Birth Of A Salesman Part 1 - The White Paper Version

To Whom It May Concern:

With your permission, I would like to present an artistic and academic challenge for the students. I would like to do this by heading up a school, online newspaper, developed by a combined effort of the heads of the different curricular departments, complete with the inclusion of digital photography interlaced with articles and puzzles created by the students.

As the head of the art department, I could look after the over-all layout/composition and photographic images. Our photographic skills will relate to the seven cognitive tools of thinking - perception, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modeling, playing and synthesizing – and help the students involved become more creative in their approach to thinking as well as aware of what is happening around them. Participation in an online, school newspaper will help the students become logical thinkers and problem solvers, rather than those that memorize are recite information.

Perception – As leader of a photographic crew, I would teach the students to be more aware of the things that are happening around them. Observations will lead to opinions and those opinions will lead to written articles. An example of how one question may lead to many other questions: WHAT IS FOR LUNCH?

---What are school lunches really made of?

---Where do we get all the food?

---How long does it take to prepare lunch for the whole building?

---Can we take pictures that accurately depict the food that we eat?

---Will those pictures make the food appealing, leading to more students buying a lunch, rather than bringing one in?

---How loud does it really get in the lunchroom?

---Does the smell of lunch make students hungrier?

A simple inquiry about food could lead to many columns and different pictures can be taken to enhance those articles. Pictures of the food itself, students eating lunch, the floor (showing how messy the students get during lunch – this could lead to better awareness and a cleaner lunchroom), etc. Photographs of, and interviews with, the lunch servers would open social skills the students never new they had. Images showing lunchroom procedures would help younger students learn how things are done here in the building, speeding up the serving process. One observation can lead to one question and that question can lead to many different solutions to existing dilemmas, yet portrayed through a child’s viewpoint.

Patterning – As leader of a photographic crew, I would teach the students how to be aware of different patterns that surround them every day. There are patterns on the walls of the school. There are patterns in our classroom assignments. There are even patterns (procedures) of the things we do. By looking for these patterns, the photographer students will be more sensitive to their surroundings. To turn this toward digital photography, I would like to think that taking pictures of existing patterns could become pattern forming. I was in a restaurant the other day and on the wall were a series of artworks that fell in line with a college professor’s “take a picture of a letter, but it cannot BE the letter” assignment (Punya Mishra). There were artworks that said, “Love,” “Faith,” “Sailing,” and “Peace.” The artist even did “Michigan” and “State,” with the first letter being each school’s logo. The rest of the letters were of everyday items, or creatively cropped and manipulated photographs that generated the visual image of the letter. Was this a pattern? Yes. Was it intentional? Yes (http://lialm00.blogspot.com/2010/10/big-picture-9-october-2010.html).

(http://ny-image1.etsy.com/il_fullxfull.86276357.jpg)

Patterns can also be a bad thing, but showing those patterns may help in finding a solution to those negative things. Does one particular student stir up trouble on the playground every day? If so, this is a pattern and an open forum might be the solution in helping that child correct his behavior. Is crossing the road in front of the school a dangerous event every day? If so, this is a negative pattern and a Grass Root, Safety Patrol might be promoted and implemented to help children cross the street safely. Pictures of the “before and after” might even help gather parental volunteers to help support the safety efforts of the children.

Abstracting – Teaching students to see things differently, rather than in plain sight, helps them to think creatively. The students can use digital photography to demonstrate imagination. Our online newspaper could have a “What Am I” portion/competition, where an image is abstracted and guesses submitted. It might look something like this:

Original Image: 

Abstract View:  

http://lialm00.blogspot.com/2010/10/veja-du-4.html

Would you be able to tell what the image was without having the original? Being vague makes a student think, or develop ideas that are outside their normal patterns. This leads to deductive reasoning and thought development.

