Photo of the Week | 2 – Playground

Taken February 12th, 2010. Canon XSi, 18-55mm. Playground beside school.

The focus of my shoot here was to find interesting perspectives and play more with the focusing features of my camera. I’m still inexperienced with it, and really tried to get the gist of the technical features, as well as the effects it had on photos when taken. In this photograph, I experimented with auto-focus features of the XSi, as well as different focal points and white balance settings.

I found the most interesting part of taking this photograph was both visual and conceptual contrast. Visually, the bright yellows, which I tried to heighten in Photoshop, contrasted greatly with the rusted grays and blacks that come off of the horse. That in turn contrasts with the bright metallic reflection of the handle, which becomes a central focus point in the photograph.

Conceptually, there is a contrast between setting and atmosphere. Taken on a playground, I wished to provoke an interesting thought process in the viewer through choosing such an angle and focal point. Especially, the horses head having a slightly darker tone adds to this ominous, almost eerie atmosphere. Given the context of the photograph, it adds great conceptual interest through comparing these elements together.

Stay with me.

Let's just breathe.

Yeah, that’s right.

This is Canada’s house. Feel the wrath of year-round snowfall and peaceful coexistence, bitches.

Especially you, Dale. You traitor. You dirty, dirty traitor.

Canada for Gold. Do you believe?

You better.

I’m already bleeding maple syrup. Fuck yeah, it feels good to be Canadian.

In Soviet YouTube, type graphs you!

Kinetic typography is one of those cool things people who are skilled in video and graphic design and whip out in a couple of hours, and flaunt them all over the internet to create new, unique tweests on our favourite scenes from our favourite movies, or quotes that have lived in in our cultural history, or some other stuff worth typing out and adding a cool temporal design to.

I’ve seen a lot of kinetic typography, and you probably have to. Scenes from Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, V For Vendetta, and a personal favourite of mine from Wedding Crashers have gained relatively large YouTube fame, and hopefully have pushed a lot of other wannabe graphic designers to test their luck and skill on After Effects, the program responsible for creating such cool designs.

It’s inspired me, but not enough to spend time fretting and raging over the intricate workings and fallacies of another Adobe Creative Suite program. I have enough of those.

I’m straying from the point. The fact is that some of these designs really do make you go, ‘Holy crap, how is that possible?’ This is one of them, and it’s not even a movie clip. It’s an entire song (a good one too, albeit highly nostalgic T__T)

Reminds me of my first iPod and original MSN Messenger. Goodbye, late 90’s.

Photo of the Week | 1 - Uprooted

Weekly assignment for Computer Photography class; post a photo every week.

Taken Febuary 10th, 2010. Canon XTi, 18-55mm. The creek behind school.

I enjoy looking at nature and believe in the beauty you can find in any place, at any time, if you know where to look. The tree that belongs to these roots was tall and bare, and the snow covered most of its base, except for this section that stuck up out of the ground and revealed a large hole, filled with snow and ice. The roots extended down towards the base of the creek, which was a steep drop and allowed for interesting perspectives to experiment with.

The roots going down gave a natural direction for eye movement and the distinct texture of the tree's base caught my eye. I took the photo with line in mind, and attempted to focus as best I could at the root going down onto the creek. Other branches and and piles of leaves surrounding the main one emphasized the colour, but I believe the whites of the snow to contrast the browns enough to provide the effectiveness of the browns and the textures.

Happy Time-Leaping Valentine’s Pre-Celebration?

Well, maybe on io9’s clock.

But yet again, I get my news from the newsfeed from other news sites directly posted on my blog. That’s how Dad did it, that’s how America does it, and its worked out pretty well so far (I don’t know what this ‘plagiarism’ is that you speak of).

But a festive atmosphere is once again upon us, so before you buy some Belgian heart-shaped chocolates, propose, or bring your girlfriend to Wonderland (Yay!), take a minute to check out io9’s article about the top 10 love stories in sci-fi film and television. Geeks need love too.

But more specifically, I like how io9 doesn’t discriminate against animated films, and includes one of my favourite animes of all time. Tokikake as it’s known in the Japanese world is probably one of the longest running sci-fi fiction franchises in Japan, and as I’ve said in my review of the film and probably multiple other times, it deserves every bit of its recognition.

But I digress, pairings in like EVE and WALL-E, Leia and Han, and lots of other sci-fi icons will make your heart mushy too much for your own good. Happy Valentine’s, everyone?

Go kiss and canoodle, or something.

This is Me

Your canvas can be coloured or contoured or carved.
Your paint can be watered down or thick like sap.
Your vision can be in seven different shades and
Have seven different ways of painting it or sculpting it or making it.

But I have one.
I have one canvas, one paintbrush.
One vision, in one shade. One way of creating something.
It’s not gray or black or white.
There is no mixing or stroking or splattering of paint.
There is only flow.

Each stroke is miniscule, each streak of ink part of a greater whole.
My paintbrush can be in seven different elements,
But they make one.
One idea, one message, one picture.
One story or one setting. One world or one reality.
My mind is my canvas. My imagination is my palette.
Characters are my colours. Emotion is my texture.

I create with words, with prose, with passion.
Give me a pen, and I will paint a picture
Of the greatest worlds or the bitterest of feelings.
Dotting and stemming, flowing and freeing,
My process work is my idea; my artist statement is my very existence.

This is what I call art.
This is the reason I am here.
This is my explanation.

What’s yours?

People who link to cool people are, in turn, cool themselves...

...and deserve recognition.

A writer with a heart, a head, and a mean sense of cultural awareness.

And yeah, she’s pretty cool too.

Zombies! Animated! Axes! Crowbars! AHHHHHHH!

Picked up from io9. The full article can be seen on the news feed under Geek News.

But damn, this animation style blew me away. I haven’t watched 9, but it reminds of that movie's trailer, and it also reminds me zombie comic books like The Walking Dead. Saying that, I absolutely love this style of animation, and it’s done so flawlessly it literally takes my breath away.

And replaces it with zombie killing awesomeness. It really is a teaser.

Give me more! I hear it will be a feature film someday; here’s to hoping.

They call this cool ‘impossible’.

Because normal people can’t recreate it. These are legends.

My friend once said ‘I am Historical Significance.’ I hope he was joking, and I think he was.

But these people; they are truly historical significance. One of the best blogs I’ve encountered.

http://theimpossiblecool.tumblr.com/

Enjoy.