Course Reflection

This is the first art class I had the privilege of taking at UT since starting school in 2012 as an over thirty, first-time college student. I am so glad I made the decision to sign up for this particular course. Through the semester, I learned a lot about digital media. I got to experience a wide variety of topics including music making, photography and editing, and computer-generated art.

My least favorite assignment in the course was when I used Sony Acid Xpress to create a music mashup. While I enjoying singing, I do not know a lot about music and my brain works on a more visual level. Those things made this assignment very difficult for me and while it opened my eyes to a different genre of art, it was not something I enjoyed.

My favorite assignment was the urban landscape photographs I took of Toledo and the finished works I created through editing. Those pictures helped me look at the beauty of art in a different way. It made me realize that a striking image doesn't always come from things that are traditionally beautiful, like flowers and sunsets. It is possible (and enjoyable for me) to capture and/or edit a picture to bring out the magnificence in things that have underlying, often unseen beauty.

I have been wavering in my decision on the major that I want to declare. Taking this course reinvigorated my love of art and has made me lean heavily towards something in the field of art. While my prospective plans are still being narrowed down, I am reminded of the old adage, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” I may not know the exact path I am taking but I now know without a doubt that art needs to be incorporated somehow into my future plans.

Jellies

What comes to mind when you hear the word jellies? Is it this?:

Jars of jelly.
Image from apronstringsotherthings.com.

If you're around my age, you know jellies actually look like this:

Jelly shoes.

Everyone I know when I was younger, owned at least one pair of jellies. These shoes were plastic, made from PVC. They were terrible to wear during the summer (the season most people wore them) because they stuck to your feet and you would end up with dirt patterns on your feet if you wore them outside to play. They were inexpensive to buy so that was a big plus for parents but I don't remember them being particularly sturdy. I remember I wore mine with socks sometimes which was probably similar to wearing socks with flip-flops but it did help with the sticking issue.

Jellies come in different varieties and many colors (some with glitter in them!) and can still be found online and in some stores. If you are really interested, you can look on Amazon. Not my personal preference in footwear but to each their own. :-)

Keep on your toes!

Scholastic Book Club

I have loved to read from a very young age. Anything I could get my hands on, I would read and I loved getting new books. Every once in a while in school when I was growing up, we would receive fliers for Scholastic books and we could place orders for new books.

1989 Scholastic Flier.

The best part would be when the teacher handed out the books a few weeks later after my parents had let me order a couple of things. I remember most orders coming with some free gift whether it was a poster or a pencil, it was always an exciting thing for me.

On top of the order forms they would hand out to us, there was a book fair that was held during the school year.

A book fair that looks similar to the ones I remember.

A room was setup with tables and books and we were allowed to browse and buy books. It was great because it made the enjoyment of reading a full experience from picking out the book to reading the last page. 

Keep reading!

Cassette Tapes/Walkmans

This makes me feel old.

I hate to think of the amount of money my parents had to spend on batteries when I was growing up. My Walkman was probably the most frequently used electronic device in my house, next to the TV. I would put in the cassette tape of my favorite group of the moment and sit on my bed blasting music through my headphones and drown everything else out.

The Walkman
Image from bluedot.net

The Walkman served many purposes. It allowed you full control over your music and it kept your parents from gagging over your selection in said music. It played cassette tapes which made music portable and relatively affordable. The biggest drawback, for me, was always needing to rewind or fast forward to hear the song I wanted to hear. I was so happy the day I got a Walkman that had an automatic "flip" on it to "turn" the tape to the other side when the first side had ended. It was the best invention in my young life.

Of course, CDs came and replaced cassettes and now digital music seems to have almost taken the place of those. It makes me wonder what the next technology will be. I'm sure it will be better than those that have come before, and more convenient. There's always some new technology on the horizon.

Keep rocking!

New Kids on the Block

My first big boy band crush, like most girls my age, was New Kids on the Block. To this day, there has not been another singer or group that I ever loved as much as I loved (OK, worshiped) NKOTB. I owned everything and anything they made and distributed as merchandise. Bed set (pillowcases, sheets, comforter), trading cards, dolls - both plastic and fabric, clothing, posters, cassettes, VHS tapes, books, magazines, jewelry, buttons... oh, the amount of money my parents must have spent!