Embodied Thinking – They say “Practice Makes Perfect.” It takes many repetitions of a body function to develop muscle memory. The same can be said for positive thinking skills too. Just as a baseball player hones his skills, students need to polish their abilities for overall development. Physical Education teaches the students to train their bodies and pictorial stories can keep the children aware of the lessons being taught in Gym. News articles can generate interests in a Theater Club, where the students can put on plays, emulating other people (real, or imaginary) throughout time. This empathizing technique could lead to career interests by teaching the students what it is like to be somebody, or something else. An example of this might appear in the form of emulating an animal, like this:

I chose to be my dog for a day. He lives SUCH a pampered life!!!

He eats:

He drinks:

He stares longingly at his momma:

He lays in the living room (these two terrorize him):

This is what a big, spoiled baby looks like:

Ah! To be a dog!!!!

http://lialm00.blogspot.com/2010/10/veja-du-5.html

Modeling – As an art teacher, I could have lessons that have the students making small models of existing things, using different mediums. We could take digital photographs of those models and use them to advertise upcoming school events. The Christmas Concert is just around the corner, why couldn’t we make up mock sets for the show and have a student body election, to see which stage set we should establish? If the students are making Dioramas in Social Studies, we could run an article about each box and describe what the students were learning.

Playing –As a kinesthetic learner myself, I fully believe in the power of playing to learn. All of the examples I have given include playing to some extent. Taking digital pictures is not exactly a structured lesson, where the students have to sit in rows and listen to what the teacher has to say. The students get to go out and find things that interest them, take some pictures of that interest and try to think of a unique way of portraying that interest to fellow students. What one-person finds interesting, another person may find boring. The digital photographs might also be of play itself. We have a basketball team that is starting to play other schools in the next few weeks. Articles can be developed about the team itself and interviews with the players can be held.

Synthesizing – If an online, school newspaper were developed, it would generate new ways of approaching the students involved. They would be forced to blend all the different areas of learning necessary to succeed without even knowing they were doing so. It would take coordination of the senses to observe the different things that happen during a normal school day. All the different sights, sounds and smells that present themselves could be potential stories. If the art class is going to do ceramic projects, a story about how the clay feels, or smells would be a great lead in to the “playing” form of learning; we do play with the clay after all.

An online, school newspaper is an antique process (news reporting) brought in to the 21^st Century. An online newspaper is very cost efficient and the energy/time used to develop, or run the articles can all be justified through the different curriculums. It takes a good English Department to watch over the articles written by the students. Proof reading each and every word can be performed by the “Editor” and this post can rotate through the children for each “press.” All the different topics will lead into some form of English assignments and our school needs all the reading time that we can provide for our students. Even math equations can be made into puzzles, like Sudoku puzzles in the Sunday Press. There are also many opportunities to include artistic values in an online, school newspaper. Page layouts develop greater compositional awareness. Photography has always been seen as an art form, but even this can be brought into the 21^st Century through digital manipulation. It takes artistic talent to “see” things that other people do not, but like when they do see it.

As you can see, there are many reasons for the development of an online, school newspaper. The benefits certainly outweigh the drawbacks. Curriculums would be bolstered. Talents would be polished. There would be no real cost to the project and the plug can be pulled at any time. As head of the Art Department, I would be happy to head up the overall progress of this venture and I already have the support of the other department heads, but we would need official approval in order to proceed. Please consider allowing our students to develop their creative thinking in an old/new exciting way. Thank you.

Birth Of A Salesman Part 2 - The Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-fyiFddyj0&feature=youtube_gdata

Birth Of A Salesman Part 3 - The Tweet

Xtra 3X read all bout it Skool gets 2 publsh online nwsppr Dtails at http://lialm00.blogspot.com/ Kids now smarter than evr b4 AYP earned

How Do I Love Thee - Embodied Thinking

I am very disappointed with myself. I came up with a lesson idea or my own group's turn at the "How Do I Love Thee" assignments, yet I have not been able to perform my own assignment. The lesson was to play with the sun or moon in proportioning photography. I get up well before the sun, and get home well after it sets, leaving me only the moon, but that has been barely visible since we posted the assignment and when it was, my subjects (my family) have not been able to participate due to busy schedules.

