Digital storytelling using gif maker

The photograph I took was of a sign telling drivers when they cannot park their car in a certain area. I thought it would be a fun idea to manipulate the photo by simply removing the broom across the P and then filling in the P to make it whole. This way the sign is saying you can park in that spot for a very short time instead of a very long time. I then made story about someone finding this sign and through the snow ridden streets of New York City. He or she parks the car only to return later to find a ticket on his or her car. The man is surprised and takes the matter to court only to lose. The gif is only 8 images because the gif maker site would only let use that many. If I had my way I would have added an empty wallet photo to show the ticket cost a lot of money. It was fun to experiment with the site because I never knew how to make a gif and now I do. In the future, I might be more cautious of the speed at which the images are being flashed because the photos are going a little fast.

Photography and connections to art

1. Photography is art. the composition and lighting could be perfect and framed such as the case with Ansel Adams. Ansel Adams went around the United States to show the world the beauty of the national parks. In the case of John Baldessari the opposite can be true as well. An illogical composition can be art for the fact that it is wrong.

2. Photography is a way of preserving a moment in time. People like remembering where they have visited or a special occasion and a picture has a way of taking that moment and saving it for future reference. Photography comes in handy when a person's memory fails him or herself. With the preservation of a moment in time, comes a picture that can be used by children to copy the image to varying degrees of accuracy. Or the image can be put on a slide and enlarged on a wall or screen.

3. Photography is a way to watch things grow. By taking pictures of a child at varying times over the course of his or her life one can see the physical changes of the person's body and how the person has changed where he or she lives.

John Baldessari, Brandon (Humans of New York), and Matthew Caraway.

John Baldessari is an American conceptualist artist and originated in National City, California. He started with statements about art, but soon realized art could be more and had these early paintings cremated. He has shouted to the world, "I will not make any more boring art" and that is what he has done to this day. Baldessari is known for taking pictures of himself in intentionally bad compositions and frames the photograph while exclaiming it is wrong. It is that juxtaposition of the picture being hung on the wall for everyone to see and with the illogical composition that draws Baldessari a lot of attention. these photographs are not limited to what he takes, or what he takes with himself in it, but also film stills. Baldessari is even more famous for putting dots over people's faces. He wants society to slow down. If for a second to have a person look at his work and say, "what did i just see". He said, "He is tired at looking at people's faces. Instead why not slow down and look at their clothes or what they are doing". Baldessari has also influenced many artists to this day like Cindy Sherman, another film still appropriator.

Brandon is the creator of a site entitled Humans of New York. He used to be a bond trader in Chicago. He was making money for three years doing this job, but then things went south. He is currently living in New York City putting his history major to good use documenting stories of New Yorkers. his photos are online at: http://www.humansofnewyork.com/tagged/featured. They are very simplistic. It is primarily just the person wherever he was one day and the subject's story.

Matthew Caraway is a physicist with a hobby for taking photographs of people and nature. Sometimes he mergers fiction with real life. Here is a shot of a person standing outside and he creatively joins the comedy that is pokemon snap with reality. Everywhere the photographer went in the game, a poke ball followed at the center of the camera.

Creative ideas for the photograph

I chose the picture of a parking sign because i find it very stressful to find reasonable parking in New York City. i know the streets are not wide enough to have parking on both sides and that the streets do need to be cleaned, but the city could make the signs more legible to outsiders from suburban or dual areas or even foreigners. The first idea i have would be to change the sign to allow parking only between that limited time window. It will serve as a way to make people more stressed about when and where they can park their car. the second idea would be to integrate the sign onto the building. This would give the city a different color than the normal red brick hue. it would also serve the public in letting them know how obnoxious these signs can be by enlarging it.

DooDoo lite app

I tried out an iPhone app entitled DooDoo Lite. It is a drawing app where one can use a styli or finger to make wacky designs. A person can tap the paper button to flip through different kinds of paper, but since one cannot directly choose black, white, or blue is a downside. The same thing goes for the drawing tool. A person can tap the pencil tool for a variety of drawing tools. These include dots, concentric circles, a brush tool, a multi colored tool, single colored thin lines, and an axis tool. Once again, one can only flip through the tools and directly choose, which one to use. An interesting feature of the app is once a person draws his or her line, the next line will be a different color. The colors will always follow a certain progression too and is not random. As interesting as this is it does become annoying to continuously tap for the color one needs. i would recommend the app if a person wants a little drawing fun or for children. otherwise the app becomes repetitive. My drawing is a valentines day heart for the upcoming holiday.

Digital Painting

A couple of months ago I asked a friend of mine to help me color a pattern in using photoshop or illustrator because I did not own or have access to those programs. He did use those programs, but he also used microsoft excel. I was intrigued and made modifications to his color schemes. Then I discovered a man named Tatsuo Horiuchi. He uses the program to paint large seasonal landscapes. I tried my hand at it and found the process to be painstaking and argues, but worth it. I do not have the technical skill to round my objects and I am unsure how to do that function. However with time i am sure to find a way. The process reminded me of an old game I used to play called Mario Paint. Where one could paint things in pixels. microsoft excel is just a more complex version, without the fancy music and gameplay.
Here are the fruits of nintendo's, Horiuchi's, and my own labor respectively.

artists that use the social media.

On Facebook there is a group entitled Stuffed Animal Art. In my drawing I class in college I was making still lifes of stuffed animals and it seemed appropriate because they did not move. I was pretty good at it too, but i was pushed into a different direction. This group create paintings of stuffed animals and posts them online. I find it to be a refreshing blast from my childhood to see stuffed animals used in such a manner.

There is a webcomic entitled manly men doing manly things. A bunch of college students decided to take video game characters and make them unemployed. The only place where they can find work is in the manly men office. One such example is a pokemon trainer. he was kicked out of his house for lying on the couch all day instead of taking a pokemon journey. He then trains a magikarp and evolves it into a gyrados. Eventually he needs to find work and finds a job at this office. http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/4706287/Karp this is as big as i can make the picture. please see the link to read it.

eEttiquette post

1.- Turn off your phone in airplanes, hospitals, particle accelerators, to avoid disrupting heavy- duty electronic equipment.
Sound advice.

2. - Postion your camera at eye level unless you want to look like a dwarf or a giant.
I am a person who doe not like video chatting on iPhones for this very reason. A person can never look straight at the camera.

3.- Do not beat, phones, computer screens, or photocopy machines, if they don't work it can be attributable to human error.
Sound advice, but it can never hurt in my opinion.

On/Off Experiment

I was turning my iPhone 5 on and off and began to wonder does every piece of technology have an on/ off switch. I would like to argue yes for the time being if I choose the parameters of what the on/off terms mean. If on is used as an adverb the word has this definition, "In or into performance or operation: Turn on the radio" (Free dictionary). Quite similarly, the definition of off is, "So as to be no longer continuing, operating, or functioning: switched off the radio" (Free dictionary). These definitions are used in terms of electrical units such as a radio or anything with a power button or switch. I believe some of the technological pieces brought in last thursday also have an on/off mechanism. Aaron's pencil sharpener could be considered in an 'off' position if not used and when someone turns the pencil in the instrument the affect is the pencil becomes sharpened. An operation is  is beginning and ending and thus the pencil sharpener has a way to be on and off. My artistic response is not a pencil sharpener, but in fact a retractable pen. The line in which it is on and off is not very blurred. When the pen is off the tip of the pen is inside the main shaft and when it is on the tip of the pen is out and is usable for writing. Clicking a pen on and off can also be very musical link in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZStQEbVDHQ . This individual clicks his pen to mario music from levels 1-1 and 1-2.


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