Here we go! I was most excited to take this Digital Imaging class – I didn’t really know exactly what it was about because it had a very generic class description when I was selecting classes for my schedule…I took a gamble and it’s going to pay off, I think!
This class will focus on the mechanics of digital photography; not necessarily composition, but how, technically, you capture time and create motion in digital photographs. It’s about understanding those techniques. I do plan on taking some more “art” photography classes. I was somewhat curious about why this was a COM class, but it’s obvious to me now…it’s about communicating through digital images. Sooo exciting!
I know nothing about the fine mechanics of photography. About all I know is “put everything on auto” and keep still while shooting. Why foregrounds and backgrounds were blurry, or not blurry, were all things that I didn’t understand were intentional.
If you told me to create that same effect with Photoshop, I could slap a marquee mask around something, run it through a Gaussian blur filter and BOOM! Done. I had no idea how to achieve that same effect (but cleaner) with a camera…now I’m learning how. So my Shoop skills, combined with my newfound camera skills will take me to places I’ve never been before, and that’s always exciting!
The below slides are five of my FIRST EVER photos taken by keeping an eye on exposure, adjusting shutter speed and f.stop for correct exposure (first) then interesting effect using depth of field…which I’m still learning about. These images have only been modified for size – they were shot raw and saved as .png files. They have not been edited, cropped or color-enhanced. Much more to come I’m sure. Stay tuned!
It took 33 years to get me back in school. I graduated from High School in 1983, from my home town of Westerly, Rhode Island. Back then, “computers” were mainframes with CRT (cathode ray tube) terminals. There were no graphics, other than ASCII art.
We were lucky to have gotten a Commodore VIC-20 as a family Christmas present in 1982. That was my real introduction to computers and programming. I spent hours typing line-by-line (scripting, really) in BASIC for the VIC-20 to run a simple game. We had no digital storage. The code and the game were lost when the computer was turned off. I retyped that simple code many times.
In High School I wanted to pursue commercial art but I really wasn’t talented or patient enough with “analog” art. Digital art was really nonexistent, but MTV was. I was driven to leave home when I turned 18, as soon as I was an “adult.” My parents offered to help with college, but that also meant staying home longer. Not gonna happen.
My brother Bob had joined the Navy and traveled far away from home. My next-oldest brother Adam had joined the Air Force. He sent letters and pictures of his adventures. Considering my lack of patience, I decided to join the Air Force, learn a trade/skill, and then leave the military after four years. That was my young goal. I retired in March of 2010 after 27 years serving all over the world. My four-year plan became a 27-year career.
From the beginning of my Air Force career I voluntarily made posters, bulletins and random graphics whenever needed. Personal computing was advancing, and soon rudimentary printing programs were available. I was a natural at layout and design, and enjoyed the ability to spontaneously create. Then along came “the web.”
I was working in Washington DC in the early days of HTML, and was already well along with using Gopher , Archie and Usenet newsgroups. Oddly, in 1992 I thought that HTML would never last. Who would ever want to use a separate, special “viewer” for those HTML documents? A visionary I was certainly not!
My wife and I bought our first digital camera in 2001, while living in Japan. Shortly after, Nokia made a revolutionary cell phone that had a camera built in, of all things. Who would want such a thing? Along with the explosion of digital photography came digital editing and graphics. I took to that like a duck to water.
After 9/11, Congress passed the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which was a three-year scholarship to military members who served during 9/11, with a minimum of three years of active duty service. I transferred with my family to Tampa (MacDill AFB) in 2005. My two daughters would both graduate from Blake High School, just north of the university, and for nearly four years I drove through the UT campus (North Boulevard) on my way to/from my daughters’ school. I thought it was nice campus, uniquely situated in downtown Tampa, a city that I love. I determined that I would attend this school as long as it was eligible under the Post-9/11 GI Bill. More than eligible, it was a “Yellow Ribbon” school, which meant that the school would cover costs above the GI Bill scholarship for the scholarship’s duration. I was sold.
