Crane by a string.

Here you can see a Gif of an origami crane circling around its string and I like that my settings have caused a motion blur, that was not intended in first place.

Photo It Like Peanut Butter. is the assignment idea, that made me create the Gif.

I am fascinated by this simple movement, which is, because of the motion blur, rather something geometrical moving than a recognizable thing, what makes it very abstract.

I positioned my camera and touched the crane and when its movement has slowed down, took three pictures shortly one after the other. I loaded the three pictures into Photoshop as three different layers by using the place option. In Photoshop's timeline I added that any picture shall be displayed for half a second. Then I saved the Gif via the "Save for Web" option.

Ghost Hands try catching time.

Did you ever asked yourself how ghosts can appear in pictures? I can tell you now.

In Is that a… GHOST?! you can read that you either need to use a long exposure or combine two photos in a photo editing software. I did not need any of this but my camera presents an option where I can use multiple exposure.

First I freed my metronome from its lock and while it tick-tocked I took a photo. I left it like this but put my hand to the left of the metronome, shot, put my hand to the right, shot, and the camera made one photograph out of it.

For me this performs trying to influence time, not very successful at all. Time goes on and on and on ...

For this photo I feel very influenced by a video I found with the week 5 headless course instructions, where Jason Eskenazi describes how he makes good photos. He talks about rhythm in pictures and as an example he shows a photo with different men doing some exercise. I felt reminded on photos that are combined from different shots of the same person, but this is what makes the great photographer. He doesn't need this 'trick', he waits until the right shot is to make.

Hawk View

Once I had a magnificent eyesight and I often think about this.

It was so funny when I went to the eye specialist because my eyesight was less good than it used to be. The doctor sent me away, because my eye sight was still good enough for him and did not need any correction.

This, unfortunately has changed about 4 years ago. I was no longer able to read texts properly. Worse, I did not have much money to effort any glasses. However, there was the day I went and bought me glasses and it was like a miracle to have my good eyesight back.

This is the story for the following, where you can find a circling hawk in my eye and hawks are said to have a great eyesight.
However, it also has a symbolic meaning, for I am considered to have a free and sharp mind, not all the time very popular with my fellow human beings.

The idea for this I got from one of the ds106 visual assignments: The Eye Exchange.

As you can see I took a photo of one of my eyes. Then I looked up an image of a hawk in the internet. I selected an ellipse and inverted the selection. After this I cut the selected part out and while keeping the selection and using edit->stroke I draw a circle around.

Now I had the round shape I needed to replace the pupil of the eye. I experimented with the blending modes until I liked the result.

I also blended in a negative of the photo, but made it very transparent. I did this, because I wanted it looking less earthly to emphasize that it is more about the mind than the physical reality. For the same reason I added a lens flare and deliberately overdid it, like when you look into light.

I can not decide which image I like more, the one of the real eye or the one with the changes, but I know they tell different stories, which I like.

Feeling Air, Breathing Water

... so I read about the idea to take a photograph of a post it note, where you can read about my biggest dream in life.

I thought about it and after some time I decided the "Post"Secret assignment idea is about yearning.

I have so many dreams and after all can not decide which is the biggest, but in any dream I can find longing for something I have not. With my photo of my post it note I tried to catch this.

What also adds to the note is that I read earlier about Gestalt Psychology, where the principle of "closure" in a photo is explained. This means that the viewer adds information which is not in the photo but obvious. My words as well as the photo are intending to activate the viewers imagination to make sense of what they see.

I have found the page about this principle on this week guidance for the headless ds106 course.

I felt like being in a dream while preparing the photo for this page and it was a 'good bye' when I tidied up after I had taken the photo. I was not able to toss away the post it, but it now has a place on my wall.

As to the making of the picture, the most you can see yourself, but I also edited it in my new Photoshop
(which by the way works badly, because Adobe is not able to solve their problem with Microsoft's Windows 8),
by adding a lightning effect.

There are still nice clowns out there.

I've thought about designing a clown character and I intended him to be creepy, but then I've found a nice picture, which depicts Coco the clown. It is not at all creepy. I decided to create something positive with this picture and I remembered a ds106 assignment idea, where something has to be warholed.

Again I used Gimp to achieve this effect, which is known from many pop art designs by Andy Warhol.
I started by using from the Colors Menu the Threshold option, where the picture is changed into one with only black and white values. Then I added a new layer, which I provided with a color. I set the layer mode to Multiply. Any white area of the image has now the layer color. Finally, by creating new layers, I painted over the image and colord the hair, eyes and mouth. I used different layer modes to combine it with the image. Like this the black areas remain still noticeable.

Now it is easy to use from the Colors Menu the Hue-Saturation-Tool to change the hue and to combine images with different hues.

If you have more questions about the making-of, please ask me via the comment option.

Butterfly and Shark - a self-portrait.

More information you can find on my StefanieJ blog.

The appropriate ds106 assignment description you can find here.

Not quite Norma Jeane, but me.

