Wind on the Hill
Written by johnjohnston on September 29, 2013 11:31 am
On a hillwalk, I pause to listen, I do not sit down the grass is wet. At first all I hear is the wind, my breathing and heart thumping, my breathing and heart calm. The wind is blowing, quite hard, in my ears, across the opening, through the reeds and grass nearby, over the hills on the other side the reservoir below. Down the glen a buzzard mews. My eyes close and I hear more, a lorry 3km away on the Loch Lomond road, the outlet from the reservoir.
I feel reminded on one of Johns pictures he uploaded on flickr.
The next surprise caught me when I saw that a dailycreate was postet which was created by me.
"Cry, die, then fly … take a picture that expresses emerging from a crisis."
You can read about it in my last dailycreate log.
I took photographs of a film on my screen and combined them with the help on a photo editing software by arranging them and using layer modes. Finally I desaturated the picture.
Maybe Christen Bouffard used a technique similar to the above example to create the following picture where a dailycreate advised her to combine two visual patterns.
Viewing the examples I sensed that the terms visual patters was differently interpreted. Some strictly used what the common sense says is a pattern, others saw a pattern in pictures about something.
Then Alan Levine was blessed with a cute idea
"I’m in Alaska! Draw me an abstract image a bear or a moose!!
and I wasn't able to resist, I had to draw.
Guilia kindly gave the being a name.
"That's pretty adorable! This might be the next big holiday gift all the kids are begging for. The AlaMooskaBear."
Shortly afterwards I even came to a photograph of the AlaMooskaBear.
Here it was supposed to see a bear of the AlaMooskaBear. He has run away☹
Two weeks since my last log. The peaceful concentration on dailycreates is past, there are many more creations to do, I managed three in 14 days, it is rewarding, still.
Already a week later, and by this late, I had the possibility to add to the dailycreate repository by doing a dailycreate, which I found an awesome idea. dailycreate tdc625: Create a new ds106 Challenge by Remixing a Previous One.
I took a random dailycreate, which I got by clicking the provided link.
Live, laugh, and love… take a picture that expresses good times.
After this I thought the really opposite would be to take a photo about sadness, but rather decided a photo of emerging from sadness would be more challanging.
Original assignment idea: Live, laugh, and love… take a picture that expresses good times. http://tdc.ds106.us/tdc501/
Newly submitted assignment idea: Cry, die, then fly … take a picture that expresses emerging from a crisis.
Then I dared something I've always wanted to do, a time lapse video, which is pictures taken over a long time combined to a video. I chose to make bubbles and shot how they are vanishing in time and finally becoming soapy water again.
Look here for tdc626: Make a time lapse video that shows a transformation.
How different was Cris' choice. First the color which is red and the highest temperature contrasted to my blue and then observing the merry behaviour of a human being instead of an inanimate appearance like bubbles, though both are enjoyable.
Finally I was surprised by me liking one of Ary's pictures, who I still know little, but I think we have something in common when choosing motives.
I would have liked to embed at least one video of the Create an I am ds106 / We are ds106 video clip dailycreate. I was not able to make a decision, for the contributions are all very awesome. Do not miss watching them, they are good and for those who never have time, they are short.
It is some time ago that I put down something to my daily create log. The last entry was about numbers and ds106, who had become 600 and whose name you can write backwards in many interesting ways (600 Skull Chain/ 601sd).
Even earlier I wrote about my first humble tries into the headless dailycreates, which wasn't easy for there was no head to tell me what to do (Initial Headless Yield).
Up to today, which is the 14th of September, you could have done 18 daily creates, from which I created 10. I think this is a great achievement, although I presume there have been headless creators, who were able to create more than this 18.
Although I missed to write into my log regularly I tried to keep an overview via my computer file.
However, after the vision of a Skull Chain I produced a video about my key chain.
It's a remix of a movie scene of "The Indian in the Cupboard" and media I've produced myself, like a photo, a very short clip showing me and a recorded audio, where I explain about my keychain doesn't say much about my life.
I loved this daily create, because I learned to know something about many people I mainly knew from their little pictures that are necessary to identify yourself online as a person, but that do not say much or even anything about the person behind.
Then I dared using a picture I've created while I attended one of the many coursera MOOC's which are not very popular with the former heads of ds106 because of their rigidity of presentation. For showing regret to have been so disloyal I made me headless, which had the effect, that the vivid and angry shark got even more into the center of the picture.