UT also offered a unique degree program that piqued my interests immediately: Bachelor of Art in New Media Production. This program, spanning multiple disciplines, was exactly what I was searching for. With focus areas in digital art, music, photography, creative writing and videography, I am in heaven. Sometimes I wish I could attend full time. Unfortunately, I do have a family and bills to pay, so I must continue working while I attend college as a non-traditional student. However, I am very excited to explore all these topics and channel my unleashed creativity towards so many things I am curious about. And, hopefully one day, I can put all of this learning to use in my own creative business effort – whatever that may be.
That’s how I got here. But where I’m going is to be determined. I am so looking forward to figuring that out.
This project had me stumped for a little while. I had no trouble finding a book – I chose “The Linux Internet Server” published in 1997. It was the first edition of this book. I never read it. It was part of one of those “clubs” that were all the rage back in the ’80s and ’90s. Sign up and pay like $20 for the initial offer and receive a stack of selected tech books, plus the offer of another book each month at retail cost. Buy three books then quit any time. That’s what I did. This particular book also came with a CD full of Linux server software – cutting edge stuff at the time. The book, and accompanying CD have never been touched. I’ve been carrying this book around for nearly 20 years without ever cracking the binding. And it’s so completely out of date. I also had a printed copy of “The Internet Yellowpages” first edition…no idea where that went. We were so confused about the Internet back then, thinking that we could fit it into our model of printed yellow pages…like that could be some authentic source of directory information…how far we’ve come.
Enough about the book…I had developed a great idea for my time-based flip-book. The animation would start with a seed, a simple brown dot on the page, then grow into a tree…with it being close to Halloween, the tree would morph into a skeletal hand after losing its foliage. The hand would then “hatch” a pumpkin from between its fingers. The pumpkin would grow into a Jack-o-Lantern, mounted on the tree/hand. The hand would then morph into a skeletal creature with a Jack-o-Lantern head, then run back to a single-point perspective, ending as a brown dot, just like how the animation started. Unfortunately, I never got past the tree.
No excuses – I simply lost interest. I was totally consumed by the following Grid Art project (Hendrix piece) – that piece was not transportable, but I intend to redo the piece with 1-inch square glass tiles rather than the squished marbles. I think that concept will work out much better.
So, here it is…my time-based media project, in all its glory…
For this final project I studied several “deconstruction” videos to learn about developing a surreal mood with simple video work. Fortunately I had a few good subjects to work with. Morgaine graciously allowed me to user her spiders as subject matter, and I was able to use their sounds (heavily amplified) to set the dreamy/nightmarish mood for the piece. The piece simulates sleep dream-state, in that you can recognize shapes, images and voices, but they are distorted by other subliminal natural background sounds in sleep…heartbeat, breathing, etc.
As to the title, “Fear Is Relative,” the spiders’ actions in these clips are all defense actions brought on by fear, intrusion into their calm habitat. Many of us are afraid of spiders, bugs and other “slimy” creatures, but the case is always the opposite. They are fearful of us, and act in a frightening manner, intending to scare the intruder away from their tranquil space. In that regard, fear is relative to the actor, not the observer. Viewing this video without any embellishments tells a completely different story of two very frail arachnids trying to protect themselves from intrusion into their homes, in the only way they know how.
The video was recorded with a GoPro Session camera. Audio was recorded with a TASCAM DR-40. Video and audio were heavily modified, looped and overlaid on multiple tracks using Adobe Premiere CC.
I thoroughly enjoyed this ART 211 class. I thought the projects and blog assignments built upon each other, and more importantly, pushed and encouraged me to focus my creativity on projects that were completely different from anything traditional. I was encouraged to take risks and push boundaries. I loved it.