Norma Jeane was a beautiful and sexy woman, indeed and when Tom Woodward posted the ds106 assignment idea of imitating some of her expressions, he certainly knew this will not be easy if not impossible, but he posted it for the humor in his idea. 
I ignored the humor and I carefully watched her expressions and tried myself, but all looked wrong. Then I imagined Norma Jaene tries imitating me. I then knew she would have looked wrong either. She just was her best self and someone took photographs of her. I then did so myself. I was just myself and took black and white photographs of me. I have chosen the pictures which present me in a good light and arranged them in Gimp with the alignment tool on a black background. In the following you can see that it works good not attempting to copy another person, but rather being yourself.  Yet, I could not resist trying the tongue technique; not quite Norma Jaene, actually (:

Green Home

I wouldn't claim that green is my favourite color, but it is obviously one of my most-liked shades as you can see in this post.


Early this week I wrote some poetry about the color green, when a daily create asked me to do so.
Google your favorite color. Write a 3-line poem about the first result.

 

Living Green

 

Three beautiful greens made by the mineral world,

    - emerald, jade and celadon -

but how many more shades of green animated nature has unfurled.

 

 

Later a second daily create reminds me more of a warm, light brown, but also of nature which color for me is green.

What is your favorite word and why?

 

Kirschbaumholz or Cherry(Tree)Wood

 

Three reasons for my favorite word, which evokes charming images in front of me, three reasons for three words:
Kirsche or cherry for a sweet dark red fruit,
Kirschbaum or cherry tree for the lovely cherry blossom
and Kirschbaumholz or cherry(tree)wood for the beautiful and warm look of cherry wood.
 

When I browsed the assignment bank for some good ideas concerning photography I saw one, where it is supposed to take a photograph of your room and in an editing software make one color visible, while the rest remains black and white.
I did not like taking a photograph of my entire room. I rather took several photographs of details in my room and arranged them to one image. All together displays a story about the color green at my place. This story you can read starting with any picture and going on where ever you think it might go on.

There once was a green lizard, that got lost in an apartment house. First it thought the origami planet looks so nicely like me, maybe I can talk to it, but it did not answer and the lizard got sad. The green lizard found consolation when it tasted the delicious green salad and when the little saurian turned around there even were strawberries, which it just smelled because the color has gone to where the red home lives. The lizard wanted to try some flowers, but they again were just from paper and not eatable. Last the green little animal sniffs the different kinds of tea and liked this much, but did not try eating them. The lizard had to go for it rather likes living outside, although it thought I might come back one day or I will go to the red home where I can try to become a red lizard.

 

 

Actually I did not use an editing software for making only one color visible, but used a mode on my camera where you can set up the color which will be visible. Still, I had to use Gimp for arranging the images. I just used the Move Tool together with the option "Pick a layer or guide". I also used the Rectangle Select Tool to add a border to each image, while using Menu -> Edit -> Stroke Selection.

 

On my Flickr account you can find my album Green Home, where I took the images from for my green home arrangement.



Forbidden Social Event

Julie, a government employee and in charge of reducing creative impulses among the citizens, finally becomes uncertain if the attitude that she represents is really valuable for mankind. She starts exploring the world her government despite so much. For this she managed to be a guest on a party which takes place in an hidden underground world.

The people here are wearing strange clothes more like a disguise and are enjoying wild music and dance. Julie is not sure what she should think about this world.

I did the gif according to the assignment "Juxtaposition", where you take a piece of artwork and try to make a video or animated gif corresponding to this. I looked up a photograph in the Internet and later found a video which shows crazy looking people with hats and masks and stars or rather crosses. I also found the colors are similar. From the video I created a gif by looking for appropriate frames. I did this the way it is described in the ds106 handbook.

Anti-Creativity Campaign

Julie, the heroine of my final project is a "valuable" citizen of Thasus, a big and powerful city. Thasus' government has high-flown intentions concerning the growth of their powerful appearance, but recently has to fight with the fact that people refuse to work in professions like information technology or unskilled work. They rather want to live a small life with a lot of time for their own creations, like painting or movie making. For this reason they started a anti-creativity campaign. The following poster has been created just for this campaign.

I think a campaign like this must have a core of truth, but as it is all the time a lot of points are not displayed in the poster. The government picks out of all the truth that leading a creative life is not really easy. It can be unsettled and troublesome and often leads into the depth of people's soul, where it could be sadder than expected.
Actually I don't believe in creativity as something bad. I just created the poster to make a point in my story. For this I just left out the many blessed issues of creativity.

This poster is completely created in Gimp. I've downloaded some pictures from the Internet and arranged them on the canvas. After this I played around with Gimp's blending modes. When I was fine with the result I added some text. The text can be edited as a picture (rotating, scaling) by right mouse clicking the text layer in the layer palette and choosing Discard Text Information.

You can find the ds106 assignment idea here.



Pictures I've used from the Internet:

Sad woman:
http://www.trendhunter.com/slideshow/diy-fashion

Sad child:
http://www.creativeshowcase.net/campaigns/help-us-stop-it

Sad man:
http://toniferreira.blog.com/2012/04/20/men-also-cry/

Mask:

Splatter background:
http://www.weshuffor.com/shop/Splatter_Red.html

Gimp & Masks

Here I provide a Gimp  tutorial according to the visual assignment Multiply Yourself.

