Wednesday, March 8, 2017
Final Blog Post
Over the past two weeks I have pushed myself to take a picture and write something about it every day and overall, I am glad to say that I succeeded! Although it was hard to remember to take pictures every day at the beginning, I reminded myself and it became somewhat habitual after the first week. One thing I would have liked to experiment with, but didn't think of doing until the project ended, is to write something and THEN try to take a picture of something to match it. By doing the reverse of what I have been doing, I would be able to practice a different part of my creativity. Maybe i will try that out in the next few days!
Blog Post #4
Almost done! There is only two days left of this project and although I am fairly happy for it to end, like I mentioned in my previous post, I am also sad to be done. One thing I know I want to continue is taking pictures of things that I usually wouldn't because it had pushed me to think about patterns and images that appear in real life.
I have decided to just leave my writings in my notebook because it would take a long time to type them out and most of what I wrote doesn’t make that much sense. I enjoy what I wrote though and I feel like I have stretched my writing skills through this project (as well as my first Major Work.) One main thing that I have enjoyed doing with the writing is just writing a quote or something someone said that can be associated with the picture. By doing this i am strengthening my dialogue skills and creating an interesting style of writing where my quotes and dialogue subtly helps to set a scene.
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Blog Post #3
Wow! I feel like I just wrote a blog post so there may be some overlap about what had happened between these two. Maybe I'll just go a bit more into the specifics of what I've been taking pictures of!
So over this past week and a half I have been forgetting to take pictures at school, so the majority of them have been at my house or somewhere else after school. In the remaining week of this project I hope to take more pictures of things at school. One of the main issues I have with this is that when I see something cool in campus I am usually trying to get to my next class and don't want to stop and take a picture, and I can't take pictures often during class. Maybe I will try to take a few during creative writing and see how those come out!
I am excited to go to big bear over the weekend because I can probably get some cool pictures there! Most of the pictures in big bear will probably be landscape, which is different from the close ups I have been taking lately. Although I love these close ups, It will be interesting to see how taking landscape pictures is. I wonder if my iPhone is better at taking landscapes or close ups. Many of these close ups have been really sharp in quality so I highly doubt that landscapes can be any better, especially with the small size of a phone's camera lens.
I'm trying to think of other types of images and pictures that I can take, but as more and more days pass is becomes a lot harder. I would like to write a bit more for each of the pictures, but I have been putting a lot of work into my 1st Major Work, so it is unlikely that that will happen. I do feel like the short quotes and paragraphs I have been writing are different and interesting though, and they are stretching my creativity.
Although I have been having fun writing and taking pictures every day, I kind of excited to be done with this project because I feel like it is making the way I think about projects a bit more segmented and rushed. I definitely prefer writing longer stories that take weeks to plan out, instead of just something quick each day.
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Blog Post #2
I have continued taking pictures and writing through this whole week, and overall it has been very enjoyable. I have put up a reminder on my phone because the first two days I forgot to take a picture until fairly late in the evening. I don't really need the reminder anymore, but I am still going to keep it up for the rest of the week just to make sure I don't forget again.
This past week, one of the most interesting things I have gotten to do was experiment with aspect and ratio. Usually when I take photos with my phone they are just of something I see and want to capture it quickly, but now I have been paying more attention to what I capture. I have tried out doing horizontal and vertical, which seems to be one of the main flags that a picture was taken with a phone and not a camera. When a picture is vertical it seems to look more unprofessional, because it seems phone-like. Another thing I have been testing out has been close ups and long shots. Taking a picture at a different distance seems to change how you look at and think about the objects in the picture. When a picture is from far away it feels more like you are capturing an event, because of all the things you can fit in the frame. On the other hand, when a picture is a close up it feels like you are capturing a single object. This difference had also been influencing what I wrote about each picture. You can see that, for the most part, the long shots are a story and the close ups are a description or part of something. This was not intentional, but the photos influenced my way of thinking.
