity. Still, I think I did fairly well given the circumstances. “Stressed Out” was definitely a good release, more for me than for any audience. “Captain Never-Itchy” was a parody poking fun at some of my favorite tropes of one of my favorite ways to tell stories, but it wasn’t anything unique that no one else could have come up with, you know? “I’m Just So Tired” was way overdramatic. I meant it to be silly, poking fun at the dramatic “woe is me” type monologues you see in theater every so often, but I don’t know how well that came across in the piece itself, and it may seem more like I was serious. (If I was serious, it was not so good. But I wasn’t. It was a joke. I know it was cliche.) “Love, Hook” was a diary entry by Captain Hook. It was also fairly silly, painting Captain Hook as the good guy. I could have/would have/should have written something on the more serious side, but I didn’t. It’s not what I was feeling or needed this week. I found it was more difficult to bring in Bob Ross and The Joy of Painting, this week, but I explained how I did in my write-up post. I also wrote an analysis of the story of The Mariner’s Revenge Song. I love the song and the tragic story it tells. I feel like it’s a good example of telling a story from the point of view of a bad character who believes they’re justified in their actions, believes they’re doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, that sort of thing. I struggle to write those sorts of characters because I always either make them justified in their actions or make them so evil it’s hard to believe they don’t realize how bad their actions are. There was also the outline for the long-form story. In the GroupMe chat with other students in the class, it seemed to throw people for a loop. I just used a story I’ve been meaning to do something with for a while, so I just wrote down what I’ve been formulating in my head. Since what I have is individual scenes rather than a full plot, outlining really helped me put it together in a way that made sense and connect it to the song that shares a name with the setting and the story. I did four daily creates this week. I felt like some of them were harder because I felt like I needed things (like clothes from half a century ago) that I didn’t have access to in my dorm room, but I did my best with the resources I had. Finally, I wasn’t able to comment as much as I could last week, but I still did here, here, and here. I clicked on things from the class website that had titles that caught my eye, not for any particular reason about the work itself. I’m realizing that the titles matter more than I’ve been giving them credit for, so I’ll have to put more effort into my future titles.
  8. @katiereif6

    Writing Up My Writing Assignments

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    I did four writing assignments this week from the assignment bank. None of the prompts were chosen for any particular reason, they just caught my eye. The first one, “Stressed Out,” is an acrostic poem about how I was feeling as I was writ...

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