First open two of your pictures you have taken to show yourself repeated on one photograph:

• Go to the File Menu and choose Open.
• Again go to the File Menu and chose Open as Layer.

Now you have two pictures on two layers. On your screen you can see the picture on the top layer. We now want to make part of the underneath picture visible. For this editing software solutions are providing Masks. You can add a mask to any picture and manipulate which part of the picture is visible and which not.

For this tutorial it is important that you use a mask of white color, which means the picture is fully visible. If you now paint with black color on you mask, you make part of it transparent, which means part of the picture underneath becomes visible.





 Now we will add a mask:

• Right click on the top layer and choose Add Layer Mask. (You can also find this in the Layer Menu)
• In the pop up window choose white (full opacity).
• Click the Add button.

Next we will choose the brush tool and we will make sure that the chosen color is black. You also have to set the size of the brush.
Then you reduce the opacity of the top layer, so that you can see something of the underneath picture.
(Don't forget to reset the opacity to 100% when you have finished the masking.)
Finally you will paint on the mask to make parts of the picture transparent which causes that parts of the underneath picture become visible.

• Go to the toolbox and choose the Brush Tool.
• Make sure the foreground color is Black, which is also the color of your brush.
• Set an appropriate brush size.
• In the layer window set the opacity to 70%.
• In the picture window with the brush paint over the parts where you are in the second picture, so that these parts become visible. (This will appear black on the mask.)
• (Be sure you have clicked the mask preview in the layer window, not the picture preview. Otherwise you paint black on your picture.) 

To make one picture out of the two layers you have to merge them. (You may like making further adjustments to make the two pictures look more alike in color and/or light before merging them.)



• Set the opacity back to 100%.
• Right Click the top layer and choose Merge Down.
• Save.



Rose Color

When I read about this assignment and looked at the postcards provided I thought creating one of these might turn out as a joke. I wont sent any of the people I love a postcard like this. Yet, I found one somehow neutral and tried to be as unspecific as possible, which is not easy when communicating love. In the end I was fine with it and I realised I like the rose color.

 

 

For the heart on the card I used stamp tool, color picker, text tool and rectangle tool, which you can find in almost any photo editing software. The heart on the card I realised while stamping part of the pullover to the white space. For the text I picked up the rose color of the pullover and set the text color to it. I used the rectangle tool and put a rectangle behind the text. I also made it partly transparent while setting the transparency of the layer. The color of the rectangle again I chose from the colors of the image.

Winter Kids

A week 5 weeklycreate

I often go to the parks of my city and take photographs. Strangely enough while the streets are crowded the park is nearly empty. For one of the visual creates of ds106 I used three photos taken at a winter day. The suggestion in the assignment is to use one photograph and to shop it up in comic book style. I slightly changed this. I used three photos and combined them to on. Then I made slices and put these together without any clear edge. For the slices in Photoshop you can use the slice tool, for gimp look this up: http://gimp4you.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/guillotine-the-gimp-way-to-slice-images/.

 

 

When I chose the assignment I thought this may be easy to fulfil, yet it was not. The difficult part was to find parts and to combine them in a convincing way. I needed at least 2 hours for this.

 

The result I associate with kids in winter, who still can enjoy snow, while I am often angry about it. However I envy these children somehow. If I would start running around and enjoying the snow in the park people may thing I have gone mad, unfortunately.

Magical Nature

 

Animated gifs summarizing the movie Spiderwick.

 

 

Some time ago I read a book titled Spiderwick (wiki). Naturally I was curious to also watch the movie (wiki). I enjoy comparing movies to the corresponding book in general, and I also compare it with the images the book evokes in me.

 

I like the Spiderwick movie, yet it is not as rich as the book is, especially because the book has magnificent illustrations which are difficult to put into moving pictures.

 

 

The first gif shows how Arthur Spiderwick, a scientist, takes a fairy he has just caught out of a box and he starts making a drawing of the fairy.

Like this Spiderwick has written a complete book about magical creatures around his house. He then get caught by fairies, for they fear the dark creature Mulgarath might use Spiderwicks knowledge to rule their world. The book however remains hidden in Spiderwicks house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

80 years later his great-nephew Jared finds it and reads through it in one night.

 

 

 



What Jared has read about he soon watches in the world around him. There are the fairies ...

 

 

 

and there are goblins, who abduct his twin brother Simon.

 

 

 

Jared follows the goblins and finds his brother caught in a cage. An old man talks to him and finally set him free, but ... 

 

 

The old man is Mulgarath, who is able to change his appearance. Mulgarath send the goblins to follow Simon and Jared.

 

 

 

Finally Mulgarath attacks Jared to get the book, yet when he changes to the shape of a bird a so called hobgoblin, who loves eating birds, catches and eats him. The magical world again is save and not in danger any more to be ruled by the wicked Mulgarath.

 

 

 

For creating the above gifs I used the same technique as I used in Old Man Complaining, a gif I produced earlier in the course.