Introduction

The conceptual project is a way for students to express themselves through means that are not typical. We have learned a lot on how to use many different forms of media like photography with a DSLR, audio recordings edited in Pro Tools, and videos produced in Premiere Pro and After Effects. This project will show the student’s ability to think abstractly and show their aesthetic through any of these forms. There are a lot of things that I value about being in Freestyle, and the community is a big part in it. I love the teachers and the material that we learn. In Digital Media, the pace of the course and the topics that we cover of Photoshop and After Effects are super interesting. In English, the poems that we read and the freedom to write what we want makes the class a lot of fun.

Photo Haiku

The Haiku unit in Digital Media and English went over the basics of what a Haiku is and the elements that make up a Haiku. We showed our creativity in writing our own Haiku based on an emotion shown through an experience. Mine was to show kindness through competition. As we were working on this in English, we learned how to use our DSLR cameras in Digital Media and used photography to express the same theme. Stitching these two together, we got the photo haiku, which we then edited with a voice recording to make a haiku video, shown here:

Photo Haiku Premiere Pro Screenshot

A few things that I valued about the Haiku Video production were the relevancy and connection to English as well as learning how to use Premiere Pro and record audio with our microphones.

Poetry Unit

The poetry unit in English and Digital media covered elements in poetry and many different works. We looked at different styles of poetry and wrote our own free verse poem in English. We applied this concept in Digital Media by recording the free verse poem and editing the audio in Pro Tools, which was a new concept to us.

Click here to see the Free Verse Poem
Click here to listen to the Intention Statement

“Routine” is a free verse poem about the repetition in life and how sometimes it is okay to fall into the pattern of repetition. The speaker in this poem, me, is writing during a time where we have a global pandemic and most in-person events got cancelled. It is coming from the sense of boredom and repetition in most people’s lives at this time, because it seems that I just fell into a routine of getting up, going to school, doing homework and then sleeping again. When the poem starts it seems bored with a neutral tone, maybe a little bit annoyed if anything, but as it was being written I realized that it isn’t as bad as I thought and I actually found some joy and beauty in the repetition of this lifestyle. The last line shows that it is okay to live like this because eventually all that will be left of it is memories, and I actually have made some positive ones. In the first stanza, the use of alliteration and repetition develops the tone to feel bored and frustrated. Another thing that shows this repetition is all of the end stops which separates the ideas being listed. When the repetition stops, it changes the tone to acceptance and gives it a warmer feeling of security in the fact that whatever is repetitive has stopped and it is all okay. The use of enjambment is the first line is used to separate the idea of beauty from the idea of repetition, but because it is enjambed the sound of it makes the ideas flow together even though they are separate. Ultimately, the use of repetition and end stops in this poem shows that the contrasting ideas of repetition and beauty are actually related and can be seen simultaneously. During peer review, my readers enjoyed the end stops and repetition, as well as the change in tone in the poem. They suggested that I try to make the repetition more obvious, which I did by adding the word “the” before all of the ideas in the first stanza. Also, the readers said that the last line was a little confusing because it was separated into a few lines, which I changed into what it is now. Overall, the feedback I got was very positive and helpful.

Poem Photoshop Screenshot

From this project, I learned how to record and edit audio in pro tools, and I also learned a lot about not only free verse poetry, but poetry in general.

Elements and Principals of Art

Elements and Principles of Art Title Page

Design Reflection

In Design, we have learned how to use a few different applications like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and expressed our creativity through projects such as the Macro and Conceptual Photo as well as the Negative Positive Space Halloween Project and Interior Linear Perspective of Bedroom. My overall experience in Design has been super fun just the right amount of challenge.

Macro Photo

This project was to learn how to use the curves feature in Photoshop and how to make pictures look better, specifically a macro photo in this project.

In the bottom right that is the layers panel which is where the curves and brightness changes are. Curves is how you can change the brightness and contrast which helps make the photo more interesting and appealing to our eyes.

Conceptual photo

The conceptual photo project was an application of our photoshop knowledge to take and edit a photo that represents our concept statement and to write an artist statement on it.

I am exploring the feeling of kindness through competition.
There are two main objects in this photograph, a bike with a race plate and a gift bag. The color of the race plate stands out against the background, which attracts attention. From there, you will notice the gift bag on the right side of the bike. The reason for the placement of the gift bag was to align with the race plate, which draws a line roughly on the right line in the rule of thirds. All of these strategies were to attract the attention of the person viewing it, which starts to establish the theme of the photo. For the setting/background, I chose to go outside and take it in the grass with a bush behind the subjects for a few reasons. The idea of biking is enhanced by the fact the image is taken outside in nature, and the bush in the background was to make sure the background didn’t have too much going on because I didn’t want it to take any attention away from the subject.
The relationship the race plate has with the gift shows the connection to the concept statement because gifts are a kind gesture, with racing being the competition aspect. Gifts can be literally anything, so that relates to the bike depending on how the image is interpreted.
My process in Photoshop was to lighten the image, increase contrast, and then apply a vignette. The reason for this was because the image itself was a little dark to begin with so I lightened it, and I also increased the contrast to make sure that the subjects of the image weren’t blending in with the background. This brought out the bold blue of the race plate and reds/pinks of the gift, and the vignette helped dim the background to ensure that the subject was prominent in the photo.

The process to this photo in Photoshop is pretty much the same as the last project, where I used the curves as the main change to the picture to make the contrast higher and I also gave the picture more saturation.

Negative Positive Space Halloween Project

This project was a quick and fun project where we just used paper and an x-acto knife to make a picture that is symmetrical.

This image is unedited so there is no need to show the application that produced the image.

Interior Linear Perspective of Bedroom

The Interior Linear Perspective of Bedroom project was demonstrating our abilities in Adobe Illustrator in order to make a drawing of our bedroom using linear perspective.

The picture above is Adobe Illustrator and you can look at the layers panel on the bottom right to see the process of this picture being made, with each object having its own layer. All of the objects in this picture are based on one perspective point in the center of the back wall, which is called the vanishing point.