Here comes my first visual assignment people! DS106 is about to get real!!! Brace yourself!

So I just had class where we got to listen to Professor Alan Levine give us a brief run-down on how to make our photography better. I love taking pictures, but I realize that I am not very good at it, so this was a helpful intro for me. He really highlighted a few techniques to help us improve our shots like the rule of thirds, not using a flash, changing your camera angle, and zooming and cropping details. Hopefully my photography will improve over the next two weeks if I can manage to keep his tips in mind.

During class Professor Groom also went over the whole visual assignment business. How come anytime someone mentions assignments in this class I get severe anxiety?! Deep breathe….. I. Can. Do. This…….

To ease myself into my 10 starts of visual assignments, I’m gonna start now…. with an easy one. Here I go.

“Visualize That Quote”

“Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself” -Jean Anouilh  ( <– in honor of the approaching Valentine’s Day holiday)

"Love is…"

"…above all else…"

"…the gift of oneself."

As stated, my inspiration for this assignment was the kick-in-pants to get to work that going to class just gave me…. also the approach of the highly dreaded Valentine’s Day.

When I first started working on this I was stressed out (also, previously stated). However, looking around on Flickr was actually kind of enjoyable. I had never just looked at what people were posting on the site (because I was so absorbed in my own lack-luster photos), but people have to neat shots! Then I realized that I needed a quote to tell in picture form, so I headed over to the love quotes on Quotations Page. Once I found a quote I liked and felt was doable, I returned back to Flickr to find some suitable pictures. The first problem I encountered was finding pictures that were “all rights reserved.” That was a bummer. However, the annoying factor did remind me to change all my pictures to “creative commons” licensing (which I did immediately). So to avoid the licensing nonsense, I did and advanced search for pictures that were “creative commons” and permitted alterations. Then I started thinking of the ideal images I would want to show the words of the quote. And lucky me, they all already existed!!! Yippy! So I plucked them off the Interwebs and saved them to my computer. A few captions and a blog post later….

TA DA!!! Did that just happen?! Two stars! Woooo!! (Excuse Me!)