The one thing that I am a bit behind on is typing up what I have been writing. I often feel more creative when I write in a notebook, so I have been writing all of my quotes, poems, and stories in my creative writing notebook. I will probably copy them all over onto my blog in the next few days, but I've had a lot of other homework that has prevented me from doing that. Although it is just adding another step by writing it down in my notebook first, I truly believe that doing this has made me able to thing more creatively while doing this project. I have been writing a lot of stuff that is different from what I normally do, and am enjoying trying out different styles.
This past week, one of the most interesting things I have gotten to do was experiment with aspect and ratio. Usually when I take photos with my phone they are just of something I see and want to capture it quickly, but now I have been paying more attention to what I capture. I have tried out doing horizontal and vertical, which seems to be one of the main flags that a picture was taken with a phone and not a camera. When a picture is vertical it seems to look more unprofessional, because it seems phone-like. Another thing I have been testing out has been close ups and long shots. Taking a picture at a different distance seems to change how you look at and think about the objects in the picture. When a picture is from far away it feels more like you are capturing an event, because of all the things you can fit in the frame. On the other hand, when a picture is a close up it feels like you are capturing a single object. This difference had also been influencing what I wrote about each picture. You can see that, for the most part, the long shots are a story and the close ups are a description or part of something. This was not intentional, but the photos influenced my way of thinking.
The one thing that I am a bit behind on is typing up what I have been writing. I often feel more creative when I write in a notebook, so I have been writing all of my quotes, poems, and stories in my creative writing notebook. I will probably copy them all over onto my blog in the next few days, but I've had a lot of other homework that has prevented me from doing that. Although it is just adding another step by writing it down in my notebook first, I truly believe that doing this has made me able to thing more creatively while doing this project. I have been writing a lot of stuff that is different from what I normally do, and am enjoying trying out different styles.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Picture #1 2/22/17
Picture: Okay I kind of cheated on my first picture because this one is from Monday but it is cool. I took this while doing to an event in Hollywood on the corner of Hollywood and Highland. I love that I can see all the Oscar posters up in the pic.
Blog Post #1 2/22/17
For my creative writing blog I am going to be taking a picture every day and writing a super short story or quote about it. I chose this goal because of how it will help me to get better at two things that I have been working on for a long time. Photography and Writing. Both of these are important to directing, the career that I wish to have someday. As a director you have to be able to write a story and know how to translate that story into a visual form. In this project I am reversing that so that I take the visual form and turn it into writing.
I am using this project to get better at photography because by forcing myself to take a picture every day I will have to learn what looks good and what doesn’t. After taking so many pictures I will also learn to be creative with what I am taking pictures of and the ratios of the pictures I take. I also hope to experiment a bit with lighting and taking pictures at different times of day and with natural, staged, and ambient lighting. Although I will be taking pictures with just my phone, I will figure out the forms of photography that I like the most and least. Hopefully by just taking lots of pictures, I will be able to take the skills that I learn through this project and translate them over to taking video and making movies, because so many of the frame and lighting aspects are the same.
The second part of this project, the writing, I am excited to write less than I normally do. This may sound weird, but what I mean by it is that often when I have an idea about something to write I want to only write about it and make that one idea into a full movie/script/novel. Very rarely is that possible, and so I end up just leaving many of my ideas as an outline or beginning of a story. By forcing myself to write something every day, I am cutting off the possibility of trying to write a ton about it. This way I will be able to focus on just writing a well crafted paragraph or two. Because I will be taking pictures of things that I see every day, I will also be forced to write about different things than I usually do. I am a huge fan of fantasy and sci-fi, so that is what I normally like to write about, but that is not what I see in my everyday life (if it is I would recommend seeing a doctor.)
Overall, I am looking forward to doing a project that forces me to write about and take pictures of things that I normally wouldn’t, while also getting better at two skills that I am constantly trying to improve upon.
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