Oh, memories! I know I owned that same hat and most of this other stuff.
Image from acommonsea.wordpress.com.

My favorite NKOTB was Joey and I never wavered from my devotion to him throughout my adoration of the group. My best friend at the time was a huge Danny fan so luckily we didn't feel like we were in competition with each other.

New Kids on the Block back in the day.

He was so gorgeous!

I outgrew my NKOTB phase but did get a little happy when I heard they had reunited in 2008 and saw a few of my friends were going to their concerts. For me, it just wouldn't be the same. There was something about being a young girl swooning for a group of teenage boy singers that I just don't think could be recaptured.

Keep hangin' tough!

Trolls

I'm not sure what the obsession was with these little things. The phrase "so ugly it's cute" comes to mind, though. I can remember the fad really picking up around fifth or sixth grade.

Troll Dolls
Image from thisorthat.com

We would all bring our trolls to school and show off the newest one we had either purchased or been gifted. I remember getting a few for Christmas gifts during that time as well. I had one that was dressed as a bunny, I had little ones that fit on the end of my pencils, but my favorite was my larger, stuffed troll doll.

Soft-bodied Troll Dolls
Image from eBay

I collected them until some new fad came along to take its place but these wide-smiled, big-eyed, bare-bottomed little trolls still hold a big place in my heart.

Stay trendy!

P.S. Apparently Dreamworks is planning a movie based on the trolls and the origin of their colorful hair to be released in 2016. Hmmm. May have to see that one!

Nintendo

Hello again!

Image from memeshare.net

You were not a true 80's kid if you didn't know the biggest "secret" to operating a Nintendo gaming system. Sure, you could just put the game in and hope that you would see something other than an empty screen but you knew that only happened on days where the video game gods were feeling particularly happy (they were mean, nasty SOB's back in those days). Without thinking, you took that game cartridge, turned the open side toward you and blew your pursed lips across it a few times. That worked a lot of the time, for reasons still unknown to this day. If it didn't work, you tried it as many times as you needed to until it did work. This pleased the gods.

Original NES Gaming Console.

I remember getting a Nintendo as a Christmas gift from my parents as a gift to be shared with my younger brother and sister. Before that, we had played some games on a neighbor's Atari but this was light years ahead of that as far as I was concerned. The first game I really remember playing was the original Super Mario Brothers. Our copy also had Duck Hunt and World Class Track Meet on the same cartridge. WCTM worked with the Power Pad which we also got for Christmas. We would shake the shelves in our house, jogging our little hearts out to the finish line with that game.

We had our Nintendo for a long time and eventually upgraded it to a newer version that proved to be slightly less buggy. I kind of miss it. I know video games have come a really long way from 8-bit gaming but the excitement of the new technology that Nintendo brought with it is a feeling of nostalgia that I'm glad to say I got to experience.

Keep leveling up!

Punky Brewster

Hi everyone!

I recently found and watched the entire four seasons of my favorite childhood TV show, Punky Brewster. Man, did that bring back some memories! I wanted to be Punky when I was younger. I loved her clothes, I loved how funny and pretty she was. She always seemed to do the right thing too. Well, at least by the end of the episode.

Punky and Brandon.
Image from eonline.com, copyright NBC.

If you've never watched Punky Brewster, you may be wondering what it's all about. It is about a little girl named Penelope "Punky" Brewster (bet you didn't see that one coming) who ends up on her own because her father left years before and her mom left her at a grocery store. Punky (played by Soleil Moon Frye), along with her puppy, Brandon, happen upon an abandoned apartment where they are eventually found by the grumpy building manager, Henry Warnimont (played by George Gaynes). Punky charms her way into Henry's heart and he takes her and Brandon into his home to be a family.

Every episode had some message behind it, told through humor and love. Some issues that are tackled throughout the series include alcoholism, death, and drug use which incorporated the nationwide "Just Say No" campaign into a few different episodes..

My favorite episode of Punky Brewster is actually a series of five episodes called "Changes." In these episodes, Henry becomes very ill and Punky is taken from him as a result. The episodes show Henry's struggle to get his family back, no matter the cost. These are my favorites mostly because they really show the love between Henry and Punky through a lot of ups, downs, and in betweens.

