Jens Risom~Prezi

https://prezi.com/a6biryzn13di/jens-risom/

Portrait Inquiry ~ Pinterest Storyboard

https://www.pinterest.com/fatcats105/portrait/

Portrait Lighting~ Steve Carty Assignment

Studio Lighting

    For this situation I used artificial lighting in the studio, I had my subject sit in front of me in the same height chair as me because I wanted the camera angle to be straight on instead of having the camera upwards. The back lights were the same distance from the subject and 4 feet away from the back wall to create the white background in the image. I had someone to hold up the front lighting above my head so that there would be no glare in the subjects glasses. The gold reflector was used in this but I wish that i didn't use it because now looking back at the photos the subject looks to lit, so iIwould of liked to maybe use the white reflector instead especially since there was a lot of lighting used.  The camera was vertical because since the background would be white I wanted to focus more on the subject. I was trying to make the subject to laugh and be happy while I was taking her picture because i wanted the expression on her face to be genuine instead of putting on a fake smile.

Open Shade

This picture was shot outside in the shade of the building using natural lighting, both of us sat down on the ground but this time the camera angle was a bit higher so in the picture the subject is giving more attention to the camera. A white reflector was used to brighten up her face and to give a nice finish to her. I had her sit a couple feet away from the wall so that there could be a bit of depth of field and not have to be crisp as the the attention is on the model.

Open Shade
I took another picture in open shade but this time I had the camera in landscape because I really wanted to get her hair in the shot flowing in the wind. A gold reflector was used for this image but I wish I used a white reflected instead because I feel like the gold is overpowering her skin tone.
Again she is sitting far away from the walls because I want her to be the most in focus. I was able to make a few jokes that made her laugh, so in this picture I was able to capture a genuine smile from her.

DSLR Examples

Fast Shutter Speed

    This photograph represents that a fast shutter speed was used because of how time has been captured and frozen when the bubble was about to be popped. You can see how clean and crisp the image looks instead of it being blurry.






Slow Shutter Speed

     This photo is a great example of what a slow shutter speed with lights looks like. From when the picture was taken at and the amount of seconds after it collects information of the movement. Making the lights look like they are connecting making the image look blurry.







Shallow Depth of Field

      Shallow depth of field is distinctively different than wide depth of field. It works around by only focusing on one object and having everything else to be blurred, usually the object is the closest and if not in front of everything.







Wide Depth of Field


Wide depth of field keeps everything in focus and is usually used for landscape photographs because you want to be able to see every detail.

Photography~Window Light~Natural Sunlight~Open Shadow

Natural Sunlight
I really like how delicate this women looks because of how soft the light is touching her. The composition is nice because it has a nice amount of negative space balancing her out. I would like to capture a photo like this which is very soft and calm looking.















Window Lighting
I like this picture because it is giving off a chill vibe from her facial expression to her hair which looks effortlessly messy. The window light is giving her a nice shadow which is covering half of her face and is making shapes at the back of the wall. This makes the photo more interesting by not just having the model stand there doing nothing but subtly adding more to the picture.












Open Shadow
 I like the models facial expression, she looks mysterious as if she knows something you don't. The wheat in front of her adds more mystery since it is covering most of her body and a bit on her face. from the background you can tell the sun is starting to set and since she is facing away from the light she is creating a subtle shadow on herself instead or harsh direct sunlight.

Music Videos Over The Past 3 Decades

1. Looking at a couple videos from the 1980s-2000s there is a noticeable change throughout them. There are many different components as to how and why the videos from then have evolved to the music videos we have in the present day. There have been changes in society, the clothing people wear, technology and how important music videos have become in the music industry.

2. I really enjoyed the music video "Take Me On" by ah-Ha, the concept of the comic book coming to life is really interesting and new at that time. The animation looked like it was well thought out and prepared to make. The concept was like when you have a daydream and you become part of another reality. When the girl was reading the comic she became part of it it and when the waitress came back she threw away the paper it resulted different stories from the pages to combine with each other. I find this entire plot to be very interesting and it really got my attention when viewing it for the the first time.

