When I found out that we were doing photography this week, I was understandably excited. I got an amazing Sony Hyperzoom camera for Christmas this year and was excited to experiment some more with it.

Starting off this week, I actually had to go in a different direction for a bit. We were told to pick groups for the radio show that we will be making in Week 8 and I became a member of Digital Dynamite with Amber, Jennifer, Watkins, and Chelsea.

@bellekid @dayeseye @foxylee13 @ampersanddragon @chachachelsea12 The Dynamite is official! Another #ds106 Radio show group named

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) February 17, 2013

I did not receive many comments about my work this week from my group but the ones I got were not all that constructive, they just seemed to praise my work. Although this was nice, I wish that I had been given more advice on how to improve and change my work to make it better. I was excited to see my new groupmates blogs and found myself asking them questions about how they did things and which fonts they used, as I am a bit of a font nerd.

I read over the tips on how to become a better photographer and used them this week. I added the photo I took of the couch to the class Google Doc on How We Are Becoming better Photographers, as I thought about contrast when taking the photo and found it to be unique. I also used the tips on anticipating things that would be happening as well as changing perspectives when shooting photos, which lead to me shooting many photos this week while lying on the floor of my dorm.

I really enjoyed photoblitzing this week, as you can see. It was exciting to make the familiar unfamiliar and find so much beauty and uniqueness at UMW. I guess that I tend to overlook how strange and beautiful the campus looks most of the time so the assignment really opened my eyes.

I spiffed up my flickr page. I’d already made a custom url for it but started to work more on creating photo sets. I made one of just UMW photos, that is photos taken of the exteriors and interiors around campus, which I really like. I also created a Best Of photo set, which includes mostly photos that I took this week but also includes some pictures of my ducks, and wrote a post, explaining why I chose each photo.

All of my daily creates for this week were photography. I explained in the captions for the photos on flickr, my process behind each thing and what each object was. It was neat for me to get to do one of my own Daily Creates, in which I was able to show off the ‘Crayon Scarf’ that I knitted.

This week’s visual assignments were what excited me the most. I completed 11.5 stars worth of them, doing the Valentine’s Caption Challenge (2.5 stars), Mission: Defamiliarize (3 stars), Newspaper Blackout Poetry (3 stars) and Splash That Color (3 stars). I love all the work I did this week, but the taxi photo I did for Splash That Color is my favorite, as it was a photo I took on accident and was able to make into a work of art in a way.

I have realized that it is getting harder to keep using sewing puns, so I have been trying to use other sewing terminology in my post titles, like referencing fabric dying in my Splash That Color post. I am sad to see photography week over but am excited for the designing we will be doing next week.