The cast of Punky Brewster.
Image from fanpix.net, copyright NBC.

I wish there were more shows still on like this one, that teach good values with family-friendly humor while still being really entertaining. At least this one is still available for viewing through DVD and other online sources. I highly recommend this show for a nice walk through some of the issues faced by kids and young adults in the mid 80's and how one little girl takes on these problems with her foster father, her dog, her friends, and a little bit of "Punky Power!"

Stay unique!

Number Munchers

When I was in school, computers were still a brand new thing in a classroom setting. We were using Apple computers and were required to bring in a floppy disk on which to store our work. In elementary school, with computer usage on the rise, we had one class a day that focused on just that subject. Some days we had to type things and we, of course, learned how to navigate around the computer but my favorite days... the best days... were the days we got to take a break from our lessons and play games.

I only remember two games ever really being an option for us at that time, Number Munchers and The Oregon Trail. Number Munchers was an educational game but it never struck me as that because it was so much fun. The object was to make your way around a grid of numbers, "munching" only the numbers that met a certain criteria set for that level.

This screen capture, for example, shows that you can only pick the prime numbers to earn points.

You had to do this while avoiding the monsters, called Troggles. I'm not sure why this game was so much fun but I've always loved math so maybe that was part of the appeal for me. If you want to get nostalgic, you can find an online version of this amazing game through VirtualApple.org which is an amazing site with a lot of games from way back when.

Stay Troggle-free!

Hello 3D

Hi again, everyone.

This week we were given an assignment in class to make a 3D model with the help of a free program called Catch 123D. I was pretty geeked about this assignment because this was something I had never done but, after looking at the sample images, I knew it could produce some interesting results.

Last week I gave a glimpse into one of my minor obsessions with one of my images from that assignment; Hello Kitty. I probably, in hindsight, should have chosen just one thing for my model but I didn't know any better and went with one of my lunchboxes (I've used them as purses before, actually) and two beanies.

This assignment filled up most of my week as I tried a few other objects (two different I Love Lucy Barbies and a fake plant… I’ll explain why those didn't work later) and had to redo the pictures a few times as well. Thankfully I really love doing stuff like this or I probably would have given up. I read some of the tutorials but this is one of those projects that you don’t know you've done something wrong until it doesn't work. Things I learned that may be helpful to someone else using this program for the first time:

• Check and double check the settings on your camera. I used my cell phone and I wish I’d had a digital camera for this assignment. The key is consistency. Focus and lighting need to be fixed, don’t use the auto feature for anything. The pictures won’t match up correctly if you do.
• Make sure you take as many pictures as it recommends, I read 40-70 somewhere. You will need all of them to make the best 3D image.
• I also read to keep your image between 3 and 5 megapixels and do not crop them. I didn't crop mine but I did have to resize them because they were too big and it slowed things down a lot.
• Use an object that is solid and doesn't have anything sticking out or hanging off. I tried a fake plant and there were just way too many little things sticking up, the program couldn't pick up on all of that… well, maybe it could have but it’s definitely not something for beginners! One of the I Love Lucy Barbies also had a sheer skirt over pants, that didn't turn out. You’ll also see the handle on the lunchbox didn't turn out right on my final image. I learned from that so I’m not going to beat myself up over it.
• Lighting, lighting, lighting. I said it before and it’s worth repeating because I think this is the most important thing to ensure your pictures are similar in value. Use an even lighting and make sure you don’t have light glare spots. Again, mine could have been lit better so I learned this the hard way.
• I read that setting your object on a newspaper is a good idea. I would also recommend putting down other things like Post-Its or dots around your object to help when you need to suggest reference points in the program. The more, the merrier (I used four Post-Its and wish I had used more). Make sure the focus is set to make both the object and background appear clear in your image. The reference points are no good if you can’t see them. Another lesson learned the hard way.

Here is my 3D model:

I made a lot of manual reference points in my image to make sure it stitched as best as I could get it to. If my images were better, I probably wouldn't have had to do so much manual labor. The mesh healing (to fix any holes and get rid of the stuff I didn't want) was probably the easiest part and it looked really sweet too.

I learned a lot more about photography and, of course, 3D image creation this week. I think I’m going to change one of my classes to a photography class next semester because I realized how much I don’t know through doing all of these assignments!

