Photoblitz Activity : I really enjoyed doing this activity.  It really got me to thinking about how to rearrange different objects to create photos.  I did this activity in my room where there was a lot of things that I could play around with and such.  I think the hardest picture for me to capture was to make an ordinary picture look interesting almost super natural.  For this I took a picture of my tape dispenser in the dark trying to capture a different look for it.  I did not end up using the photo as my best work.   While doing this assignment I tried to think of the photography tips that were listed in the Week 5 announcement post.

Best of Flickr Set : I really enjoyed learning more about Flickr.  I enjoyed creating a Flickr set of my best work and after I completed my visual assignments and my photoblitzing assignment for this week I then added more photos to my Best Work Flickr Set.  I really liked how I can organize my pictures so people can see my best photos.  I like how it is embedded as a slide show in my post Best Set Flickr which is linked above.  Throughout the week while I was working on my visual assignments I added more pictures to my Best Work on Flickr.  I like how that throughout the year  I will be able to add more photos to my best work on Flickr.

3 Daily Creates:

1. September 26, 2012: Bald is beautiful.  Photograph the egghead in your life:

So I know already that the Daily Create is supposed to be something that you take a picture of that same day and all, but I honestly don’t know any bald people who live close enough to me that I can get their picture today, and I didn’t have any eggs around. So this picture was taken awhile ago.  It is of my cousins baby girl who is about 7 months old.  But it shows how even though her hair hasn’t grown in yet she is still beautiful.

2. September 27, 2012: Draw an abstract picture of your favorite animal.

This time I actually drew a picture for today’s drawing.  I felt like it would be easier to draw an abstract picture of my favorite animal than to draw one on paint.  My favorite animal is a dog.  This image looks like my dog that I submitted to the daily create about drawing a picture of someone you miss.  For this I had limited color options.   I only had colored pens with me when I was drawing this picture.  What I did though was color in the dog differently with the same color.

3. September 28, 2012: Take a picture of advertising that has been painted onto a building.  The older the better.

For this daily create I took a different spin on it.  This is not a painted advertisement, but it is drawn with chalk.  I feel like since this is drawn with chalk under some shelter, that it is more permanent like a painted advertisement. I walk by this picture every day on campus walk, and I know it’s an advertisement for Young Life.  I was somewhat involved in young life when I was in high school when two of my friends introduced me to it, and I really enjoyed being a part of it.  I know lots of people will think that this is just a drawing but it is actually an advertisement as well.

I have still been enjoying the daily creates and I always look forward each day to see what I have to do for the week.  Following the Daily Create on twitter is how I usually find out what I should do for the day.  This is helpful for when I am not near my computer but I can look on my phone and then think of ideas of how to do my daily create for the day.

10 stars worth of Visual Assignments: 

This week I did 5 Visual Assignments that added up to 10 stars. For my visual assignments I did one 3 star activity, one 1 star activity and three 2 star activities. So 3 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 10! Below are links to the separate blog posts I did for each assignment.  On each post there is a link to the assignment as well as the star value they are worth.  I really enjoyed doing these assignments because I like taking pictures of things and these assignments helped me learn a little more about photo editing.

The visual assignments I did were:

1. Splash the Color– 2 Stars

2. Newspaper Blackout Poetry– 3 Stars

3. An Album Cover– 2 Stars

4. Common Everyday Object– 2 Stars

5. When Unicorns Explode– 1 Star

I really liked how this week I was able to choose which assignments I wanted to do rather than have assignments chosen for me.

Weekly Reflection:  I  cannot believe that it has already been 5 weeks into this class.  I really have enjoyed the visual storytelling unit.  I actually enjoyed it more than the audio unit.  I really liked how this week I could pick my own assignments from the assignment repository  I like how I can choose what assignments I can do and what I will have time to do throughout the week.  I think my favorite visual assignment was Splash the Color.  I really liked it because I used it to mean something a little more personal to me than just a random object that needs color.   My other favorite assignment was An Album Cover because I liked how I can take someone elses photo (licensed under creative commons of course) at random and make it my own.  Photoblitzing was also fun for me, for that assignment I thought about the photography tips that were listed in the week 5 post.  I always have enjoyed taking pictures of different things, but reading the photography tips have helped me think about taking better pictures. The photography tips gave me a new outlook on taking photos because usually I just take snap shots of things and don’t think much of it.  But now I am thinking about techniques on how to take a better picture of a certain object.  I guess the only unfortunate thing for me is that I only have the camera on my phone, so I have limited zooming options and I cannot change lenses so I just have to focus more on how I’m going to take the picture.  I’m really looking forward to see what we’ll be learning for week 6.  This class has taught me so much about digital storytelling than I have ever known before.

To end my weekly reflection I want to make a note about the radio show.  I’m really excited to be part of group 1, I think it’ll be a great group.  This project is going to be a lot of work but I think after it all comes together it’ll be great.  This week Alex already made a post on what theme we decided on and the format of our show. We have chosen to do the autumn theme and include real stories throughout the show.  This week already we have been communicating on Canvas and twitter, and we are planning to get together to meet in person on Monday (10/1) so we can get a start on our radio show.  I am really glad that as a group we decided to meet in person, I think it’ll make things a lot easier and I’ve never done a group project before without ever meeting the people in the group to talk about what needs to be done.  I’m looking forward to meeting my group and it’ll be nice to see the people who I am taking this class with.