3. When watching videos from each decade it started to get easier to identify when the music video was made in. Some characteristics that would give it away would be the clothing choices, the environment, and the lighting used. Before i personally noticed that in the video there was nothing too crazy it was more of just the artist singing the song and having a couple other elements to it. This was mostly because not a lot of people had access to watch the videos whenever they wanted so videos weren't as intricate. But now music videos are seen differently because  they have now shifted to a form of entertainment for the viewers. Especially since people only have a small attention span music videos are now made either really controversial or have been put a lot of effort to keep the viewer watching which also gets them more views on the internet.

4. What sets Arcade Fire's video from the rest is how interactive it is for the viewers. The video is shown through the computer screen like it would be yourself controlling the video with new tabs opening up and closing. It is something different that was executed nicely.

5. I believe that the artists who are well known will keep trying to make music videos controversial or show a lifestyle that not everyone can have to create more of a fantasy feeling for the viewers. But i have recently seen a lot of cool videos from bands that aren't as well known because i think that getting popular is on their list but not their main goal so they are able to get more creative with their music videos. So to conclude music videos will differ based on the category they are in but i do believe that somewhere in the future they will get better.

Portrait Assignment~ Direct Sunlight/ Window light/ Open Shade

Direct Sunlight
This is an example of direct sunlight because my subject was facing the sun directly giving him harsh shadows on his face creating contrast. There is a building to the right and with the sun rising it casted a shadow leading to his clothing. The contrast matches with the brick wall behind him giving more attitude to the picture, since most of his face has a shadow on it.

Window Light

This is my example of a window lighting photograph. I had the model face away from the window so that the light looks soft as it lightens up her silhouette. My favourite thing about this picture is that  her braids are being lit up and it gives the illusion of a halo on her. I find this picture to seem very calm but dark at the same time because of all the shadows that have been casted. Also she is slightly off centre which is more appealing to the eye instead of her wing placed in the centre.

Open Shade
This photo represents open shade. The model is leaning against the wall looking directly into the camera, she looks very natural and seems like she is thinking about something. This image would apply for the rue of thirds as she is on the left side and that eye level would be on the top of the imaginary line making this picture pleasing to the eye. Also I like how all of the colours shown in this image go well together and doesn't have any colour that is too distracting.

"What to Do About Online Art Theft & Plagiarism" ~ Response

Art theft and plagiarism isn't necessarily new because it has been apart of history for a long time, but back then it was common for artists to recreate paintings but you knew who the original artist was. Nowadays many artist's post their work online thinking it will make them become known for their work, but instead a lot of big companies are now stealing smaller artist's work without giving them credit.

Instead of the companies actually hiring designers and pay them to give them an original design they prefer to steal it from someone online. Usually when this happens the artist doesn't have a lot of money, and if they would want to sue the company they would lose because they would hire the best lawyers against the artist. In no way is it okay to steal someones work even if you really like it, its better for you to contact the artist directly and ask if you can use it and credit them or even better to pay them for their work.

A popular way for the artist to bring awareness to the stolen artwork is for them to shame the company on social media to make them look bad. this usually happens by the artist to do an interview with newspapers because any news for them is valuable. But only sometimes they enough awareness to get their copied artwork taken down. I know that Snapchat has stolen makeup artists looks for their filters and that the artist have spoken out on social media about this problem and fortunately Snapchat have seen the complaints and apologised and have taken down the stolen work. But that doesn't happen most of the time.

There are many articles that want to help artists to protect their work when its published online here are the 7 steps to help prevent stolen artwork.
1. You need to be aware of your country's copyright laws.
2. You need to monitor all of your online artwork.
3. Locate stolen artwork.
4. See what you could gain .
5. Gather evidence.
6. Send a cease and desist letter.
7. Class action lawsuit.

Helvetica Movie Quote

"And I think I'm right calling Helvetica the perfume of the city. It is just something we don't notice usually but we would miss very much if it wouldn't be there."

