Photoshop Story

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Photo Principles

Contrast: One of the most fundamental aspects of design theory. Contrast is the juxtaposition of colors, light, texture and more. The photo of the fuzzy black dog is an example of contrast because the black fur of the dog is a complete opposite of the white floor the dog is laying on. Then the soft fur contrasts the hard floor.

Rhythm: Occurs when there are several similar elements in a scene which set up a rhythmic visual structure where repetition is the key. The photo of the building exhibits rhythm and used curved lines to pull the viewers’ eyes across the scene. The repetition of blue tinted windows continues across the building is led by the platforms sticking out of the side of the build. Since the image cuts off before the viewer can see the edge of the building results in continuing the image in their mind because of the Gestalt Law of Good Continuation. This keeps the pattern and rhythm continuing

Perceptive and Depth: (Diminishing Perspective): Occurs do to scale constancy, which is a perceptual mechanism, that allows the mind to resolve the inconsistencies of depth by changing scale and converging points. The image of the railroad tracks depicts the used of diminishing perspective where the rail and boards are large close-up but as you follow the rail up the photo due to vertical lines you begin to see the rail get smaller. The wood boards then create a dynamic effect by creating horizontal lines which draw the viewers eye to see the other rail that begins to converge with the main rail halfway up the photo.

Motion: Is another application of the use of range sharp and blurred photography producing ghost double images and complex streaks. The image of the little kid in the parachute is a prime example of motion. The parachute that is violently rippling around the little kid slowed into a blurred motion. The subject is mainly in focus yet everything surrounding the kid is in blurred conveying a sense of movement.

Focus: Is the clarity of an image. This picture of an elderly grandmother at a county fair exemplifies the principle of Focus. The lower front of the picture is out of focus causing the viewer to look up towards the subject creating a sense of movement. The background of the park is slightly out of focus also which helps draw the viewer back to the main subject. Color is removed in order to remove the distraction of colors and cause more focus on detail which then is manipulated by the focus

Pendulum Photos

Students hit the stage at Midnight Meals karaoke

The intention of this card is to show my interest in production so the card itself is a production. If this card were to be printed out a small person would be cut out of the center of the camera lens. The person would then fold the card at the white edges, turn off the lights and shine a light through the lens to create a picture.

For this business card it will be in the design of a movie clapper with moving top. Instead of scene information it will be replace with information about my favorite movies and actors. I used grouping feature to keep text together.

I want to create a business card that portrays my tv show and myself. The card will have the theme of RoadTrip by the card itself being a driver’s license. bThe picture will be of me and then all the other DMV information will be change to describe me such as Class A driver will be changed into Class 2011. I used the descriptions of height and eye color and change it to production show skills of mine. I work with Photoshop to try and get a translucent background and a glossy/reflecting top layer to look like plastic

Anthony Zerbe preforms “It’s All Done with Mirrors” for Elon Students

Anthony Zerbe performing on stage at Elon University (image provided by Elon University)

The walls of Whitley Auditorium at Elon University resonated with the voice of Emmy Award winning actor Anthony Zerbe as he echoed the feelings and passions of the works done by the poet, Edward Estlin Cummings, as he took the stage last night for his performance of “It’s All Done With Mirrors.”

As the lights dim, the crowd, filled mostly of acting majors, murmured to each other with excitement for the chance to witness Zerbe’s performance. For the past three days, Zerbe has been leading a series of individual workshops and questions and answers sessions about acting for performing arts students.

Zerbe’s extensive acting credits range from film to television to theater. Zerbe’s film credits include the “Matrix Reloaded,” “Matrix Revolutions,” “License to Kill,” and “Cool Hand Luke”. Along with roles in film, Zerbe has worked on television series such as “Murder She Wrote”, “Bonanza”, and “Harry O” for which he was awarded an Emmy. Zerbe revealed to his eager audience that his true passion is for the drama of the stage, which is more rewarding than any blockbuster movie.

The clangy, out-of-tune sound of carnival music fills the hall as Zerbe steps on stage as the ringleader of the creations of E. E. Cummings in a circus full of more strange and unique characters than any of P. T. Barnum’s circuses. Zerbe fluidly transform from one poem to the next, blurring the lines of his speech with verses from E. E. Cummings, using each poem to convey certain meanings on love and life. After the 70-minute performance, Zerbe opened the room for discussion using he 72 years of expertise to give advice on acting, poetry and life.

When asked why he chose to do E. E. Cummings, Zerbe replied, “Why not?” Zerbe has been a long fan of E. E. Cumming, due to the fact that most of his poems were what he believed “speakable” making them perfect to perform on stage.

“Poetry is being, not doing,” said Zerbe, “Poetry is consumptive. Ideally it doesn’t have to be analysis, just taken in.” Focus was given on poetry as something you ideally just take in and enjoy just as in life. Zerbe not only gave his insight into poetry, but also used poetry to parallel life. Zerbe stressed the importance of life being made up of nows and it is important to be still and experience those nows and not be doing so much that you miss your now.