After trying (and failing) to get the assignment fulfilled, I have no choice left but to include a picture of an old piece of artwork that explains a lot about two things I enjoy: Art and Music. I drew a picture that clearly states that, "Music Is Art." Music and Art both take years of practice to get good at, in order to produce a quality work. They require "Body Thinking," or the training of the human figure to perform a highly skilled task.

If you look at the musical notes, you will see that they spell out the title: "Music Is Art." It took me seconds to come up with the idea, but a long time to draw the artwork.

How Do I Love Thee 6 - Playing With Lines

I know it has nothing to do with digital photography, but lines are a huge fundamental of art. We use lines in our photography all the time. I give a lesson where we act and sound out different types of lines. It is the playing around that makes a boring lesson come alive. It looks like this:

There is only one real meaning behind "lines," but it is very important. Lines are a major part of artistic composition and the students need to be able to express knowledge of different types of line. Since we are discussing them, we also broaden our horizons and talk about the sounds of each line. What does a zig-zag line sound like? Where can we apply a zig-zag line? The possibilities are endless & the students have very unique ways of showing their imaginations for each line. This demonstrative exercise clearly demonstrates the students understanding of the lesson. There is not very much interdisciplinary application involved with the lesson, unless you include the physical portion in the realm of gym class.

Veja Du - 7

I grew up in the Thumb of Michigan. My Uncle has a farm that has been in his family for over 150 years. I spent a lot of summers out there, helping as free labor, bailing hay, chasing cattle & just being a boy. A few years ago, my Uncle had a fire in his barn and lost everything, including three horses, 5 head of cattle, some cats and even decades old horse tack. My Uncle was devastated.

My Aunt came up with an idea that would help rectify the family farm’s plight: hold an old-fashioned, Amish-style, barn raising. She secretly called extended family and even posted an ad in the local newspaper. Word of mouth spread the news and soon she had commitments from a lot of people with different backgrounds. If you could swing a hammer, or even lift a board, you were welcomed to participate.

The weekend of the barn raising, the farm started to look like a shanty town. Everybody came out to the middle of nowhere and pitched a tent, got out their tools and pitched in where they could. It was amazing. We had done the prep work the work before, making sure the foundation was secure to build upon and supplies were plenty. Once we started to build, it took off like a wild fire. It only took two days for us to build a whole barn. The only thing we did not finish was to hang the overhead, sliding doors and siding.

You might not associate this kind of labor with “play,” but to me it was something better. As I said, I half grew up on this farm and was very happy to be a part of the re-transforming a heartbreaking situation back into something positive. My Uncle is a very strong, Bible believing, country boy and does not show much emotion. It was very touching to hear his voice crack as he gave thanks to everybody during the first night’s blessing over dinner. It may have been work, but we all played in our own special way. Nobody was forced to be there and it was a beautiful thing to experience.

It has long since been completed and the new barn is full of horses, hay and tools. It may not have the same old ambiance of the old-style barn, but this one has made a lot of memories already.

The Big Picture - 25 November 2010

I have always said that I have the best possible teaching position available: art teacher. I get to have the students “play artist” with me, in a semi-controlled setting. I come up with a creative activity and present it to the children. If they mimic my project the best that they can, they succeed. I do not expect everybody’s lesson to be perfect, or look alike; I just want them to try hard, have fun and produce something that looks similar to the proposed project.

I have access to 30 Kodak EZ Share, digital cameras. These cameras will only hold 30 still photographs, or 12 seconds of video; that is it. After the memory is full, the information needs to be downloaded into a computer and deleted from the camera before you can take any more images. I developed a middle school lesson where my students had to doodle up a storyboard, presenting a commercial for an existing product. They had to write a script, have rough sketches of the location (on school grounds) and clearly state the product being sold. The kids tore into this lesson because it was a welcomed break from normal draw/color and cut/paste assignments.