Then I did not dailycreate for some time, but because I liked Alan Levine's blog post from the other day, about dailycreates, where he presents his work together with work from other ds106ers, I want to present a dailycreate I liked because of the surprise I felt when reading it, especially the comment of Jenny(n).
Jenny(0) started writing a story about Jenny(1):
Jenny(1) started writing a story about Jenny(2):
Jenny(2) started writing a story about Jenny(3):
Jenny(3) stopped writing.
Jenny(2) stopped writing because Jenny(3) stopped writing.
Jenny(1) stopped writing because Jenny(2) stopped writing.
Jenny(0) stopped writing because Jenny(1) stopped writing.
Stop, stop, stop all the writing
Give me time to breath.
Stop, stop, stop all the writing
Or I’ll have to leave.
Still, nice at it is to admire all the lovely and interesting creations of fellow participants, I had to go on with my own daily creates.
It had to be a black and white photo with high contrast of a maybe uninteresting object.
I put a shallot and garlic together with their peels on a drawing of a hand.
I also edited it with Gimp, although I already tried to make my camera present a high contrast.
I sought to make it even more interesting by using the bump map filter in the filter->map menu. I remembered to have read about it in a headless post, which is too long ago, so that it is rather difficult to find it. Thank you unremembered helpful girl.
Finally I framed the picture.
Very unsure of my creation, I thought: o.k. you can not possibly every day create outstanding images, which is anyway not the purpose of dailycreates, but what a surprise, it was liked ...
as well as people liked the following book cover idea, which I can understand. It has the lightness I am always happy about when it hits me; in the outside or for my own work.
The same with Guilia constantly creating doodles. This is a present I've never received (which is ok). When I try following my thoughts with the help of little drawings I am left behind completely helpless for the block in my head.
however, I've got to go on and I am really proud of the result of my next dailycreate, which was to design an alien postcard with Hubble photography.
This has a lot to do with masks I created in my new Photoshop. I am hardly aware of what I did, so sorry I can not give a detailed description.
I remember painting on a mask to 'paint away' the edges of the picture, and also interesting was to give the characters a black edge, where you have to use a rippling filter on. Then you select this black parts and on a mask for the characters you blacken the selected parts, the way they are erased in the image. Yes, it is sooooo complicated, but fascinating and it helps making the characters more integrated in the picture.
What I further realized is that participants often try to tell that, apart from the ds106 dailycreates, they have their personal daily creates like for example this picture below which is by Alan Levine, whose daily photography I highly admire and enjoy.
<Celebrate the 600th Daily Create! Express 600 in a drawing without using numbers. (dailycreate tdc600)>
When I had the idea of drawing 600 circles I thought this might be tedious. I rather decided to use my blender 3D and tell it to just arrange beads along a curve.
For a further dailycreate, I again used the skull picture to make an animated gif:
<This is TDC 601! That is 106 backwards! Draw something 106ish backwards. (dailycreate tdc601)>
I took the skull picture and loaded it into gimp. I duplicated the picture and with the clone tool "erased" the ds106 letters. I put a mask on the duplicated picture the way that the letters appear when I draw on the mask. I recorded me drawing/writing ds106 with a software called bandicam then I created single images the way it is done for a gif (ds106 handbook -> gif with open source).
I loaded the single images into gimp and flipped the image horizontally (image -> transform -> flip horizontally). Finally I saved all as a gif.
There once was a tiny enchanting world, but then a sorcerer came and put it into a tin. Why? Actually he was badly in love with the beauty of its inhabitants and landscape and gripped by jealousy while imagining any other sorcerer could look at it. Later, unfortunately, he forgot his love more and more and one day the tin dropped out of his cloak and he did not care and left it where it has fallen.
Some days ago I've found this world in a tin just when it was time to do my first headless dailycreate, somehow dented, but beautiful as it former was. I am now looking for possibilities of getting the world out of that tin. I may have to become a sorcerer myself.
I've started this intention by just trying to show the world's sea, but then I was utterly surprised by its self-will, while infiltrating my meditative clip with music and visual pieces.
Next day I asked the world to help me drawing a cute insect, but it rather wanted to draw something exciting like a bad spider. I tried to ignore the world's wishes, but the result was a big nothing, until I seized the last escape, Rochelle's certificate.
