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