Blog Prompts #5, 6, 7, and 8

Because I'm a Harry Potter fan, I have to mention (have to) the Harry Potter books use of the word "dark" to basically mean "not the good guys".The evil wizards are called "Dark wizards" that use "Dark magic". I never really thought about why anybody ever uses the word dark rather than evil when the Dark wizards are so clearly evil (but is it?). Sometimes dark is another word for misguided. Whenever a character is called 'dark', then the story pretty much has to explain how the character became that way. When a dark loner character comes into play, the reader is instantly interested in the dramatic history that obviously led to that characters current characteristics.

Seeing in the dark is not as easy as seeing in the light. People are generally more comfortable in the light because they know what is happening. I think the metaphors for light and dark work the same way as light or lack of light. When a photograph is dark, it is harder to see and the viewer questions what is in the darkness. With light, they are comforted because there are no surprises.

Today I was riding my bike on the sidewalk on campus. I always, or at least usually, ride my bike on the sidewalk. I do so because cars are big and scary and I don't trust them. Two people I know have gotten hit by cars while riding their bicycles in the past year (luckily both wear helmets and because of that are okay). I've ridden my bike around campus for years. I always have. It's come to my attention that apparently one isn't supposed to ride a bike on the sidewalk. It's not a law, as far as I can tell, but just a courtesy because pedestrians only like looking straight. I don't ride fast past people, I intentionally try not to alarm them if I feel like they don't hear my coming (the ones wearing headphones), and nobody ever glares at me or anything. I pass tons of other bicyclists and pedestrians and everyone seems fine. Today I was riding my bike past a set of parents on campus and the woman crossed to the other side of the sidewalk without looking. There had been plenty of room to pass, but not anymore and I squeezed the breaks and said, "oooo, watch out!"

"Bikes are for roads, not sidewalks," the man said.

I wasn't very far ahead, but I turned around and said, "I find cars scarier." I guess both of the things I said could be taken as giving attitude. I guess. I didn't intend it that way.

I was already away when I heard the guy yell, "So don't tell us to watch out!"

This is one of those situations where I can tell that no matter who I tell this story to (besides Zach Colman, opinion writer for the State News two years ago), they're going to disagree with me. Everybody I know walks and probably doesn't like bicyclists, or they're bicyclists who use the road. I'm alone. But cars go at least 25 mps if they're following the speed limit and pedestrians go 3 mps and I probably go around 10 mps (I looked up average speed, which is 13-15, and I ride really slow, not necessarily by choice, but because my bike is a piece of junk and sometimes the pedals just stop and I have to walk the rest of the way). If my speed were closer to that of a car, then heck yes, I would ride in the street, and I do sometimes when I want to go fast. But when I it's rainy or it's snowy or I'm carrying stuff then I don't really feel like going in the street with the cars that are probably not obeying the speed limit.

So I feel in the dark because I know no one will agree with me and I don't know why.

However, ten minutes after whizzing past the sincere and friendly parents, I saw a boy with a Gryffindor scarf and I told him I liked his scarf and he smiled really widely and thanked me and I felt super light! I smiled to myself and suddenly felt like I could ride my bike faster, which I did because there were no pedestrians ahead of me for at least a quarter of a mile. There were lots and lots of cars in the street, I might add.

To completely change the subject for prompt #8, the artist within the required reading that I find interesting is Henry Peach Robinson. I feel like we share many of the same interests in photography. We both like to create scenes that never actually happened. I like to do it in the form of posters and a "key art" type of feel. His were photographs of people, acting as if they were real. And example of one is title Bringing Home the May.

Bringing Home the May is comprised of nine negatives! I can tell there's someone not quite real-looking about it, but it's still an amazing image! The fact that he did this with negatives and no feather tool!

When the Days Work is Done is also an amazing image made up of five negatives, shot on different days.

People really despised the way he put together his images. They felt it was a lie and false. People felt that photography told the truth, and if it didn't, then it wasn't good photography. Robinson's images did not tell a direct truth, and thereful he lived through much criticism of his work. But I feel he was very talented.

Vision Alterations: digital pinhole camera = very very cool

I was scared to make my digital camera into a pinhole camera because a lot of students were getting dust on their sensors. Another student said there was a simple device one could use to get it off (very simple device). But I don't own that device, so I was still very very careful. I read online to poke a hole in tinfoil because then it would be a super tiny hole whereas a super tiny hole in cardboard would be more difficult to create. However, I taped my cardboard with a needles-width hole in it to my camera and took a picture. At first it came out completely black, so did the next couple. I'd spent a long time package-taping this board to my camera, so I was determined to have a blurry picture! I pointed it at the ceiling light and voila! And image! And it was relatively in focus too, so I decided to not even add tin foil yet.
After that my pictures became less and less pinhole-y-type pictures (except they were still a bit out of focus). I took several pictures of myself because that was more interesting that pictures of pumpkins and old artwork to me. I had to shine a light very close to my face for the shoot because the lens is so tiny, not a lot of light passed through. I was amazed at how clear my pictures were until I removed the pinhole lens and replaced with my normal lens and took a picture of my nose. I was so amazed at the detail!