Strangely enough the next possibility of freeing the tiny tin world was easy, why ever. It may be that it is a great inspiration to create something for a person who has her birthday.
Finally I want to thank anyone who has enriched my week with their posts, creations, advice and nice comments, especially when it turned out to be a deeper communication.
When I wrote a letter to a fantasy character according to this day's dailycreate, I immediately thought about Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story. He is a bit down and wasn't able to reject an invitation to tea, where a little girl makes him one of her female tea guests.
... but here is my letter. I, as many little girls, also once imagined me at a tea table with other "women" talking about this and that:
Liebe Frau Vogel,
Do you remember the meetings in my parents' garden so many years ago? When I discovered a neighbor's girl has gotten a tea set, so beautiful you can hardly imagine, white and with delicate flowers of pastel colors.
I did not tell anyone that I from now on wished so dearly to have a tea set, to invite friends and to talk about what goes on in the world.
Some days later I sat in a hidden part of the garden and you came along, just like that. You unpacked your bag with a most beautiful tea set with tea already in it and some delicious cake, already on the plates. Not long there came along three more friends, Frau Fink, Frau Amsel and Frau Star. We chatted about the farmer's family, where they have a bit of an unlucky atmosphere, and I've listen to the story of the lonely teacher, who still lives with his Mum. I actually felt just like a grown up woman like you were and for this I wore a beautiful flowered summer dress, like your dress.
All good things have an end and after you and my new friends have come about 7 times you told me at our last meeting that there are other little girls waiting for you to come and that I am now strong enough to go my way without you. That was OK, because the next day I met a girl, who became my friend for some time (it was the neighbor's girl with the tea set). Later there have been many more friends, with and without tea sets.
Thank you so much, Frau Vogel.
Forever,
your Stefanie
For the gif I have downloaded the Toy Story scene and added to the headless dolls some birds, which I have slightly animated.
I have chosen birds, because I named them after birds like Amsel (merle) or Fink (finch).
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.
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.
A dailycreate: Recreate a movie scene using shadow puppets as characters.
This video is made of a light, two shadow puppets and the original dialogue of the scene. The scene itself is the dance of Elisabeth and Darcey from 'Pride and Prejudice' (2005). In addition I created a mask and combined it with the video in a editing software.
A post about my daily creates during 7th week, spring break and 8th week, which are:
writing about glasses and a mermaid wearing some; videos about garbage, bubbles and an old man; an origami heart and the create letters; all thought out while looking into the sky out of my window:
I have laid around thinking about things when I realized the nice formation of clouds. I also remembered that there was a dailycreate, which demands a photo about our day dream window. My camera wasn't near to me so I had to get up to take it. Yet it was worth it. The photograph doesn't show the vastness I experience while looking out of my window, but it shows the dreamy feeling I have - the soft fabric, the dim consciousness symbolized by the soft light.
While looking out of this window I have found out about how I will present the letters from 'CREATE', which was simply producing a stencil of the letters and lay them over a picture of flowers and take a photograph of the arrangement.
The result may be a bit different from what was demanded, for many students put things together to build the word.
Origami is an art I am fascinated from again and again, so I was attracted by an assignment which asks to build an Origami just using a post-it note. I didn't have any, but I had a notepad and used it to build a heart with a base, which was fairly complicated, so that I called it 'Complicated Heart Folds'.
From other students I saw that the stickiness of the post-it note may have been an additional difficulty, which did not prevent the final Origamis from appearing beautiful.
The writing assignments are always interesting to me and this time two of them have been even more interesting. First I wrote about an underappreciated object, which I chose to be my new glasses. Later my new glasses had its say.
New Glasses
It is four month ago
when I finally found you, glasses.
I saw you and knew
that I must have you.
Hoping life will improve
I gave all my riches to you.
First glimpse you present yourself
black edged on the outside.
Nearer eyes know
you’re magically green inside.
Now you show me
my way through tiny letters.
Thank you I can write here
praising your sight.
I'm not just new glasses ...