I’m sure I will play around with Catch 123D again. The results (even though I’m not 100% happy with them… I’m a bit of a perfectionist LOL) were really amazing and made me concentrate on a lot of detail work which I kind of enjoyed as only a geek really can. 8-)

Stay focused!

Art With Words

Hi everyone.

This week for school we were asked to create typographic and text-based art using a few different online programs. I decided to base my work on some of my favorite things; butterflies, Hello Kitty, and I Love Lucy. These programs were really fun to use. They were all pretty straight forward and easy to navigate but also allowed for some customization which I liked and tried to utilize.

Glass Giant ASCII

Glass Giant has a lot of cool applications available and for this assignment we used the ASCII Art program. ASCII takes random characters and puts them together to form an image. I tried a few different images but ultimately decided on a simple line drawing I found of Hello Kitty. I made the image in white with black text and black with white text and it was interesting to me how the program used different characters for the same drawing.

TEXT-IMAGE.com

TEXT-IMAGE.com is another online text-based art program that offers three options for creating an image. I chose a rainbow colored butterfly from freepik for all three to see the differences from one to the next.

The first is HTML which was my favorite of the three. This creates an ASCII type of picture but it can use the color of the image to determine the color of the text print. The best thing was that it lets you choose your own text to form the image. I found a quote about on BrainyQuote that says "What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly." (Richard Bach) and I used that for the characters. I also chose a dark purple background since the images in the program stand out better on something dark due to contrast.

The second type of image you can make is with ASCII just like the previous program. For this one, I used the same dark purple background as the HTML image and used white text for contrast.

The third converter available is Matrix which is also an ASCII type of image but this one uses special characters in a bright green color on a black background to look similar to Sci-Fi/Matrix text. It was really easy to use, not much option for customizing due to the specific look of the design.

Tagxedo

Tagxedo is a word cloud image creator. It form an image by taking words and laying them out in such a way as to form a picture with certain words having more emphasis depending on the text source. Unlike the other programs, this one has a save feature which was nice. I saved my image as a 2MP PNG file, although it allows for higher quality if desired.

This was by far my favorite program as it allowed for the most customization and experimentation. I started with an image from my favorite episode of I Love Lucy, "Vitameatavegamin" for the shape. I had to edit the picture to remove background and increase the contrast and change the image to black and white so the program would pick up on the lines of the image that I wanted to bring out. Tagxedo will do this for you but I preferred the control I had using Photo Paint (I also had to draw in a few lines to make parts of the drawing stand out a bit more). I also created my own color palate that used red, purple, pink, and black since that seemed to fit my subject the best. For the text itself, I found an online script of the "Vitameatavegamin" episode and used that to create the word list. I also found a font similar to the one for the I Love Lucy heart logo (Savoye LET Plain) and used that. I removed a few words that I didn't want to use and played with the arrangement of the words a few times to get one I liked. I spent a lot of time on this, trying to make sure my image came out recognizable. I really like the end result and am already thinking of other ways I can use this program to create art to hand around my house.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my work this week!

Keep customizing!

Draw On

This week's class assignment was threefold (sixfold, actually, if you do the math). We needed to make two each images in three different online programs to demonstrate generative art. 

I am grateful for an instructor that understands technical difficulties and the stress of a student because this week was the week for me! Whew. I'm just glad to have six pieces to submit that I am pretty pleased with. Not to draw out what could be a very long story, I have an old, cheapy graphics tablet that I was trying to use for The Scribbler Too/Flame Paint images. For some reason when I was using the online programs, they would go "back" to the previous web page and I would lose all of my work. This happened several times before I had to quit for the night. I also saved one image but it saved as something else and I didn't know that until I was uploading everything! It was crazy but I persisted and finished and that's what's important.

Made with Scribbler:
I tried several images and these are the two I liked the most. For the first, I love peace signs and I thought this looked like something off a vintage poster. I wanted to add some dimension to it so I tried my best with that but it's hard when I'm not looking at an object to keep it with the right perspective. The second image was harder than it looks to create since scribbler does not offer an eraser. I would definitely fix a few things if it didn't meant having to redo the entire picture. It is sign language for "I love you" and I actually use it a lot with my boyfriend as it's easier to "say" in a room of people or if we are in a quiet place or when he leaves for work. We're pretty much cheesy like that. LOL. No save feature in this program (ick) so these were screen captured and cropped.