I covered the lens with torn up tin foil just to see if the shiny material would affect the way light enters the pinhole. It didn't really affect it the way I thought it would, but it did cover up a lot of the frame in a very interesting way. I took several images and when the exposure was longer, you could see the texture of hte tin foil, but when the exposure was shorter, the tin foil was just a black area. Both ways were interesting to me.

Time to Think About the Future

I forgot to bring the Windex, and didn't notice when the scanner would become dirty. However, my sweater proved to be a crucial friend whenever I would notice the smudges.

Regardless, for not coming as prepared as I would have liked (not only did I forget my wallet (I was going to buy transparent sheets in the art store), but I forgot my card to get into the room (luckily people were all over the building and I got in just fine). I live just to darned far away (not really) to go back to get these things. Part laziness, part I have a dinner party to go to tonight and I don't want to be late, but mostly it was that I can't stand a wasted trip - using up the gasoline and time - when it was very likely I could use the ingredients I brought with me.






So when I set up the scanner to prepare my project, I only had a CD case (transparent), petroleum jelly, dusting powder, and my time-turner. I'm surprised that I actually like a lot of the pieces I made. I brought the CD case because when I go into interviews, I often bring a CD with my digital portfolio on it (although a hard copy is better, I hear), so to be a jewel case, or what goes in it, is my work, which represents me, or rather, what I can do for an employer. But I don't know what the future is going to be like at all. Despite what hopefully is a well-rounded background, I don't know what I'm doing.

I didn't have the transparency paper to smear the petroleum jelly on, I instead put it into the CD case, which worked about wonderfully because it really shows how I have no idea if the piece that represents me to a potential employer is clear or not, if it really shows me, or if it just kind of shows me. Another way of looking at it is that the portfolio is my gateway to my future, but I can't really see what my future is. Whatever my future is, however, my portfolio is a major factor in getting me there.

The time-turner, along with of course representing my somewhat unnatural love of the Harry Potter story, represents my preoccupation with time. Like most people, I calculate how much time I should spend on this project, and then this project, and then this project. The time-turner also represents how my time at college is ending very soon. I'm looking forward to getting a job, but I love college and I know I will miss it. So the time-turner represents my diminishing time of college, but also the amount of time I devoting my preparing for my future.

The last one is when I realized I still hadn't used the baby powder. I sprinkled it on there and did a scan with my face over the powder, but I'm reading A Million Little Pieces, and the powder reminded me too strongly of drugs. But when I started cleaning off the powder, I thought it looks really cool, so I did a scan of that with my hand in it.

Blog Prompt # 1, 2, 3, 4

The way we see the world seems like it should stay consistent, but I think what we see changes all the time. It can change from what we put over our eyes, on our eyes, or behind our eyes (and by that I mean, what we consume that affects our brains). Although we nearly always see something, we often see that something differently every time. Our brain compensates for differences in lighting and perspective flawlessly, so even if we pass the same bench from left to right every single day, if we should ever pass it from right to left, we would recognize it as the same bench. If one day we pass the bench wearing contacts, and the next glasses, we will still recognize the bench. If we're carrying a large cardboard box passed the bench and only see a portion of it, we still recognize the bench. Depending on how drunk we are passing the bench, we'll still recognize it. I suppose if one is high on drugs, depending on the drug, he or she may not recognize the bench anymore.

I wear both contacts and glasses (I've recently taken to wearing glasses more, but I still wear my contacts because of a conversation in my Comics and Visual Narrative class in which my professor, Ryan Claytor, explained that if you wear glasses often, the character you design of yourself should be wearing glasses. After that conversation, I wore contacts to his class 90% of the time just to be safe), but over Christmas break I forgot to bring extra sets of contacts, and the ones I had been wearing were overdue to be thrown away, so they were highly uncomfortable. I spent nearly a month in glasses save a few days when I attempted to wear the contacts. When I did wear them, it felt that nothing was obstructing my view, but everything was... sharper? Cleaner? I wasn't quite sure. It gave me a headache and I took ibuprofen on the first day.

But to me, when I wear glasses, the slight obstruction of the blurry frames in my field of view, and the less-than-clean lenses make me feel like it's lazy time. Like I should still be in my pajamas. As I'm wearing them more, this feeling is going away, but because for years I wore glasses only at night and in the morning, I don't feel the need to be as productive or energetic while wearing glasses.