I have a name. I am Sophia and you know
I am. You bought me. I tell you I am a present to you and don't try
to contradict, I can see you thoughts, how you think that you haven't
being able to gain me without paying for me. Hear this, I placed
myself into these glasses. I am aware of your way of thinking. I
understood you will look for glasses to achieve me, Sophia. I even
knew which kind of glasses you are up to and which ways you will go
to, and where you will look around for me. I just say philosophy or
one of your favourite books "Sophie's World".
Still don't realize who I am?
Just remember this Greek signs ΣοφÃα,
which is Sophia, when written in Latin letters.
And now go and write an ode which truly
and entirely appreciate your new glasses.
After this I decided on drawing a mermaid with glasses, which was not the most important issue for this daily create, but to settle a mermaid into a real world place. I've put her into my bathroom, reading, wearing glasses. Maybe she is also an elder mermaid which is difficult to see with mermaids. Have you ever realized a mermaid as old? Reality tells me even mermaids have to grow older.
I first draw a mermaid with colored pencils. I already knew I will it make look suitable to the color drawing effect of my camera, so I outlined the drawing with different colors. After this I took a photograph of part of a washbasin with the above mentioned filter and I also took a photograph of the mermaid drawing without any filter. In a photo editing software I used the layer mode 'Darken Only' to combine the photographs. I suddenly thought about some bounds which are able to protect the mermaid, for it is a so private place to be photographed in. I added a border for this. I like the dreamy result.
While mention the privacy of the mermaid it is a good link to the videos I've produced this three weeks.
I first was intrigued by the idea to make a video about garbage and recycling. Because garbage is a really private matter I tried to let it appear a bit more impersonal by striving the topic everyday garbage recycling in Germany.
Next I produced a video in which I summarized the novel 'The old man and the sea'. I had fun with using props which I built myself, a boat, a fish, a skeleton and an old man. It was not possible for me to restrict me to on minute, for the illustrating with props needs some time.
In both I had to struggle with the fact that I rarely speak English but almost ever write in English, where I have my time and my dictionary. Concerning this my language was slowly, I often had to think about words which may demand a great deal of the onlookers patience. In addition I had to manage both, the performance and the recording which is often contradictious, because for the one you have to concentrate and for the other you have to be cool and alive.
A third video was one about bubbles. This was fun, but I have learned that fun is not always easy. We can not take seriously when children are producing soap bubbles, but try it, it is quite difficult. The same with making a chewing gum bubble. Here I also was concerned about showing my mouth and tongue, but remembered many of my artist friends, who are far more fresh here, mostly to provoke I have to admit. Why not provoking?
I have to say many of the daily creates are not possible to manage in about twenty minutes, but I still like the challenge. More often I skip the easy ones rather than the more demanding assignments.
For this week dailycreates I have decided on taking a photograph of some cooking I did, to write a little story about I am a pastry, and to capture a photograph with an opposite title.
I like pastry, why not being one. Now as I am a pastry I desire to be eaten and to be tasty and to look delicious. I am a pastry with fresh red and dark berries on it. Since my birth this morning I live behind glass among other precious pastries. I am spotted by a hungry person which has not enough money to buy me. I am touched by this desire and wished I had feet to just put myself into the hand of my new conquest. It is all in vain. A person so unpleasant gives money to the girl behind me and in return obtains me. I am put into a box and passed on. Then all happens so fast. My hungry friend catches the box with me in it and dashed away. After some time it gets quiet in my box. Then through a thin slit light appears and becomes more. A hand takes me and a rose colored mouth comes closer and closer and finally two sighs of relief are clearly audible while my admirer swallows me.
This about my daily creates in week 5 of the ds106 course. I chose to record five sounds from daily activities, to post a photo from a person that is not me and to tear up something and make a phot of this.
Take a photo of someone other than you using your favorite type of technology:
This photograph displays the new born child of one of my best friends. I love taking photographs of people which are out of focus. This on the one hand gives the displayed person some privacy on the other hand it makes an atmosphere of familiarity. I am really annoyed about people who debase this kind of photography as wrong. They just keep away from themselves the possibility to express what they think is right.
Take a picture of something, cut it up and piece it back together in a different way:
I disobeyed here some of the instructions while putting the pieces together in the right way again. I liked that this way all looks like a curtain. I then had the idea to position a window behind the curtain and was fine with the result.
I also included for this week dailycreates an assignment which were supposed to be done last Sunday. When I get the new daily create it is around 4 p.m. in my country. I decided to add this assignment to my 5th week dailycreates.