The students quickly grouped up into pairs, or trios, and started discussing what product they wanted to sales pitch. They doodled up all sorts of places they could shoot their commercials, even trying to get into places they knew they should not be: behind the stage, in the principal’s chair, or in the boiler room (via Freddy Krueger fame). The students chose their products and wrote their scripts. Some were written to be funny, some serious and some were just informational, but they all were relatively decent. I issued cameras (one per group) and they ran off all over the campus (I had asked for parental volunteers before starting) and did many, many takes of the same commercial. They found out that 12 seconds fly by when you are not paying attention to it. The long scripts were pared down and locations changed, one group even had to swap the lead rolls because student “A” would not quit laughing.

When it was all finished, we uploaded all the commercials into my computer and I burned them into a CD. We watched all the commercials and they had a critique sheet (prepared by me) that they used to grade the other commercials, looking for certain criteria: Did all members appear/speak on camera? Was location chosen well? Was script clear? What product were they selling? Etc. In the end, the students figured out that making a commercial was not as easy as they had thought. They were learning, but did not know it; it was play.

Most of my lessons are developed in the same fashion. I present an idea, something (or some idea) that has been implemented in the past and I show how the artist performed his work. After that, I let the students learn on their own. It is my way of letting natural transformation occur. Like many of the examples given in “Sparks Of Genius,” the lesson itself is only the tip of the project. There is always work to be done. Just like finding the hominid footprints, the discovery was only the beginning. Art (digital photography included) starts in one place and can lead to many, many other directions. One step may inspire one hundred more. The learning involved is just part of the process.

How Do I Love Thee 4 - Modeling

A.) I like to take digital pictures and eventually turn one of them into a real work of art. Not that digital photography is not an art form, but I jet prefer to try and emulate my photographs in paint, or color pencil. When I travel, I take my camera with me and I snap away the different things I see. I can take tons of photographs that have little differences, but I can see what they are. I use these pictures as mini-thumbnail models for a finished product.

B.) For this project, I chose to post some of my pictures I took of the lighthouse in Holland, MI. We went there on a weekend trip and, as the day was starting to wind down, we went to the beach. We walked all over the pier and sand as I waited for the sun to set closer to the horizon. I took some clear shots of “Big Red” and horsed around with the different settings my camera offers. Here are some of the pictures I took that day:

C.) I took all of those pictures and looked them over very carefully. I really liked this one:

So, I grabbed a canvas off the shelf and my painting tools and started to create some art. This is what I eventually came up with:

The original photograph looks great (self-opinion). The painting looks real good considering I do not paint very often (again...biased opinion). But, the picture of my painting does not do the artwork justice either. One thing I do not like about digital photography is that you lose a bit of originality with every generation and you are seeing the 5th version of this: my experience, my picture, my painting and my picture of my painting...computer version.

The Big Picture - 20 November 2010

Before I became a teacher, I used to work as a machinist for sixteen years. I built robot parts and, eventually, built the robots themselves. When looking at a blueprint, you need to be able to visualize the drawing in 3-Axis’s: X (left to right), Y (front to back) and Z (top to bottom). Seeing the piece in your mind before you started working the material helped you in creating the part.

Digital photography takes a 3-D object and turns it into a 2-D view. You will lose all of the dimensions and correlation/relationships to other items/subjects in the photograph and, unless you rebuild the scene, another viewer cannot get a real feel for what you experienced. We can look at the images the Hubble Telescope has been able to produce as an example. Can you really tell that certain stars, or celestial, entities are light-years apart in the photographs? You might be able to see the gaseous surroundings of a nebula, but do they have any texture to them? How about heat? Do they smell like anything we have ever experienced?

Digital photography can also be used to make space “seem” real too. Chapter 12 talks about modeling, something that has been used in photographic and cinema for decades. As we tried in one of our assignments, we played with the sun and moon, using them as toys or props for our pictures. We cannot really catch the sun or moon, but with careful placement of a hand, or prop, we can make it look like we hold the solar system in the palm of our hands. The same can be done with a toy car. Stand far enough behind a Matchbox ’57 Chevy and it will look like you own the hot rod. With simple personnel placement, I could look like I was able to slam-dunk a basketball over Michael Jordan’s head.