~Lars Müller~

   I chose this quote because I feel like it best represents what everyone truly feels about the font Helvetica. It has invaded the world, every where you look it's being used. From company's names to magazine articles, it has now become the "professional" default font for any creation. Most people can identify when it is used on the streets without actually acknowledging it. But if one day everyone stopped using it, we would miss it as the quote says. It has become part of our daily lives, and it has now become normal for us to see it.

Make It Better~ Kinetic Typography

      This video  I chose to write about is called " Make It Better", this is the video that caught my attention the most to write about. It is a very simple concept that only has one statement that says "I'm gonna make it better" which it first starts out with just the changing of regular fonts then it turns into different positions, different colors etc. I like this video because it shows that trial and error is the only way to get better when doing something, which did inspire me to do my best. I find this video to be very crisp and clean it is very visually appealing. Every time there is a big change a different sound is played to emphasize the change/movement at 0:21 is an example of when the letter m turns into a balloon like and the sound of blowing a balloon is played to be more realistic.

       One of the first principle of design examples was at 0:21 seconds and it is anticipation because the m in "I'm" made the sound of a balloon being blown up and then turns into a big blob, after that you don't know whats going to happen next. At 0:40 seconds squash and stretch was used when changing the shape of the letters making it seem more interesting. At 0:48 seconds secondary action is used with the two different statements, the difference of the fonts collide and make a mix between them both. Another example is at 0:54 when the drop of black, drops on to the top of the statement and bleeds down giving the words more dimension.

Tattered Seams- poster and t-shirt

Poster

1. My thought process for the Tattered seams poster was that with the information given about the play I knew that the tiger had in an important role on the plot of the play. I wanted the poster to reflect the play but without using a character because I didn't want to exclude any character, so I chose to use the head of a tiger raring to show anger that goes through the play. Also I find that the head of a tiger is more captivating than a person. I also wanted to add a circus tent somewhere on the poster so I first added a full tent but it didn't feel like it had unity to it so I decided to have the points of  the tent to show but have the rest of it run off the page. I found that by making this decision it had more unity because your eye would look from one point of the tent to the next because of the red and white of the tent and then goes to the tiger.

2. The colors chosen for the poster is the realistic color choice of a tiger which is a yellow orange. So for the background I decided to go for a complimentary color  that is a dark purple almost navy blue to show a higher contrast of the design which makes it more noticeable to catch the attention of someone for when its up on the hallway. I chose the font color to be yellow because if I did it white it would have taken away the focus off the white stripes of the tent, therefore losing the unity created.

3. The technical procedure of creating the poster was to use Adobe Illustrator because I knew that it would be more efficient if I just made it myself because I feel more comfortable with using Illustrator then Photoshop. I went on Google and searched up cartoon tent and cartoon tiger. Then traced over it and played around with the sizing. 

4. I am very pleased with how my poster turned out the color choices that I made stand out  enough to grab your attention which is the main purpose of a poster. I also like the way everything is placed makes it look really appealing because it is balanced since all of the writing goes down the centre.

https://prezi.com/tqtzthurcsmi/art-deco-first-made-it039s-appearance-in-france/

Tutorial for a Double Exposure on Photoshop

        In this tutorial it teaches you how to do a double exposure in Photoshop with two images. The most common images used to create this effect is using a side portfolio of a person on a white background and nature as the second image. The first step is to separate the person from the background, using the channel with the most contrast it was duplicated by dragging it into the new icon. then go to Image>Adjustments>Levels then move the mid tones and shadows sliders towards the right to dramatically darken the image without having the darkness move to the background. After with the brush tool in black the remaining highlighted area was painted black. Click RGB layer to return to the normal, after Select> Inverse, then paste the clipping onto a new layer and fill in the background with white. Then apply a mask to the landscape and CMD+Click the thumbnail of the portrait layer, then apply a layer mask to the clip of the landscape. Adjust the image of the landscape to get the part of the image you want to show in the portrait. Go back to the original portrait and have it be B&W, then have a soft brush filled with black to reveal more of the landscape for the desired look. Then the eyedropper was used to find a colour from the sky to use to fill in for the background.

        I found this video to be a bit complicated since I am not 100% familiar with Photoshop up to date. So to me I found the video to go too fast and it was hard to follow along with all the steps. But I do find this Double Exposure technique to be very interesting and artistic, and that this can be used for many things.