Made with Scribbler Too:
The first image, again, is retro inspired and was created to look similar to tie dye. I played around with settings to find a good balance with the line work on this one. The second image was my experience from hell described earlier. Too much work was put into this but I love it! I thought the program made great spiderwebs and fishnets seemed similar and much sexier. I used an image underneath to trace over all of the lines so I could get the perfect shapes and then I did the shading. Shading was hard in this program, but achievable.

Made with Flame Painter Free:
The first image is supposed to be a faerie holding a flower in a blue flame. The second image is a nod to flowers and I'm kind of in love with it. With the unpredictability of Flame Painter's drawing tool, it was a little hard to draw with any real type of accuracy so that was the difficulty with this for me. I could have just drawn lines and been a little less specific with my drawing but that's not really my style and what I did try ended up just looking like random squiggles and didn't evoke really any type of feeling for me so I went this route.

All in all, this would have been a fun assignment if not for my troubles. I enjoyed Scribbler Too the most because of being able to incorporate other images and all the controls available to vary the look and style of the drawing.

I recommend trying each of these programs, they are all free and good for experimenting with ways you normally wouldn't draw.

Keep calm and draw on!

My Type of Typology

Typology done with nail polish. Click for larger image.

This was a really difficult assignment for me this week so I'll get right down to that for this post.

Our assignment for class was to make a Becher Grid/Typology based on the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher.

My creative juices we just not flowing this week which is not good when you need to be creative. I wanted so badly to do a typology with origami, I even checked out a few books from the library. It just didn't work out (for various reasons) so I tried a different approach with earrings and they just didn't photograph well. Long story short, I remembered my plethora of nail polish and decided to go with that. So I took a tablecloth and set up a little studio in my kitchen and off I went.

I hadn't anticipated the amount of detail work this project would need! I had to put down a piece of tape to try and make sure the bottles were photographed in the same spot, at relatively the same angle. My camera I used is my cell phone (LG Optimus G Pro) camera and there is no tripod for that so I used the case as a stand and had to be reeeeeally careful not move it when I took the pictures.

I ended up taking three sets of pictures because the first two were very, very different in terms of their exposure and all of that (the backgrounds were noticeably different for one thing). I finally realized I had the white balance set to auto. Once I turned that off, the final set turned out pretty similar.

I used Corel Photo Paint X6 for this project because I am slightly familiar with it and I also knew I would need grids which that is capable of producing easily. I first straightened each image slightly because they looked a little "off" to me. Then I took each image and squared it up to with cropping. I then took each image and resized it to a smaller size. I didn't change any of the other settings on this assignment because I took great care on my lighting beforehand (and it was a controlled environment) and liked how they looked (but I did use the value editing process to try and fix my other two series of photos).

I started a new image and added the photos in as objects/layers. I then used the grid feature to add an even spacing between the pictures and arranged them to my liking which ended up being in order of color. After merging all of the layers to the background (I chose a color that would compliment the images), I saved it and posted it.

The editing part was really pretty easy (except for a small error I made with the straightening that gave me a white line on the top... had to start over) in comparison to taking the actual photos. I like how this turned out and would probably just change the subject if I could change anything but I did learn a lot during this assignment so that's a huge plus!

Stay colorful!

A Walk With My Shoes

I was lucky enough this week to be in the right place at the right time. Right place? Meijer. Right time? Well, I don't remember exactly but it was on Monday. So I decided to meander to the shoe department just for kicks (see what I did there?) and looked through my favorite aisle, the clearance aisle. Because I like to tie everything together with a theme, we will call this 80's pricing. I found a pair of super cute, purple K Swiss shoes in my size marked down from $50 to... ready?... $10! Had to buy them! Did buy them!

Our school assignment this week was to make a "day in the life" slideshow presentation. I could have chosen myself but I'm not big on selfies and it seemed like something most people would do. So I thought and thought about it and finally decided on my new shoes as the subject for this project.

I spent the morning running some errands (UT for a meeting with my advisor, the library to return a movie, Speedway for gas and a drink, and then back home) and document my shoes' adventures. Hope you enjoy!