Modeling, Dimensional Thinking and Digital Photography can also be used to help a project too. Scale models of a skyscraper can be built long before the real building. A simple photograph would show some of the characteristics and features of the façade and, with careful placement of a light source, how the structure will affect neighboring entities. If building “A” is built on block “M,” what will it do to the park down the street? Will it kill off all the trees by blocking the sunlight? Will building “A” make buildings “C, D and E” too dark during peak hours of business? These are some of the ways you can use Modeling, Dimensional Thinking and Digital Photography to help us make a better world.

Veja Du - 6

Hi everybody! Check out my Veja Du - 6 at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SifQ5AtzMuI&feature=youtube_gdata 

I know it is not still photography, but I made you all a claymation video to watch. If you prefer the still photography version...here ya go!!

TODAY ON CRIBS - THE PILLSBURY DOUGHBOY

Hello Everybody...he-hee!!

IN THE KITCHEN:

Do you want some breakfast? I can make some toast...he-hee!

2 MINUTES LATER:

I made you a hearty Pillsbury breakfast. It has eggs, bacon some Pillsbury bread and a banana...he-hee!

3 MORE MINUTES LATER:

Or, if you prefer, I made you some lunch. It has spaghetti, peas and a Pillsbury Crescent Roll...he-hee!

IN THE HALLWAY:

Some families put up pictures. Mine has built a shrine to me. I'm all over the place...he-hee!

See...I'm everywhere man...he-hee!

BACK IN THE KITCHEN:

It's good to be me!! Now, if you will excuse me, the "Fan Club" and I need some alone time...he-hee! Hey baby...that tickles!!!

CREDITS: 

THE PILLSBURY DOUGHBOY - HIMSELF

ALL THE WOMEN REMAIN ANONYMOUS

Veja Du - 5

I chose to be my dog for a day. He lives SUCH a pampered life!!!

He eats:

He drinks:

He stares longingly at his momma:

He lays in the living room (these two terrorize him):

This is what a big, spoiled baby looks like:

Ah! To be a dog!!!!

The Big Picture - 6 November 2010

I love to take digital photographs. One of my favorite subjects is sports art; baseball to be exact. If I ever get a chance to visit another city, I usually make sure that I can get tickets to the local baseball team and we watch a game. I have played the game for 39 years as a catcher and my wife has learned to ignore me, because I sit in the stands and call out the pitches before the catcher sends signals to his pitcher. I take my camera to the game and I wander around the stadium taking the general sightseeing pictures (broadcast booth, playing field, statues, monuments, etc.) then I go back to my seat and start to zoom in on the players.

Chapter 9 in “Sparks of Genius” talks about “Body Thinking,” or the training of our bodies to perform a physical function over and over, until our body does the movement without even thinking. Chapter 10 talks about “Empathizing,” or mentally placing yourself in another’s position. You may act like that entity, or you may emulate their physical traits. My dad tried to teach me how to pitch by making me watch Detroit Tiger baseball games on the television and try to throw a ball like the pitchers did. It never worked. I was taught how to throw a baseball like a catcher and still do after all these years.

As I said, I have been a catcher for 39 years and that is a lot of squatting when you add it all up. I was taught “how” by a snakeskin, steel tip cowboy boot wearing coach. He used to stand behind me during practice and kick my left buttock every time I did something that he did not like. I hated that stupid metal tip, but it sure made me “body think” my way into being a better catcher. Now I am old in baseball years and I can watch a player’s muscular performance, seeing if they deserved a boot to the butt, or freedom from pain. I take pictures of the players too and I can critique them later.