Masking in Photoshop

        This was a quick assignment which was to help us refresh our memory on how to use masks in Photoshop for another upcoming assignment. We were told to choose a picture of a famous person that we like or dislike, I chose Lana Del Rey because no one else came to mind. Then we were to find a new image which would be suitable as a new background image for the celebrity. In my case I chose the image of a park because I thought that it would match with the image of Lana and look the most realistic.

        I first placed the image of the park in the Photoshop tab, I then created a new tab and dragged the image of Lana so that I have more control of what will be "masked". I placed the white mask over Lana, I then used the pencil brush with the colour black which will reveal the new background (the park). I would also switch to the brush in white if I made a mistake (e.g if I erased some parts of Lana's body it would appear again) and  I would change the size of the brush as I went along the outline of the body. As I did this assignment I would remind myself that white conceals and black reveals. I then dragged the tab where masked Lana's image and placed it onto the tab where the background photo is.  I also would have the brush to have a soft edge, this technique was used so that when I used the pencil in black Lana's body can somewhat blend into the background. To try and minimize the appearance that there are actually two different images and not just one. When I finished using the mask I just readjusted the sizing so that she doesn't look out of place in the background.

That is how I ended up with this finished result.

Pixel Portrait

GIF 

PNG

Technical Procedure

        The first step I took was to find a picture of myself that would have strong shadows so that my end result can look as close to the original photo as possible. The file created in Photoshop had a total of 100 x 150 pixels, RGB color, 72 dpi and a white background.  I then placed the photo on the white background. I then created different layers on top of the picture and labeled it the corresponding names. Since my photo has a lot of different shades it was difficult for me to find a correct color match, so I used the eyedropper tool to find the right shade. Then I would use the pencil tool in 1 pixel to color on the white background and  trace the existing shadows from the original photo. The way I achieved my final result was that every time there was a slight color change I would go back to the eyedropper, get the new shade and continue coloring in. I found that that was the best way to achieve the 3-D affect that I was looking for, it did take a bit longer but the I'm pleased with the final result.

Characteristics

       Since my face doesn't have any prominent features I decided to pay more attention to the detail of the shirt, face and hair. If  I didn't pay attention to everything then the end result could of been anyone. I really focused on getting an even gradient on my cheeks  and under eyes because that is one of the features that do stand out the most if I had to choose something from my face. The shirt was filled in with more detail, because I felt like that would make the image look even more 3-D.

File Format

        The last instruction for this assignment was to export the file as a .gif and as a .png and upload it to our blog and compare them. To me I don't see a difference, there is no color change, the position stayed the same in both the .png and the .gif.

Chinese Watercolour

          Chinese watercolour painting was a very popular and loved style of painting thousands of years ago in China. There are many different categories with this medium but one of the most painted categorise was the Flower and Bird.  It consisted of having one to three birds in the painting accompanied by a blossom tree or different kinds of flowers.  The colour pallet of these paintings consist of bright colours with a white background. For this style it is acceptable to add nothing to the background, but as a result the flowers and the birds have to be carefully placed to create a flow in the painting.  

    The image to the right is an example of Chinese watercolour in the categories of Flower and Bird. When painting in this style it is critical to plan out where everything is going to be placed. Composition and Space play a big role in the creation of the painting. The first Blue Jay is placed as if it is looking up and the tail is towards the left corner of the paper which minimizes the negative space, the flower on the right corner balances and compliments the tail of the bird. The second bird  also occupies the negative space that was in the middle. The paper usually used is pulp and bark it allows more paint to be used as the wood absorbs the water and doesn't leave a wavy texture, if regular paper would of been used. There are different types of brushes used but the most common one has a finer tip which gives a wide range of variations of lines for the artwork. In this painting the brush was used to create shading texture and lines in the making of the bird and flower. Lastly the painter thinks carefully where they are going to sign there name because it can either add beauty to it or it can throw off the the flow of the artwork. They seal it with a bright red, in this painting the seal looks like its part of the flowers.

Thank you for reading my first post in year 2!