Stay trendy! (at clearance prices, of course)

80's Music Mashup - Part 2

Last time I wrote, I showed you guys my skill(ish) for music mashing. This time around, I took that song and put it into a video mash-up. This class assignment was definitely more fun for me than the last but it was still a challenge.

I used Windows Live Movie Maker to take pieces from two movies from archive.org and reassembled them into this mini movie I've titled Changes. I added, of course, my music mash-up and some well-placed sound effects to make the finished product.

The story I tried (and hopefully succeeded) to tell was about a man who realizes he needs to change himself after he gets a bit of a wake up call. It sounds like a serious plot but it came together to be a little more comical in a way that only sped up silent movie footage can achieve. I’m glad for that, though, I love making people laugh (or I’ll settle for a chuckle).

All-in-all this was a good time but I think I’ll leave the movie making to the professionals for now. So, Spielberg (if you read this) your job is safe for now.

Keep creating!

80's Music Mashup

I can still recall the first music I ever bought. It was a cassette tape (you youngins can Wiki that right here) of The California Raisins (huh?). I think I may have been around six or seven at the time. My babysitter took me to a music store and I remember coming home with that tape. "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" was, I'm sure, played over and over in my house for the next several months. Good times.

I had an assignment for school this week to create music; a daunting task that gave me a new appreciation for the skill involved in song making. I decided to do a mashup because I figured I could get into that better than starting a song from scratch. So I went back to the 80's with this and (after many many scrapped ideas) went with mashing Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" with "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" by Culture Club after a tutorial suggested a website that listed song's beats per minute (BPM). I found two songs I liked that had similar BPMs. It is (noticeably, I'm sure!) my first time ever doing anything like this and I had quit a bit of difficulty.

I tried several free programs but finally settled on Sony Acid Xpress. The program was helpful in that it was supposed to keep everything at the same tempo. I don't know much about tempos so I will just figure it did that since I heard a difference in some songs I tried. I made use of the program's splitting feature and cut up "Man in the Mirror" where it felt right (during breaks in the music) and then tried to find places to put it into the other song.

The chorus was an "easy" (nothing about this was easy. LOL) first choice and is the only part of the mashup that I am really happy about. I wanted to use more of the song so I tried to find parts that went together but some of it sounds like it is competing instead of harmonizing. Overall, not my favorite assignment but I think I did OK with my first time foray into music making.

Keep singing.

Finding Beauty in the City

Try our video maker at Animoto.

I know it seem a bit off my blog topic, but beauty is timeless so this actually fits right in (go with me on this one). I made this video from some edited photographs I had done for my digital media class. If you've been reading my blog, you may remember my last post involved a picture from that very class.

For this assignment, we needed to make a 30 second video set to music with some of our pictures using Animoto.  I had a song in mind from the very beginning which was the lovely "Beneath Your Beautiful" by Labrinth and Emeli Sandé. It's a love song, I know this, but for me the song is also about finding inner beauty and I think beauty can be found in a lot of places if you just take some time to look deeper.

With my images in the video, I wanted it to almost feel like a journey from the little things like some small graffiti to the bigger places like the universe.  My "universe" picture, for example, actually started off as nothing more than some broken glass in a parking lot, something not everyone would see as beautiful. I also added text to the beginning of the video to convey my message and used the spot light feature to give one of the photos a little more time in the video. I used the simplified style so I was able to fit in a couple extra pictures and I also liked how it essentially turned the images in their own backgrounds. I tried a couple of others but I think this one looked the best and allowed my photographs to stay as the primary focus.

I hope you enjoyed.

Stay beautiful.

Pay Phones/No Answer

Cell phones. I am thankful, indeed, for that huge invention. Before cell phones, the only way you could call someone was either from a business phone (local calls only and you’d better have a good reason) or the pay phone. When I was growing up, these germ laden contraptions were at almost every store, every gas station, and restaurant I can think of. I remember it would cost 25 cents to make a call (later 35 and then the big hike to 50 cents) and you would have to talk fast so you wouldn't get the monotone message telling you to insert more money.