My boys like to play baseball and I coached their teams for years. There were times I wanted to buy a pair of steel tipped, snakeskin boots, but I prefer to stay out of jail. I taught my players “Body Thinking” through repetition, not pain. I took photographs during games and used them to demonstrate/illustrate where they were not playing correctly. It worked well, but not perfectly. I would tease them as well, by picking one or two idiosyncrasies of their behavior and imitate them during practice. One player had a mental/superstitious issue with making a cross on the plate before each at-bat. I am not sure if he knew this, but we all had a good laugh when I asked the team who I was and walked into the batter’s box, making a crucifix symbol with my bat. It was fair turn-around when my kids finally noticed that I never walked in front of an umpire. Even if he were standing up against the fence, I would politely excuse myself and walk behind him as I went up to bat. I really wished somebody took some pictures of me doing that, because I am not that superstitious and it would have been funny to see.

How Do I Love Thee 3 - Abstracting As Poetry

DIGITAL HAIKU

Once I took pictures

Then they made me “boil it down”

Now they call it art

Digital photography is a fun subject. There are so many different avenues to express yourself it becomes endless. I started to play with paint.net and it gave me the ability to boil down some of my artwork. Now people look at my photographs and consider them a whole different art form.

The Big Picture - 22 October 2010

Being an artist, you might think I would be able to perform abstract art. It is just not so with me. Abstract art is very loose and representational, about as polar opposite in artistic styles from my personal, heavily controlled, pencil renderings. Pablo Picasso is not my favorite artist, but I do know about his work; I even have a Picasso Lithograph in my house, but the cubism/surrealism/abstract movements are just not what I like to look at.

In art, in order to abstract an object, you need to over-simplify it down to the bare essentials. Shape, color and size mean nothing. Proportions are not held and realism is completely lost. In a digital photography world, how do you abstract an item without computer programs? You can take all the pictures you want and, unless your camera has special settings, you are reliant upon those programs…and then you need the knowledge of those programs in order to make them work properly.

Analogizing, or representational replacement, in photography can be interpretive. I like to take pictures of lighthouses. If any of those photographs hold any artistic “specialties” (composition, color, shading, etc.), I might even paint the picture. Then, I had a professor at The University of Michigan ask me what my obsession with the phallic symbol was all about. I wondered what he was talking about and asked him why he said such and he responded with some Freudian quote about all things being psychologically connected to sex. I had never thought about lighthouses in that manner, I just liked taking pictures of them. Now that professor has semi-ruined the subject matter for me and every time I snap a photo of a lighthouse I get a mental image of a penis…and that is just wrong.

On pages 154 and 155 of “Sparks of Genius” they talk about M.C. Escher’s tessellations. I have always been fascinated with Escher’s work. He was of a different mindset. A digital photography lesson about M.C. Escher could contain an observance of positive and negative shapes that blend together to form a composition. The question is, where would you find anything pre-prepared for you to just take a picture of, without it already being somebody else’s artwork? You would have to look for individual parts that, put together, would make up the whole. In the end, it would be a rewarding assignment, but one that is very hard to achieve.

I do not alter my digital photographs very much. I take my pictures, upload them into my computer and sift through them when I get time. In other words, I have thousands of pictures just sitting in electronic limbo, waiting for me to retire, so I can actually work on them. It would take me some time to open up my mind and turn my pictures into anything abstract, or representational. I like to keep things as close to realistic as possible. This does not mean that other people cannot enjoy those styles of art; in fact many do. It is just not my style.

Veja Du - 4

I KNOW IT'S NOT A "PICTURE," BUT IT IS A DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH OF ONE OF MY DRAWINGS

SO, I STARTED TO DISTORT THE COLOR: 

THEN I PIXELATED THE ARTWORK:

AND CRYSTALIZED IT:

HOW ABOUT NEAR BLACKNESS?

MY FAVORITE...LOOPING:

AND...UNDER GLASS.

Sparks of Genius Idea 2

Hi Groupies,

I checked the calender and the full moon is 22 October 2010. I think this falls right in the middle of our turn to take our turn at the "activity" lesson. Please correct me if I am wrong. If it does, are we going with the idea of "playing" with the sun and moon? If so, when do we run it by Punya and Kristen?

