Center Piece:

Pretty cool.

(Will be edited in the next few days.) Final Entry! Huzzah!

Well, I have exhausted what I want out of my final piece. I think that it has gone well, actually. I would upload some of my many failed images, but to be honest, I deleted them in my furious rage to complete the project. My portfolio shows the piece at every step of the process, so no worries there.

Along the way, I certainly came across several problems.

Swapping Backgrounds/foregrounds -
I wanted to cut and paste many objects. I needed to be very careful in my image selections. It can be very difficult taking the foreground out of images, and so I made sure to choose pictures with very consistent backgrounds or foregrounds. This allowed me to swap the backgrounds of many of my images and it helped me in almost all of my steps.

Overlapping Images -
When I swapped the foregrounds of the images into the main background, I ran into an unfortunate problem. Many of my images that needed to appear in the background overlapped into the foreground. This does not look good when you have a moon that is closer to the viewer than a fence. Instead of panicking and forcing myself into a four hour code lock down, i decided to simply move the elements. I knew I would not be able to pull off a layering effect, and so I only strategically placed the images. The moon is right between the fence and other elements fit in perfectly as well. To make the moon look even more distant, I blended the original background back over the moon. This gave the moon a faded blue appearance, just what I wanted!

Mirroring:
Some of the images I wanted to use were not facing in the right direction. To mirror them entirely, I placed them into a large canvass. Next I mirrored the whole canvas. This helped me reverse images.

Coloring:
After everything I managed to complete, I still struggled on even really simple things. For example, I really wanted to try to color code certain all black images. I, for the life of me, could not do it. I wanted to add more color into the final piece, but I decided that it was not worth the effort. I also wanted to add a tree and see if I could try to give it a gradient with the same colors as the sunset. In the end, I had to scratch that idea.

In the end, I can say that I am definitely satisfied. I had a lot of different plans, and this one was one that I finally managed to capitalize on. I worked on the actual coding for close to 6 hours or so. (It spent the whole day working on it.) Getting the idea into place required that I actually write down steps on paper and include illustrations to help me picture the final piece. I cannot say that I found or created anything especially significant in the finished creation. For me to get so deep into what I compulsively created would be an outright fabrication.

New Plan, (for real this time!)

Okay, my last idea was lame. This new plan will be tons better, and hopefully not as difficult. I will also have to use a lot of different tools to pull it off.  I will use a variant of the swap background and foreground code. I will use blend to try to make certain items look as if they are in the background. I will also try to use mirror techniques and scaling to fix images for how I would like to use them. My background image is this:

 I will add a city on the right side of the horizon:

 This city image will have to be cropped and changed to not include the red text and the blue sky. That will not be a problem. Placing it into the background will not be difficult, the only issue is the fence in the foreground of the background. The city will appear in front of the fence, and I want it to appear as if it is behind the fence. I will try to blend the city again over the original to see if I can create a layering effect. If that works out, I will also use the same layering technique for some other objects.

Like a moon.

And If I can manage to crop this image to only include the vapor trail, I would love to place copies of this into the top left of the background. Hopefully it can all turn out.

"What Color are Your Bits?" Response:

The analogy compares the separated and remote distinctions in Paranoia to the issues that arise when discussing the multiple levels and differences between copyright situations.  The article uses the concept of color to show that content should not be copyrighted.  Just as color can not be adequately represented in the lowest digital level, so should creative content or ideologies NOT be made into user restricted content.  Copyrights cannot and should not exist in that manner.  The example given displays this Paranoia world as this dysfunctional and totally unbelievable society. The purpose of explaining it was to show how unreasonable the world is with such constraints. With the issues regarding copyrighting, so too could the internet be thrown into hysteria. Should we also consider the more recent disturbance of PIPA and SOPA? As we all might have found out today, these laws are in consideration involving the regulation and censorship of the internet in regards to piracy and copyright issues. Going back to the article, I think the author makes a great point. We cannot ever make copyrighting a perfect system. Things will be broke, and things will be stolen, but to try to force the situation would only make things far worse. He or she does however need to work on their writing ability. (As do I.)That article was confusing . . .

The Photomosaic Patent Discussion:

One requirement for a patent is that the (work) be “nonobvious”. (That is, not something a typical practitioner in the field could/would have done.) Bearing in mind that what seems “obvious” in retrospect may not have been “obvious” before someone made it so, but considering  your experience with the lab code and what you’ve learned this term about manipulating digital images, address the question of whether it seems Robert Silvers work was sufficiently “nonobvious” to merit a patent. Is looking back is a fair way to evaluate the question?




Silvers created his own code and uses his own creative process, and yet he finds the need to create a copyright. If his method is as individual as he says, then why does he need to have a patent for it? In my opinion, his action was somewhat unjustified. A patent should protect a method that can be adopted by anyone, and if the specific process can only be carried out by him, why should he have the need to make a patent? His rationale is not very clear.