For my performance art piece I wanted to go to a place that had a large audience doing something else, and act as a distraction to what was already going on. My friends had told me of an open air market that occurs on the first Sunday of every month, in Hyde Park Village square. That’s where I headed. I also decided to bring balloons with me just as something extra to attract attention, and I thought that the extra prop would more accepting than just wandering aimlessly around…
I suited up in a full body “second skin” green suit, which is definitely odd enough to attract a lot of attention. The green suit was also assuring in that I was completely anonymous. I did post on Facebook that I would be there, hoping to get videos from my friends that I could incorporate. That didn’t happen, but just as well because the footage was really unnerving to me afterwards, and I’m okay with my friends not participating in my spectacle.
My wife filmed, and as she was filming she picked up a lot of comments, mostly from men, and mostly derogatory…”creeper” and “awkward” and “weird.” I did think about handing out my balloons to kids along the way, but after a few shrieks, I thought otherwise. The women in the crowd seemed to be much more accepting.
For the most part, folks just went about their own business, some waved, a lot laughed, shook their heads or other…no one was aggressive or threatening.
While I was walking around I felt a bit odd, but also comfortable and somewhat liberated in doing something that was so completely out of the ordinary. Now that I’m done with this piece, however, I really feel like I need to get back into the shape I was when I was much younger. The green suit was wholesomely unflattering.
I hope you enjoyed the video…now I must hit the gym! Maybe I’ll do this little exercise again when I have a better physique.
I’ve been a fan of electronic music for many years, but had no idea there were so many genres in this style of music. I was first turned on to this style back in 1998, with the release of Crystal Method’s Vegas, which was released in 1997. I was hopelessly addicted to High Roller from that album, and still to this day consider it to be one of my favorite tracks. The Crystal Method is what I consider the most fundamental, early standard-bearers of the Electronic DJ Culture. Their driving beats blended with synthesizers along with sample arrangements are perfectly placed and provide an amazing layered soundscape.
ELECTRONIC – PRODUCER/DJ CULTURE: The Crystal Method – Trip Like I Do
Another favorite electronic Big Beat duo from the UK is full of layered samples from popular culture, perfectly arranged, is The Propellerheads, and their 1998 release Decksanddrumsandrockandroll. They had a great crossover hit “History Repeating” featuring the legendary Shirley Bassey, who contributed samples (Strong). The Propellerheads fused Big Beat with Jazz on this track. Their use of technology in blending an “old” style of music with synthesizers is why I chose this track for the Nineties category. The nineties seemed to be when crossover styles were most accepted, in my opinion.
Strong, Martin C. (2000). The Great Rock Discography (5th ed.). Edinburgh: Mojo Books. pp. 778–779. ISBN1-84195-017-3.
NINETIES: Propellerheads – History Repeating
I was immersed in New Wave while I was in the US Air Force, stationed in the UK from 1986 to 1989. While I was there, New Wave was really all anyone listened to. It was the prime of my young adulthood, clubbing every weekend and staying up ’till the sun-up, drunkenly running the streets looking for Doner Kebap trucks and trying to stay away from bar/pub brawls between American and British youth. New Wave was all the rage. There’s so many artists to choose from, but if there’s one artist who embraced and pushed technology boundaries, he would be Peter Gabriel. His video Sledgehammer from So was the most cutting edge use of stop-motion at the time, winning several awards. According to Wikipedia, Sledgehammer was the most played video on MTV (as of 2011) and declared the best animated music video of all time.
Also in my younger days I was attracted to Industrial Metal; the harder the better, for the shock value of all that sonic fury. During those days my favorite Industrial group was Ministry, with its grinding beats and walls of sound. I was also decidedly “anti establishment” at the time, the late nineties. The more I could shock with my choice of music, played loudly, the better I felt. This was a hard stance to have, still serving in the Air Force, but it was fun. Further, that was just the beginning of American military participation in the Middle East. It fit my attitude at the time. I did grow out of that phase many years ago, but still revisit those songs for fun every now and again. Oddly, this choice is fitting for today. Ministry’s use of video mashups and audio samples along with heavily distorted metal guitar riffs and drums is the reason why I chose them for this category.