“Feeling something, that’s what life’s about,” said Zerbe, who packed his performance and talk with humor and an eager sense of passion, used his age to advised many of the young students at Elon about owning not just the performance but your life.

“I came to watch a show,” said Nicole Kiefer, a theater studies and cinema double major from Elon, “But what I got was a personal lesson not just on how to improve my acting but life as well.”

Pendulum Photography

This Week in Photos (Special Fridays and SUB event)

http://www.elon.edu/pendulum/Story.aspx?id=1837

Pendulum Photography

Grand Night photos

http://www.elon.edu/pendulum/Story.aspx?id=2006

Anderson Cooper

Anderson Cooper answering questions from Elon students

Elon, N.C. – Students, faculty and members of the community eagerly filled every possible seat as they waited to hear CNN news anchor and host of “Anderson Cooper 360”, Anderson Cooper, as he addressed importance of bearing witness to a story to the sold out lecture in Koury Center’s Alumni Gym at Elon University on April 7, 2009. Cooper graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a bachelor‘s degree in political science after which he traveled around the world, reporting stories from war torn countries like Israel, Rwanda, Somalia and Vietnam.

Cooper is the recipient of many awards including an Emmy Award for his contribution to the coverage of Princess Diana’s funeral and a Bronze Telly for his coverage of the famine in Somalia. Recently, Cooper published his memoir Dispatches from the Edge, which topped the New York Times bestsellers list and currently the anchor of “Anderson Cooper 360” on CNN.

“I don’t pretend what I’m doing is making a difference,” said Cooper as he sited his first story about Burma, a country where not much has change.

“It’s not the role of the media to help the government,” said Cooper when questioned about the importance of media. Instead, Cooper articulated that the value of reporting is not to create change but to bear witness to a person’s story. Cooper explained how the role of media is not in solving the problem or in telling people how their actions should change but in bearing witness to a person’s story.

“You are there to tell their story, “ said Cooper as he told the story of his witnessing of a child dying in the streets. He explained that if no one was there to bear witness their story would have dissolve just like their bodies.

“You have to be affected by what you see,” said Cooper, “Be horrified by it or moved by it.” Not only did Cooper express the importance of being there to tell the story but since as a report you are the one transmitting the information back, it is just as important to be able to reflect on emotion.

Cooper realized this when he was in Rwanda where he saw a small child who had been dead for a few days and noticed how the skin had come off her hand in the similar fashion of a glove. He was interested so he took a picture. When a friend of his showed Cooper a picture of himself taking the picture of the hand he released he needed a break because he wasn’t seeing the body as a person anymore.

“It’s important to let it affect you,” said Cooper, “if you don’t, you have no business being there.”

God is Not A Republican – Leonard Pitts Jr. Speech

(Photo by My Nguyen)

Elon, N.C. – “Faith is something you don’t talk about in polite company,” said Leonard Pitts Jr., a 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary, as he began his speech “Finding God in the Low Post or Surviving Journalism with Faith” at Elon University, but religion and the manipulation of God was exactly what he did. Pitts was the keynote speaker for the conference entitled “Faith, Doubt, and Media” that took place Monday, March 10 in McCrary Theatre.

Pitts began the address with a memory of a past questions and answers session he once had where he was asked the question, “Are you a Christian?”

Though Pitts said it was an easy question, he hesitated since his answer may change the perception of the audience since nowadays God has been linked to the fundamentalist perceptions and the far right.

“Before, Christian meant follower of Christ,” said Pitts, “Now it means followers of Reagan, Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.” According to Pitts, Christianity is no longer a spectrum of political viewpoints but has been taken over to fulfill a single political agenda.

“God is not a Republican,” said Pitts as he tried to alter the perception of Christianity that has been taken over by the fundamentalist’s perception of God. Pitts has over the years become troubled by the way faith and God have been misused to forward a group’s agenda.

“Some of us would have the rest of us believe that Christ who consorted with prostitutes and lepers, tax collectors and women who challenged the orthodoxy of the day was the original conservative,” said Pitts. He was displeased with the fact that churches are aligning themselves with the status quo and not the outcasts like Jesus did.

So in order to break this singular perception of Christianity that the fundamentalists have form, he decided to write a column on God so he could combat fundamentalists on the same “battlefield.” In these columns, Pitts does not just reiterate the fact that God is not a Republican, but that God is not a Democrat either. To Pitts, God does not have any association to any particular faction. Pitts does not just see God in his column but constantly in the world around.

“I believe that God is found in the rituals that bind us one to another…in old women who stands in the shelter of the shade of old men they have loved for a lifetime, or in a child’s birth or even death,” said Pitts.

“God is a reminder that after the numb silence of loss and pain that there is hope to rise up,” Pitts said, “God is comfort.”

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