I remember the day I was at Wal-Mart and desperately needed to reach my mom (this was actually in the early 90’s but, eh, close enough for this topic). I wasn't sure if she was at home or at work so I tried home first and the answering machine answered so the phone assumed I reached my call recipient and didn't give me back my money (if no one answered the phone, you could hang up and your money would clink into a change return slot). I had to frantically search for more money and exchange some pennies for “silver” so I could call the other number. Frustrating for sure!

This leads me into an assignment I had for my college digital media class this week in which we first had to take photographs of “urban landscape” and then edit them. We were then asked to publish our favorite edited image to our blog and give a detailed explanation of the edits. So, two stones being the killer of two birds (aw, poor birds) I picked this picture because it is one of my favorites and also reminds me of my childhood in the 80’s.

No Answer (Edited), a photo by Blue_Eyed_Geek on Flickr.

I titled this picture “No Answer” which is apropos for this broken, pay phone handset. I took this raster-based image with my 13 megapixel LG Optimus G Pro cell phone camera. The original image (viewable here) had a resolution of 4160 x 3120 pixels which is equal to the 13 megapixels of which my camera is capable. The image was edited through Pixlr Express. I optimized the image to a final size of 800 x 678 pixels through cropping and interpolation since I knew this would be viewed on a computer screen. I am an amateur photographer and am not really familiar with manually setting the exposure on my camera. Flixr shows the exposure of the original image as 0.005 sec which was the camera’s auto setting. When I edited the image, I was pretty happy with the amount of light in this image so I didn't mess with the contrast but I did increase the saturation level very minimally just to make things a little brighter since I shot on a cloudy day. I played with the sharpness a little but found that I liked the original image better because the sharpness tool took away the soft look I had and wanted. I liked the warm tones in the original so I didn't play with temperature changes. I then went into the creative tools and applied the “Max” effect. I wanted a little pop of color in the black and white area so I used the history brush to show the blue on the handset. My final step was to apply a border overlay to balance out the frame on the little boxes created by the earlier effect. I’m really happy with the final image. So much so that I’m considering printing and framing to display in my house.

Cabbage Patch Kids

Lucky for me, having a birthday that took place in winter meant that my birthday parties could not be held in a park, the backyard, or some other free place that could contain and amuse several children and not require my parents to hide their breakable knick knacks.  Birthday number four (as best as my mom and I can remember) took place in January of 1985 at none other than Chuck E. Cheese’s.  Besides the shear awesomeness of celebrating the big oh-four at the place where “a kid can be a kid,” that was the birthday where I got the best gift any little girl from my generation could have hoped for… a Cabbage Patch Kid (CPK).

To the best of my recollection, this is what Jennifer looked like except she had a yellow bonnet.

I don’t remember every detail of that day but I do remember her; a dimpled, bald baby, dressed in a yellow, knit outfit with a yellow bonnet and smelling like baby powder. I named her Jennifer and she would be my favorite doll for many, many years.  Even my CPK that could move her mouth and talk could not come close to knocking Jennifer from her proverbial pedestal.

My most memorable time with Jennifer was when we left my grandparents’ house in Ohio to go back home from a family visit.  I think we lived in Connecticut at the time (on the east coast for sure) so it was going to be a long ride home.  Somewhere into our trip I realized that Jennifer had gotten left behind!  We were far enough away that it was inconvenient to go back but thankfully not super far away. A good heart wrenching cry from yours truly made my dad turn the car back around to get my baby.  I think I spent most of the ride home apologizing to her for my forgetfulness.

The new Cabbage Patch Kids.  Cute, but definitely redesigned like they do with toys.

Final Flashback

Each CPK came with a birth certificate/adoption certificate that listed the name of the doll and gave you something to sign showing that you adopted him or her and would care for them.  I would sometimes change the name but I think Jennifer was the name mine came with.

The funniest thing to me as a child was Xavier Roberts’ (the creator and also a character in the CPK story) signature on the butt of the doll.  Like who decided on that?

There was a cassette (remember those?) that came out sometime in the 80’s with Christmas songs that were sung by the CPK.  I listened to that every night near Christmas and all night Christmas Eve when I couldn’t sleep because I was too excited.

The Cabbage Patch fad was, to my generation, what the Tickle-Me-Elmo and Furby craze would be to future generations. Parents would fight each other just to get one to take home to their daughters.