Throughout the first unit at Freestyle Academy, there was a sense of harmony in all three of the classes I took. In my Digital Media class, the work I did for my English and Design classes came together in an interesting way. This whole first unit, we were focusing on keeping everything conceptual. To do this we had to stop thinking so literally, and start thinking more abstract. Because I am so used to using logic and reasoning at school this was difficult for me. With most projects and works that we did in English and Design, we were thinking conceptually. Many of these projects, such as my photo haiku video and ekphrastic poem, are displayed on my website for you to view.

In my English class, my classmates and I were required to write a free verse word poem, an ekphrastic poem, and a spoken word poem. For my free verse poem, I was exploring the feeling of reluctance through the experience of following my instincts. To convey this, I had to experiment with various writing techniques and shifts in tone. Ekphrastic poems are poems based on another piece of art.

On my field trip to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, I wrote an ekphrastic poem on the untitled piece shown below.

He
was in my
way
wherever he stood.
His revealing
outfit
of dark honeycombs
melted
away to show his
emptiness.
His head was somber
and slouched, not
minding the perverts
all around. He was a
snail
in an ant colony,
apologizing for
existing.

When writing my free verse poem, I was thinking about how people’s insecurity when not trusting what their heart tells them leads to a hesitance to pursuing things they really want or believe in. This leaves a handful of people who do not cave in to conforming to the pressure of following what the majority of people’s instincts are.

For my spoken word poem, I was expressing my feelings of unimportance. Although it seems to be a negative topic, I did my best to flip it, making it more optimistic towards the end.

In addition to the other three poems I had written in English, I wrote a Haiku. It was similar to my free verse poem in that I was exploring the feeling of reluctance through following my instincts. After writing the Haiku, I put it over a picture that suited the topic in a figurative sense. In my Digital Media class, all the students turned their photo Haiku into a video. We used this to our advantage by using effects with video editing that made the Haiku more interesting to observe.
Making the Haiku was more difficult than it seemed. I had to condense complicated emotions down to three lines. This made the final product interesting due to how much thought went into such a small piece.
I personally enjoyed seeing all of my classmates' work. Everyone's Haikus were very unique and surprising.

This is my Haiku Video.

I added a title page and various effects on the image and text.

This is a screenshot of my page in Premiere Pro.

For our Tranport project, we were assigned to take pictures of objects that can be used for transporting people or things. The object had to have wheels, but could not have any kind of engine. We were not allowed to shoot with people in our pictures.

In our Transport project, we were assigned to photograph an object with wheels, no engine, and no people in the picture using an interesting angle and aperture.
My picture was a colorful bike in a suburban neighborhood. I shot with the back wheel close to the lens and the background bland and colorless. I thought that shooting from the angle that I did would make the picture more interesting to look at. It also made the leading lines on the bike stand out. I shot with a bland background to emphasize the colors on the bike through contrast. I chose this particular bicycle because it had nostalgic, fun colors. My large aperture allowed for a low depth of field that left only the bike in focus.
In photoshop, I used only two tools to edit my picture. I used the pen tool and the crop tool. I used the crop tool to emphasize the chains and bolt of the bike with the rule of thirds because that is the focal point of my image. I used the pen tool to select the majority of the background of my image and bring down the saturation. This gave my background an even more dull, sad feel which brought out the happy colors of the bike even more.

Conceptual Art Diptych

I took a picture of a pea sprout and a crack. The pea sprout was carefully placed in the crack as to look planted. My goal was to make the shot look uncomfortable and natural at the same time. I shot around sunset and got a streak of light going down the cement in my shot to give the picture that slightly natural tone against the very human background of the cement. My angle was head-on and up close to my pea to get all of its little imperfections and details.
Pea sprouts have an eager, undeveloped look to them. Because of the primitive connotation that sprouts have, I used one in my picture to represent human instincts. Having it planted in a cement crack was a metaphor for humans when they are hesitant to follow these instincts. When we do not want follow our instincts we intentionally put them in a hidden place within ourselves. Intentionally putting a plant where you know it will not grow reflects this feeling.
In photoshop, I used the crop tool which helped me to get the focal points of my photo in proper view using the rule of thirds. I also created a vignette to focus in on my picture, giving it a nice, clean frame. To do this, I used an ellipse tool and put a large oval shape on top of a copied layer of my photo. I then subtracted the shape, turned up the feathering, and turned down the opacity. This left my picture with a nice looking black frame to add to the dark, unpleasant tone of my picture.

In my music parody Hey Douche, I edited the vocals out of the song Hey Jude by The Beatles and added the vocals of my own classmates into it. Enjoy…