Here is a link with information about Silvers and his process:
Click here for article (Chicago Tribune)  

Photomosaic! (Kind of)

Today's lab gave us the ability to create our very own photomosaic! It is too bad my first creation looked like this:

 My first attempt used the same picture for the tiles as it did for the main picture.  It did not really work. I really want to play around with more examples now that this is working. I will make sure to upload more creations the next few days. I hope to be able to alter the code, but who knows when that will happen.

New Plan!

Going to take this image:

This will be my background. Because the foreground in this picture is all black, (0,0,0), I hope to take a cropped photo of a silhouette and place it at the bottom to cover up most of the cacti. This next photo will be the source of my silhouette.

I am going to take the blend program and see if I can alter it to do the reverse of the swap background effect. In this case, all of the foreground (mostly) is black. With this uniform color, I hope to be able to take the foreground out of the image.

Before I do that, I hope to add some effects to the lightening. Maybe  . . . I cannot say what; maybe make the lightening a different color or add something interesting.

Next I hope to place some planes in the sky. I will use the same swapping technique for this. Here is an example of one of the planes that I will use.

I might have it…Or try to use a mirror trick to reverse the direction. I think if I mirror vertically from the very far left side, it should swap the picture entirely around. I need to test it!

I think that is it for my new plan. If all works out, I may add more things as the deadline arrives.

Making a Plan:

Who knows if I will keep this idea, but I have a plan of sorts.

I am going to take this picture:

 . . . and throw in multiple elements.

I will include the Golden Gate Bridge:

(Maybe not from this angle.)

I will include some aurora borealis:

Maybe place a city in the water:

Maybe a dock:

But anyway, to make this final piece, I guess it will take a lot of clipping and maybe some shading to fix shadows.  And if this wont work, or if it ends up looking terrible, I can always find another plan.

Lab 6 Response:

Today we worked on more color alteration, color separation and the converting of all the pixels in an image into one of three colors. Some of the functions, or tools, including making an image darker, lighter, blending between images, and adjusting pixels. Today's class also consisted of a discussion involving the Carr article. We expressed a number of issues and did our best to try to understand them. If for some reason you did not think I talked enough in class today, you can always check out my (brief) written response to the article in the previous post. I also posted a link to a PBS video that displays the danger of an . . . incompetent school board. And without further rambling, I give you . . . pictures! These photographs were edited using the three color limitation alteration. Nothing great, but decent enough. (And I added blue to the code.)

Nicholas Carr Response:

It is easy to blow this article off as an example of paranoid exaggeration straight from Orwell's 1984. But after doing some research and watching this video about the school board in Texas changing their textbooks,

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/are-conservatives-in-texas-rewriting-history/736/ 

  

I have realized that this is certainly an issue that should be discussed and taken into consideration. I am in no way stating that what the author warned will happen in the near future, I am more concerned about the implications in regard to schools and advertisements in the next 20 or so years. Leaders of countries have always been able to practically do whatever they want, that is not a concern of mine. As the author states, I feel like we should take serious note of how advertisements will weave themselves into the future of books. The wary internet user should already be realizing how much advertising has crept into our lives and personal information. In all, despite my initial skepticism, I do agree a great deal with what the author warns. The transition to digital books may not occur in the next ten or even thirty years, but I do feel like with its arrival will come a new age of advertising (and who knows what else).

Lab 5 Response:

I just finished my lab for today, and I am . . . fairly exhausted. I know, it is pathetic, don't give me that look.  The sepia1 code took me the longest time to figure out. To be honest, I just ended up scrolling down and using bits and pieces of the sepia2 and sepia3 codes. I managed to create a decent effect, so I cannot complain. The rest of the lab involved more color coordination and separation. I can post a picture of what I managed to accomplish with the sepia code. I know it is lousy, give me a break. My project plan is still in the earliest stages of creation. Bear with me. (Not to be confused with 'bare with me', which would perhaps create some civil unrest.)

"You cant be serious!"

Weekend Response:

The lab Friday left me with some interesting results. The final task in the fourth lab asked if we could code something to brighten the light colors and darken the dark colors. I made . . . an attempt. The results were sloppy, and after consulting Oldham, it would appear that I managed to achieve something, at least.

 Picture 1:

The code involved in this alteration included a light threshold and a dark threshold.  The goal was to set two levels at which the code would change the image based upon the difference selected.

Picture 2:

This second picture was affected by code that reverses the threshold, allowing colored photos to overflow... (Something like that.) It also looks like I added snow. (kind of, i guess.)

Picture 3:

Another filter modification... With more extreme threshold effects.

So yeah, that is that. The first week went well. I have been thinking about the final project, but I have yet to really put any ideas into a plan.  I have a good amount of photos I have been collecting, and if I find one that is particularly inspiring, I may come around to a plan of sorts. I will also be posting photos to the bottom. Feel free to take one if you are interested.   

Test Post!

This is a test . . .