I also find that alcohol has a similar effect except that instead of getting clearer, things seem less clear (and the headache is also present) but you can't exactly pinpoint where. The illusion, if that is what it is, is seamless. After having a drink or two I spend a lot of time staring around my field of view trying to find the seams.

My friend also suffers from Who-Knows-What-To-Call-It, a condition where he wakes up paralyzed and hallucinates. Apparently it's an actual thing. I only know of one instance specifically, though he's said it's happened occasionally throughout his life, where he woke up and his ceiling fan turned into hundreds of monsters that zoomed down at him, about to attack, and he can't do anything about it because he's paralyzed. Then a minute later he's okay, but thoroughly freaked out.

I used to consider the idea that blue to me may be pink to someone else, or even something I wouldn't recognize. How strange that way of seeing, but to that person, my way of seeing would be so foreign. I don't actually think this is the case, but it is interesting to think that maybe we do all see differently. Maybe my eyes are closer together than my friend's eyes and she can see a wider field of view than I can. Some people can see farther things clearer and some people can see closer things clearer. I am so near-sighted I can't see clearly beyond four inches from my face. My brother, on the other hand, has one near-sighted eye and one far-sighted eye, so that when others try on his glasses, they can't stand to wear them for too long. Before I had glasses, but my eyesight was worsening, I just assumed that everybody saw things the way I did. I was so confused when I could read the blackboard in class and had to sit in the front row just to follow along in class. Even today neither my glasses nor my contacts ever seem to be as clear as I'd like them to be and I have trouble recognizing faces at a certain distance so that when approaching people wave to me and I don't know how they are until a few awkward seconds later.

And I can't write the prompt without mentioning the woes of watching a movie or T.V. show late at night with the intention of maybe falling asleep during it. Impossible with both glasses and contacts! (Although apparently there are contacts you can sleep in, but just not mine). The glasses completely hinder the ability to lie down one's head on a pillow (I've tried, and as "flexible" as your glasses may seem, they will never be as sturdy afterwords). And sure, I've napped with contacts, but it dries them out and they become suctioned to one's eye and depending on the length of the nap, painful to remove for remoistening. I never wear my contacts all day because they also dry out, so I plan when to wear them depending on how "clearly" I want to see the world (my optometrist insists I can see more clearly with my glasses because it corrects my astigmatism, so I can't understand why I'm more comfortable going to the movies in contacts).

Perhaps I should consider other ways in which one's visual perception is altered. I concentrated mostly on glasses and contacts, but it was still highly relevant to the prompt question (which I know I didn't provide).

Reflections

I've posted these videos before, but I'm posting them again to reflect one what I've learned this semester.

Forgetting Oneself from Kim Berens on Vimeo.

It seems strange, but it feels now like this wasn't my first stop-motion video. It seems like I'd done it before this. When I was making it it didn't seem like I'd done it before this, but now it does. Maybe because I've seen so much stop-motion since and done a couple more project using the method.

When my professor introduced us to this assignment, my first thought was, "how can I use Photoshop?" I came up with having an invisible person. Every frame where skin appears I cut the person out and added the inside of the clothes that would then be visible. I also added the light when the light turns on because it was washed out.

I think people liked the video because it was unexpected that the person in the video would not have a body. After that it's the, "how did they do that?" reaction. If I saw a video like this, I'd want to know how the artist did it, even if I knew how I would do it, I would want to know how another would attempt the same thing.



Vote Nov. 2nd to Save Troy Library! from Kim Berens on Vimeo.

With the Vote November 2nd to Save Troy Public Library, I learned... don't post a political information video the day before the election when you're attempting to sway the votes. Of course, this wasn't entirely my fault. If you consider the circumstances and use a few key synonyms then it may even appear that I'm an ambitious, determined and enthusiastic worker! (which is my attempt in the following sentences). The election (obviously) was November the second, but the project wasn't even due until the ninth! Professors usually give adequate time to do an assignment, and having it done a week early was very difficult. Regardless of posting it so late, 9 people liked the post and three people commented. It's not very much, but a couple of the people I don't even talk to! So it made me feel good.

There were of course problems. For whatever reason, when exporting a 24 fps file as a Quicktime, the video had ghost images, which were ugly and made it hard to understand the video. But I needed to post it. I figured that as long as I got the word out there, people would mind the ghost images. For my class however, I either had to change it to 12 fps and cut out half the frames (looong and tedious) OR, what I ended up doing, which sounds convoluted, but really is quite straightforward: I exported the video (without audio)as a swf file and imported it into After Effects, then exported it as a Quicktime and imported it into Final Cut, where I added the audio and exported it again as a Quicktime. See, really not difficult.

And the week after November second was niiiice.

