Selected Blog Post 1
My identity project consists of the first set of images being relevant to my particular interests, and the second being imagery of deeper personal meaning. The first image is a segment of my skateboard collection, skateboarding being a very important aspect of my life. I utilized a grip tape background to project a rough sandy texture to give the composition some weight. The rest of the photo manipulation was based mainly on the use of liquefy tools. The only trouble I had with this first image was the white space between the skateboards. I used Photoshop to crop out the skateboards from the base image, leaving the white space behind. I am now left with a contrasting background that would have looked better blended together with the nearby manipulations of color. However, I am still happy with the image.
The second image is based on my love for photography. I placed two of my black and white film prints on top of one another and manipulated the frames with liquefy tools to create two very different aspects of texture protruding from each image.
The third image is the one that came out the best, in my opinion. This image is three photos meshed together, the first being a photo I took under the bridge downtown of the Franklin Mills building. I then placed two different images of rusty texture surrounding the building, and lowered the amount of colors to give the composition more of a painterly, gestural feel. The end result is an image of industrialization, rustic memories of my growing up in Kent.
The final image is a corroded car from the 40s in a cluster of woods. This particular image radiates the most emotion for me. I found this abandoned car when I was a child and I can still remember the frightening feelings of my first encounter with it, being I was very young and not understanding of what this object was when I saw it from a distance. At that time, this car was quite rigid and more erected than what the past 15 years have done to it. For my photography class last spring, I ventured out to this deep childhood oasis of woods to return to the car. Upon my arrival, I could map out how much it has changed and how nature broke it down into fragments over the past decade and a half. I thought it was a very inspiring and meaningful time with my visitation with this area I have not visited since my childhood. The mellow sunset in the background only injected these emotions by an immense amount.
Selected Blog Post 2
For this project the class continued to delve into Adobe Premiere Elements, but this time on a grander, more-polished scale. Instead of the previous project in which we created a 25-second video with 5 different clips of the Rockwell Hall, we were required to create a one-minute narrative detailing what made us particularly angry. After capturing the videos, we then partnered up with one other person in the class and exchanged videos, leaving each other to create a narrative not using our own videos. This “exquisite corpse” approach added much more variety to the overall project, I feel.
I was very impressed with how my video turned out. I spent many hours fine tuning the final video. I scoured the internet in search of many different examples of sound effects of which I tried to remain consistent with throughout the video. Also something I’m happy about is how much I learned about the program from playing around with it myself or talking with my peers. One example of what I learned was lining up sound effects by comparing decibel ranges. Another aspect I really improved upon was the utilization of a variety of clip transition effects. Again, it took a lot of time to get these effects to match up perfectly with the video and sound. One thing I could have added throughout the video would be different forms of human speech, alongside Gabe’s cameo speech which occurs during the credits. I felt I really had a handle on the transition effects and usage of sound, but dotting the video with certain instances of speech could have made for a stronger project. In conclusion, I really feel like this video was a success and enjoyed the creation process of this project.
Selected Blog Post 2
The first project for Digital Media was to create a surrealistic landscape utilizing photoshop. My experience with photoshop is very limited so it took a few hours to get used to the controls. For this project, I explored Kent State campus and shot photos of many different examples of rough and grainy textures. These textures included walls, bricks, broken windows, cracked concrete, and grid-like surfaces. I created somewhat of a photo collage and played with a lot of different filters. I felt like this was a success for the first class project.
Ian Marshall: Blog of the Arts 