INDUSTRIAL: Ministry – New World Order
My final genre that I love listening to is Psychedelia. Two favorite bands of mine are Porcupine Tree and Ozric Tentacles. It was hard to decide which band to highlight here, but I chose Ozric Tentacles. They tend to stretch into psychedelic territory more with their wandering jazzy lines and wide use of electronic synth along with analog instruments in tight formation. Their use of technology woven in with musical arrangement is really astonishing and easy to listen to for days. Their arrangements are not intended to shock, but more to stretch one’s mind into new places through layered synth sounds and constantly changing syncopated beats.
I hope you enjoyed my breakdown of the electronic music I listen to. I continue to revisit these bands and many others often while I’m designing and building new web sites.
This latest art project was to create a fictional magazine cover, of our own idea and design. I thought of four different concepts, but settled on another idea I had to showcase Morgaine and her Lolita style.
“Lolita” is a niche fashion style from Japan styled after Victorian and Edwardian era clothing. Lolita fashion has no ties to the same-named novel by Vladimir Nabokov, nor does it have any of that story’s connotation. To learn more about the Lolita FASHION culture, here’s a good link.
Once again I asked Morgaine to pick out one of her wardrobes and I toted her downtown to shoot some poses outside the Tampa Museum of Art. It was a sunny day and I wanted bright, but not direct sunlight. That location has lots of high overhangs and frosted glass panels to reflect lots of natural light, but no direct harshness. It’s like semi-shade everywhere.
I also wanted to create a masthead style that would be recognizable as a fashion magazine but unique, minimal and modern. The element of the reduced-size O, with the word “STYLE” inside developed over a couple of days of tinkering.
Once I settled on the masthead, I followed with styling the article titles, spine and other miscellaneous pieces. The price, $19.93 is Morgaine’s birth year. The bar code was generated by an online bar code generator with its defaults, TEC-IT.
Masking, a soft peach color scheme with a very minor radial gradient, soft shading and some adjustment layers completed the cover. I extended the cover’s background color to the spine for continuity.
This project also has a back cover, and that was to be a simple advertisement for something related to the magazine. I put together a simple advertisement for Morgaine’s favorite Tea Room, coincidentally located in Brandon, close to where we live – The Victorian Grace Tea Room & Gift Shop.
I ran the finished PDF over to Kinko’s to print – I had planned a scant few millimeters over-print so I could mount the finished cover on a Glamour magazine. Wouldn’t you know it, the Kinkos attendant didn’t print all the way to the edge of an 11 x 17 sheet of paper. My overall design was 16.25 x 11, with maybe 1/8 inch to trim off (planned) – but the finished product left a sliver of white on the covers. I’ll take a hit on that, but it’ll have to do because I’m out of time.
The finished product came out pretty well – to attach the cover, I first used double-sided tape on the spine after I had the cover lined up. Then I used spray adhesive on the front and back covers to make it permanent.
In Digital Art we briefly explored the Art Nouveau genre, and our next digital art challenge was to make a beverage label in the Art Nouveau style. I really enjoy this genre, with its soft colors and articulate drawing combined with subtle shading. Art Nouveau is mostly “flat” with realism coming from detailed subtle pen lines – something I am horrible at – I tend to lean towards the impressionist side of things. Big swaths of color with no boundaries. I like to color outside the lines…
Fortunately, with a little trickery in Photoshop one can turn just about any photo into pseudo line-art, so monkeys like me only need to worry about coloring. Typically one uses the selection tool, selects an area, then fills. Mostly I like to go freehand with lots of layers, switching back and forth between brush and eraser, or masking back and forth.
Yes, that’s real mead, courtesy of Hidden Legend Winery, Victor, Montana.
For my subject beverage, I chose mead. Honey wine. The oldest known beverage of its type. And, since we got our Flowhive, I’ve been researching how to make mead in small batches. A quart of honey will produce a gallon of mead….so once we get our hive rolling, I’m expecting we’ll get enough honey to make a few small batches of mead…just because we can.