Record four sounds related to/resultant from any one daily activity. No words.
I recorded some sound and then realised that most of them are around water. I arranged in autdacity four sounds to one file, which inludes water from a tape, cooking water, pouring water into a cup and flush.
Create some kind of pattern of things on your desk right now - a daily create activity
I have built some boxes from notepads in the origami style. Then I put them on a black background and took a photograph, which looks nicely like a colourful pattern.
A dailycreate of ds106: Make a blue screen of death message using type only.
I once did a piece of art concerning Schubert's Winterreise, and this was about a certain shade of the color blue. When I read about this daily create I felt reminded on this. The artwork I mentioned above was created with light and so it was great to know that a screen emits light, which is a bit different from a piece of blue paper which reflects light. Yet, it still does not look like a cold, icy, faint lighted day in winter.
By the way, about which category is this? Photography, Writing?
The sky is a gateway to infinity which we instinctively perceive when looking into it and feeling amazed.
This I have written for the ds106 dailycreate: Describe the sky in a single sentence without using any color words.
There are many approaches to this task and just one was 'forbidden', which is to describe the sky with color adjectives. It nearly hurt me to leave out what makes me feel so good when looking into the sky, but in the end I could go beyond the obvious and were able to express what lies behind the beautiful sky colors (which, by the way, are various).
Take a photo of the ONE thing you MUST see, do, eat, hear, etc. everyday!
When I read this dailycreate suggestion I knew at once this must be a photograph about tea. I really must drink some black tea in the morning and I often also drink some later in the day. To take the photo I just had to pile up tea in the lid of my tea tin. I took the picture with a DSLR camera. First I experimented around with the Manual mode, but could not get a better picture than with the given Macro mode of the camera. I thought a bit about the depth of field, which blurred both, foreground and background. I felt fine with this after some time. I also edited the picture. I changed some yellowish colours nearer to cyan and added an effect which simulates a look through a magnifying glass.
I do not just associate tea with this picture, but the MUST described in the task, in a sense that the MUST may be near to any naive but deep passion inside people.
I needed some time to think about this task. It became clear to me that any photograph I took and which was good was touching and by this love. However I decided to choose one which shows besides of love also tenderness which I deeply associate with love. For the above image I used a piece of steatite I have worked on to give it a shape. I added a feather which is an opposite material to the stone and took a photograph. For the effect of the image I rely on that people know how materials feel in their hands and feel reminded of this sensory experience.
making a banana sculpture, paper out of banana, banana ice, banana puree for infants, weapon prop, convenient place to stay for bird-eating spider (or banana-eating?), monkey meal, yellow part in a fruit bowl still, funny symbol of certain male organ, murder weapon (deliberately placed banana skin), fancy headgear (lasts just a short time!) ***SORRY, JUST TEN***
To list this uses of bananas was easy and difficult the same time. I had many ideas which was the easy part, but I did not like to reveal too much of my inside and nearly got a headache while thinking of what is right to reveal and what is wrong. Maybe this is the reason I just listed 10 points, but I am in general deeply annoyed about making lists, especially with numbers in front of any issues, and I am also deeply annoyed about being advised to create a certain number of something.
Take a picture of your favorite thing in the world to do, however simple or complex.
There is so much I want to do in this world. When I started thinking about it I felt depressed and decided to maybe skip this task, but then something green became visible. I took a picture of some partly transparent fabric for this.
A technical issue was, that the green on the photo was not so vivid as the real green. I raised the saturation in an image editing software.
This is a stopmotion animation inspired by a dailycreate Suggestion by ds106: Find nearest over-looked everyday object. Fabricate a story about it being a key part of your childhood.
I bought felt tip pencils some time ago to make me taking notes rather than figuring out anything just in my mind. I used them some time, then they became a kind of decoration. I know from my live and my creations that combination of different colors are a big part of the child I was. I loved doing set theory in primary school or arranging sweets acoording to kind, shapes and colors. I am still doing it. For me this is a world of peace and order in a often confused world, especially in the topsy-turvy world of art.
I used a tripod to position my camera and changed the position of the pens step-by-step. Just one little piece of advice for stop motion novices: don't use the automatic exposure but find some good settings manually. The auto mode may cause different brightness in your pictures which adds restlessness. Though, you may like this.
