WOW! I love love loved week 5 – visual week!!! {It definitely made up for my hatred dislike of audio week} Throughout the week we had to tell stories through pictures. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn, and enjoy my journey through week 5!

First of all, we got new comment groups. Allow me to introduce another group of wonderful ladies and fantastic, creative bloggers: Brooke Parker, Brittany Dray, Kaitlyn Crotty, and Sarah Park! Our group is called Fab 5 :) You can also find links to their blogs on my right sidebar! When we told Professor Levine about our group, he was excited and loved our group name:

@kncrotty @hellobrittanyy @kelsielasalata @bparker5 @sarahhpark2 Hello Fab 5 group! One up on the Beatles. #ds106

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) February 14, 2013

I am looking forward to be a part of this group {I will try still keep visiting my comment group’s blogs!} but I am anxious about the radio show assignment. These girls are so creative and continue to inspire me! Kaitlyn’s color splash post is off the chain! She did multiple color splash pictures and I could tell that she really enjoyed and had fun creating them! Brittany’s radio bumper has a great song for the background music! I can’t wait actually to hear it on the radio! The blog layout that Brooke has is SUPER cool! She also incorporates animated GIFs in her posts to express her emotions. Creating an animated GIF is not quick, so you can tell that she puts a lot of effort and time in her DS work! I really like Sarah’s Valentine caption. Her caption can go either way so it is up to the reader to interpret it one way or the other – which is cool! I told you, I have a lot of talented ladies in my group!!!

On the week 5 post, there were a couple of suggestions on how to make your pictures better. I printed this sheet out and tried to use some suggestions throughout the week when I was completing my assignments. Some I couldn’t do like ‘use the best lens’. I wish I could have but the best camera I have is my iPhone. That will change. I am asking for a nice camera for Christmas {oh yeah, list is already made :)}. You can see my all-time favorite suggestions and example pictures in my blog post. I also posted my favorite suggestion and the picture of that suggestion in the class photo suggestion Google doc.

One assignment we had to do this week was called the ’20 minute photo blitz’. In this 20 minutes, we had to take as many pictures as we could of the things on the list. This assignment was fun because it was kind of like a scavenger hunt — and who doesn’t love those?? I chose to take my pictures in Starbucks. Everyone was staring at me like I was some kind of paparazzi! You can read about my whole experience here and check out more of the class’ best photo blitz pictures here on Flickr.

Speaking of Flickr, this week we had to “pimp” our Flickr out. One thing I did to my Flickr was create sets, I have 3 now. One of my sets is called best of Miss Runner Bug. This set will be a collection of the pictures that I think are my best. I will continue to add to it every week {right now I just have one picture} even if the picture wasn’t for DS 106. I even figured out how to embed a set into a blog post and created a tutorial on how to link Flickr and WordPress together. It is just a little tutorial because I wanted to get my feet wet with making a tutorial. After I created that one, I made this one on how-to: makeup your pet. I hope that others found this tutorial helpful. I find myself looking at tutorials a lot {especially during audio week} so I knew exactly what to include and how specific it needed to be in order for it to actually help somebody out.

This week’s daily creates mostly involved photos because it was visual week. I like when the week’s daily creates have something to do with the topic that we are studying because it gives me more practice that I am not stressed out about. We had to do three daily creates this week. You can see which ones I chose in my daily create post.

Finally, we come to the assignment section of visual week {wahooo!} I had a blast doing the visual assignments! I also had a blast looking at other people’s assignment choices {because we had to pick assignments that totaled 10 stars – we could pick any assignment to get to 10 stars} because everyone’s was different and I enjoyed that! There was one assignment that everyone had to do; the Valentine’s Day caption challenge {which was 2 stars}. We all had to do it because this week was Valentine’s Day!! <3 Here is my post about my Valentine card.

The other assignments {8 stars} were up to us! I couldn’t even pick which ones to do because I loved them all. Can we do another visual week?? First, I chose the splash the color {2 stars}, which I loved doing and I still use my Color Effects app. You can read about my color splash experience here. Next I chose the go vote assignment {2 stars}. I loved this one too because I can use it when I am a teacher with my class as a fun social studies project! Here is my blog post about my voting poster! Next, I chose the makeup your pet {1 star} assignment. I chose to makeup my dog, Lexi {the greatest dog EVER!}. This assignment was silly and fun at the same time. Checkout my creative dog makeup skills… I should probably stick to education, right?? :) Lastly, I chose the A-Z photo collage {3 stars} assignment. I enjoyed doing this assignment because it took creative, “out-of-the-box” thinking. My theme that I stuck to {through A-Z} was education. I thought it paired well with the A-Z photo collage, get it?? My teacher friends will :) It was difficult at times but a good kind of difficult! I love my A-Z education photo collage and I’m sure you will too :)

And that does it, 2+2+2+1+3 = 10 stars worth of assignments!

Overall, this week was great! I learn a lot every week, but this week I learned tips and tricks that will stick with me {even out of DS 106}. I learned tips about capturing moments and effectively conveying the story that you are trying to tell. This knowledge will always be with me and help me take the best pictures that I can. I am sad to leave this week and happy that this week came when it did {after audio week}. Hopefully, we will continue to have visual assignments and daily creates throughout the rest of this course.

Have a great weekend everyone! :)