I grabbed a bottle (two, actually – one for my art assignment and one for Whit). I wanted to see how my design ideas would complement a real bottle, so I decided not to go with an empty. The title “Harvest Moon” popped in to my head, probably because of this weekend’s “super-moon” and all the noise about it in the news.
One characteristic of Art Nouveau is classically beautiful women in typically alluring or sensual poses. This intent was not “just because” but often because much of this period work was commissioned for advertising. Sex sells. Fortunately, I know a classic beauty or two…I asked the timeless Denicia Conley if I could troll her Instagram feed for a suitable photo (first making sure she’d be okay with contributing to my art assignments). She had modeled for some local designers, so I was pretty sure I could find something suitable.
I thank Hidden Legend Winery for the use of their Pure Honey Mead (it’s a five-star rated mead, BTW) and my pal Denicia Conley for allowing me to get artistic with one of her photos. As always, feedback welcomed.
Copier Art was something completely new and foreign to me. This is a thing? Of course I’d heard of the prank where you climb up on the office copier and photocopy various body parts….ooooh, how risque! Not so much in this day…maybe it’s a fun office holiday party gag. I’d be more concerned about breaking the glass on the copier.
Prof. Roundtree set us on creating a piece with photocopied images of ourselves…ONLY photocopied images – no color, no embellishment of the image(s) themselves. I think the hardest part for most students was finding a copier that someone would let one play with. Fortunately, all I had to do was head in to work on a weekend. The copiers at work are on the smallish side, so no climbing around for me…I just photocopied my face, arms and hands in different positions, then ran four copies of each, which gave me a pretty good stack of material to work with.
What will I create? That was the hardest part for me. With such a “limiting” medium (kidding), I was stymied for a bit…until I remembered an IG post from my pal Jason (https://organicparadox.org, IG: @tincsart) – he was working on a paper bunny mask that was all comprised of geometric shapes. On a whim I Googled “paper masks.” BOOM! The mother-lode, Wintercroft.
Catch of the Day
After looking through the available kits I decided to do the full-sized fish mask (fish head & tail) because I liked its large geometric shape and I thought it would become an interesting canvas for the copier photos. I think it worked out really well.
I printed the pieces on card stock, then glued the copier photos on the pieces with spray adhesive before cutting them out for assembly. I did this step first because I wanted the positioning to be somewhat random, with a jumbled pattern to appear over the form. The black and gray fingers and arms create a strange muddled overlay to the overall form, which actually hides the shapes more and makes it more realistic…but definitely funky. That’s what I was going for. Random. Mission accomplished.
The full form…and my front porch is turning in to my art studio. I still have to finish that Hendrix piece.
This latest assignment focused on Photoshop, working with layer masks. This was a fun project because ERASING is strictly forbidden (automatic fail). All work must be done using layer masks, adjustment masks, etc. I’ve been working with layer masks for quite a while, but I learned several new techniques for this exercise, which made assembling this composite photo happen quickly.
Prof. Tortorelli stressed that he wanted an interesting composition, but be very careful with lighting, so this shoot should be outdoors. I just love all the different modern architecture around Curtis Hixon Park – it was actually really difficult to choose where to shoot – there are so many great spots around the Tampa Museum of Art. I settled on a glass alcove at the museum. Prof. Tortorelli will probably poke at me about the lighting – it became a challenge with clouds moving across the sun, but it was also really interesting with reflections and shadows in that space.
I took maybe 40 photos of Morgaine moving around and posing in the space, and she changed outfits halfway through. As I was putting the composite together, a little story started to emerge around Morgaine’s poses. The eye seems to flow from left to right on this piece, and it tells a story of a relationship, starting together but frail, breaking apart, then two individuals standing alone, but undamaged, ready to move on. That’s what the final photo was telling me.
I really enjoyed doing this piece, and while it seems like it would be difficult to do, it was really quite easy using Photoshop’s massive array of masking tools.
