Tripod with Black and White Photo

Friday, October 12, 2018 1:18 PM

Recently I bought a small tripod for my camera. In class we learned about the importance of camera stability to achieve maximum resolution. Happily small inexpensive tripods are available on amazon.com.

While using the camera mounted on my new tripod I noticed that the camera would move a bit as I pressed and released the shutter button. To manage this issue and achieve maximum stability I added a 2 second timer so I could push the shutter and give the camera a moment to recover from the force of my hand.

Field Guide Reflection

Tuesday, October 9, 2018 11:23 AM

Last week we presented our completed field guides to the class and listened to feedback on our work.

Overall I now feel pretty disappointed about the field guide I made. I worked very hard on this, both on the actual research part and the making of the finished product, but I don't think that hard work is perceivable in the final result. I am happy with what I accomplished, but those accomplishments are internal to me and are not something other people will perceive or appreciate.

Field Guide

Tuesday, October 2, 2018 11:29 AM

At last, I have completed my Home Ownership field guide. I am pleased with the end result.

The final version is similar in look and feel to the Draft Field Guide. I made some improvements to the text and futher developed the illustrations. I did all of the illustrations using Adobe Illustrator, with some inspiration drawn from Noun Project.

White Balance and Exposure

Sunday, September 30, 2018 12:33 PM

Building on last week's assignment, this week I took several photos with proper white balance and exposure. To accomplish this I installed the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK) on my ancient Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS camera. What a difference it makes! Years of crappy photos could have been avoided if I had known about CHDK.

Homeownership Illustrations

Saturday, September 29, 2018 2:16 PM

In class we have been studying Semiotics, which is the study of meaningful communication through signs and symbols. The final version of my Homeownership field guide needs meaningful signs and symbols to help the reader process and remember the information.

Adjacent Illustrations

Tuesday, September 25, 2018 10:04 PM

Recently I was asked to create a few illustrations for Adjacent, the online journal published by ITP.

Draft Field Guide

Tuesday, September 25, 2018 12:23 PM

Building on my reworked taxonomy and field guide entries I created a draft version of my field guide. I'm pleased that this is coming together in a way that makes sense and that I'm comfortable with.

Visual System

We need to use some kind of visual system to employ metaphor or metonymy to organize and communicate information. A visual system will provide context to help people process and remember information.

My field guide title is "Homeownership: Powering a Community." I would like to relate a home to energy. My vision to achieve that is to start with a silhouette of a typical house, shaped like the green monopoly houses most people are used to. Then I will add a power cord coming out the side of it to relate it to energy and power. I then reuse this in images for each entry in my field guide.

White Balance

Sunday, September 23, 2018 1:47 PM

Our first assignment is to explore the camera's ability to properly set the white balance.

The camera I'm using is an old Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS 12.1 MP Digital Camera. I've had this camera for years but I stopped using it for the most part when I got a phone that could take decent pictures. I used it for this assignment because Eric Rosenthal got me to believe that I could take great pictures with this if I learned how to properly take control of the camera.

Digital Imaging: Reset

Sunday, September 23, 2018 1:45 PM

Digital Imaging: Reset, taught by Eric Rosenthal.

Class blog posts:

Sunday, September 23, 2018 1:47 PM White Balance
Sunday, September 30, 2018 12:33 PM White Balance and Exposure
Friday, October 12, 2018 1:18 PM Tripod with Black and White Photo
Friday, October 19, 2018 8:32 PM HDR Photography

Taxonomy and Field Guide Entries: Take 2

Saturday, September 22, 2018 5:21 PM

In last week's post I tried to organize the information to be presented into a hierarchy of some kind. I explored several maps showing the relationships between the different components related to the life cycle costs of home ownership. Although I did a good job mapping the information, there were a few problems. The biggest problem is that I was moving this project in a direction I don't want to go. Specifically, I don't want this to result in a business-like presentation that somebody from an MBA program would produce. Not that there is anything wrong with such presentations; educating people about financial literacy and home ownership is a critical function that somebody needs to do. The problem is that doing that would be painfully boring for me. I worked in the finance industry for too long and I really wanted to do something else for this class.