Give me some input here and let's get ahead of the assignment before it gets here.

Thanks,
Lial

The Big Picture - 9 October 2010

As an artist, I have a tad bit of creativity. As a person with ADHD, that creativity seems to spatter all over creation. You would think that I would have a hard time falling into patterns, or ruts, but I always do. My wife always jokes that I am borderline Obsessive Compulsive as well. When I draw, I draw a lot of the same subject matter before I tire of it and move on to something else. The same is true for my digital photography. I seem to like to take photographs of the same ideals, just in different locations. An example would be all of my baseball stadium pictures. If we go to another city, I HAVE to go see a game and I end up taking tons of photographs that, if I did not know where they were taken, blend together to the general viewer. Can you consider my picture taking a “pattern?” Yes. Do I take pictures of patterns themselves? No.

I try my best not to be closed minded when it comes to art projects and I really liked some of the pattern ideas that were presented in “Sparks of Genius,” but where would you find some of those images in the real world? Can you find a series of M.C. Escher style images/patterns to take pictures of? Would they be natural, or man-made? The different hopscotch games would be great subject matter, but what is the reality of seeing them in the real world? The thought of being able to come up with different subject matter definitely piques my interest though. It sure would break up the monotony of the same-old landscapes people take.

The second portion of the reading assignment dealt on the formation of patterns. To turn this toward digital photography, I would like to think that taking pictures of existing patterns could become pattern forming. I was in a restaurant the other day and on the wall were a series of artworks that fell in line with Punya’s “take a picture of a letter, but it cannot BE the letter” assignment. There were artworks that said, “Love,” “Faith,” “Sailing,” and “Peace.” The artist even did “Michigan” and “State,” with the first letter being each school’s logo. The rest of the letters were of everyday items, or creatively cropped and manipulated photographs that generated the visual image of the letter. Was this a pattern? Yes. Was it intentional? Yes.

I talked to my obsessive nature in taking pictures of the same subject matter over and over. There is a reason I do that (other than I like what I am doing). I repeat my processes, trying to improve on my last work sessions. If I set out to take a series of pictures that dwelt on lighthouses, I would keep doing it until I was happy with my progress (which rarely happens…I am my own worst critic). I can form patterns without even knowing that I am doing so. I just do what I like to do and try to be the best at it I can become.

What do you see?

How Do I Love Thee 2 - Deleting Patterns

A lot of people fall into taking digital photographs of the same things over and over. They form a pattern of subject matter and it makes for boring artwork. I understand that working with novice photographers (elementary students) will require some extra “point and shoot” projects to acclimate them with their digital cameras, but directive driven assignments will help break those patterns.

            

We are currently taking an online class that has us taking photographs of things most of us would never have taken the time to observe. So far, we have looked for “hidden” images in wood grain. We blew up areas, making the real item hard to distinguish and we made fun of an everyday item. These ideas make a photographer look outside their lens before taking the ordinary pictures.

            

I like to take perspective photographs. By using something in the foreground that may lead in to the main subject, I am creating a visual image that draws the viewer’s eye to that subject. This would be one way I could use to break patterns of landscape or portrait photography. Another way would be to have my students “be” an animal, or insect. They would have to walk around and take photographs “through the eyes of…” whatever they wish they could be. What would it be like to be that fly on the wall? What does it see? Or, the butterfly that just landed on the tip of a flower?

            

Digital photography can be a lot of fun. After the initial costs of getting the cameras and programs, it is something that can be used over and over. The pictures can be manipulated, cropped and even deleted. This creates an endless supply of lesson ideas and those ideas will prevent patterns from being forged.

Veja Du - 3

Here is one of my drawings. Can you notice anything special?

Now, look again. I have my name (LIAL) spelled out in the folds of the uniform.

A closer look:

How about this one?

A closer look:

I am still looking for something better.