As for the content, I think it comes across very well. My Dad, who I believe to be very politically knowledgeable, gave his thumbs up, and many people from Troy liked the video on Facebook, meaning they understood the message.

It was a great introduction to Flash and time-based media, something I really enjoy and, as a designer who has spent many years dedicating hours to Photoshop, I seem to be spending a lot of energy on pursuing time-based design!

Blog Prompt #24 - Final Project

My final project in color photography, I really want to make a series using this image below.

I made this last summer for fun using cyanotypes for the hair and painting in a lot of the the original image using Photoshop brushes. This might just be one of my most favorite things I have ever made. Especially since I didn't use any of the artistic or brush stroke filters. The only thing I did not make was the paper texture. I found that online at a free texture website. Whether that is legitimate or not, I have since wished that I had done the paper texture


I have photos of family and friends that I'm going to use. So far I have three white males and an Indian girl, so I'm going to have to take some more pictures so I don't accidentally make some controversial statement about race and gender that I never intended. I've done some more cyanotypes, that unfortunately didn't  turn out, but luckily, for my particular assignment, it doesn't really make a difference (the professor who lent the chemicals to me reckons the chemicals might have been accidentally mixed together at some point).


I also have created my paper texture by rubbing instant coffee on paper and then baking it. It, er, worked, but it's not quite the texture I imagined. Who knows, I might end up liking it, but we'll see. I may make a trip to Hobby Lobby's scrap-booking section, however.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

These pictures are actually from assignment #4 for my color photography class, but I never posted them! I posted the works-in-progress, but not the final images! But alas, here they are!


The first three images are the ones you've seen before. They haven't changed too much (except maybe the last one) since the works-in-progess.
The idea came from this amazing cover of Over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole (originally from the Wizard of Oz). My sister loves the song as well, and when I came up with the idea for these images, it was a time when both Beth and I were really happy and constantly listening to this song. The song and these images just make me feel that happiness is bigger than just one person or two people - that people can spread happiness to other people just by being pleasant. 
I think the song is about Dorothy wanting a life with meaningful happiness, which is ultimately what she gets at the end of the movie when she returns to her family after wishing to go home. I feel the person in my images has already achieved that wisdom and is happy with her family and with her life, but she still likes to take her time just for herself, when she goes over the rainbow (there's a rainbow in the second image).
As for the order of the images, I really don't know. I like them in this order the best, but it doesn't really make sense. One image is over in the clouds, the second is her flying into the sky, and the last is her on the ground (probably), and the colors of the sky don't match up either. These are the way I originally imagined these images, and I never changed it. I tried, but I didn't like anything else, I like the way these look.


This last image I made in a night, the night before I had to print the images, actually. I went home and thought, I have to have one more image for my class. I had never done to re-make of a movie poster, which, if you know me, is very odd that I didn't do it for every assignment. I want to make movie posters as my career. I feel like most of the art I have created in my lifetime has been preparing me for my future career as film key art designer (posters, etc.) I just love it. I re-make my own movie posters for fun (mostly Harry Potter). I love trying to copy exactly, because then I learn why the designer did this instead of that. One can learn a lot from copying. I've made posters for a few students films, and I got to use my knowledge I gained from copying the masters!
Anyway, so I didn't have a lot of time, because I'd spent most of my time working on the above images. I looked through my movie posters inspiration folder on my computer and selected this Casino Royale poster. I didn't have a gun (real or fake) to use, however, and my roommate suggested I use my wand. I could not think of one legitimately good reason not too, so I did. I set up the lighting as closely to the original as I could. I shot it myself, so I thought it would be really hard to get the pose right. It isn't perfect, but it's close. I actually think the real reason it's not perfect is my shoulders are a lot smaller than Daniel Craig's shoulders. His simply fill more of the frame than mine could possibly. I did my best. In the end, it probably doesn't matter. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out. 
It might surprise you to learn that, not only is the background completely photoshopped from brushes (there is a very blurred out and nearly transparent picture of a house, just to give random variation of tone), including the lights, which are just several layers of the same things but slightly different opacities and colors, but the figure is actually made of up of three different images! One for my hand, one for my body and one for my head. As I was shooting this myself, running from camera to seat and posing in ten second, it was hard to get it completely right. So I just photoshopped it together. I think it's perfectly okay in this situation (unlike here, where I would have preferred to do it right during the shoot). In fact, I prefer photoshopping things for posters, I feel it's on of the few acceptable places to do so, and therefore I want to take advantage. As long as I never churn out anything like this Huckleberry Finn poster. First of all, it doesn't even look like Jim is running. But the worst part is, if you see the movie, you know the body of Elijah Wood is actually another character altogether. It's...  I mean, the poster's purpose is to make one want to see the movie, but once one does, it's obvious the body belongs to someone else!
I've been holding that in for years.