Brandon Burris on Examiner.com

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http://www.examiner.com/x-17596-Phoenix-Photography-Examiner

Sound Project - Iron Man

I had a lot of trouble with this project as well.  I still found sound hard to work with, more so this time because we had to make our own sounds.  The song that I remade was Ozzy's "Iron Man."  I thought this song would be cool to remake using car sounds, basketball beats, and my own voice saying Iron Man.  However, I spent well more than just a couple hours working on this project having much difficulty manipulating the sound I created.  But, I finally got this grueling sound project somewhere that I kinda like, or rather the best I could get it.  I still don't think its that great, but it works and I did my best to get the result that I did.  Overall, I came to the conclusion that I really don't like using Audacity.

http://www.public.asu.edu/~blburris/IronMan.mp3

http://www.public.asu.edu/~blburris/SoundExercise.mp3

This kind of project was new to me and I had a lot of difficulty with it because I was new to messing with sound using Audacity and Garage Band.  I finally got my project about to where I wanted it and expected to sound like, but I wish I could have done more with it, maybe with more freedom.  But, using what I had to work with, I think my first sound project came out pretty good and I am happy with it.  Please click in the above link to hear my sound project.

When I started this project, I knew that I wanted to take a comical approach in deigning my quote projects.  Therefore, when I searched for quotes, I looked at various comedians for ideas.  In the end, I chose three really good quotes that I liked, one from Mel Brooks, one from Bill Cosby, and one from my favorite comedian, George carlin.  Being new to Illustrator made it a little difficult in designing and depicting each piece the way I wanted because I am not yet familiar with all the tools that are available to me.  But, I did my best and with a little luck of clicking the right buttons, arrived at the images you see above.  I am pleased with the pieces, even though arriving at them was irritating at times.  Nevertheless, I feel more comfortable with using Illustrator now to manipulate text, but still prefer Photoshop.

I found this assignment to be kind of difficult, mainly because I have never used Illustrator before.  After much thought of what to make, which also proved to be difficult because I didn't know what I had to work with, I finally decided to make a vector type of my initials.  My initials are BB, therefore, I placed the b's back to back which created a butterfly image.  I did the same thing and gave the butterfly a little head.  As for the colors, I chose to keep the whole thing as a black and white contrast.  For the background, I put a bunch of squares that also had the black and white contrast that complemented the butterfly well.  Overall, for as simplistic as the piece is, it took me a long, grueling time to complete, but it proved to be a success and I am happy with it.

I decided to go with a science fiction theme with my extra credit book project.  Science fiction is my favorite genre, and wanted to take a stab at making one of those extreme looking space backgrounds that some science fiction books have.  Therefore, I started with making a starry sky scene to which I added a couple planets.  I incorporated a few of my own pictures to complete the project, such as my moon picture which I used as one of the planets.  After I finished composing my project, I had yet to come up with a title for it.  I pondered what I would call it for about a day, but in the end what I liked and what stuck in my head was “Journey to the Center of the Universe.”  I liked this title because it could be a part two to the renowned “Journey to the Center of the World” which would be cool if there would someday be a part two…hell I will write it if I must.

 

When I was first introduced to this project, I immediately knew what the subject of my piece was going to be, the University of Phoenix Stadium.  I chose to do my photomontage of the stadium because I knew that I had pictures of it when it was first being built and thought it would be cool to incorporate them into the piece.  So, all I needed was a set of current pictures, with which I could easily incorporate the building pictures of the structure into.

Getting the pictures I wanted turned out to be an all day event.  I spent the day taking a series of zoomed in pictures of the stadium that I would later piece together to make my photomontage.  I took three sets of picture: one set at noon, one set in the evening, and one set at night.  I did my best to set my camera in the same position in front of the stadium each time, according to my pictures I took back in 2006.  This proved to be difficult as many things in the scenery changed, but I was able to get it pretty close.

After I took all the pictures I needed, all I had to then was piece them together in Photoshop using the photo stitch tool.  I started by stitching all of the noon shots first, which took a while to do because of the file size and the amount of pictures I was stitching.  When that was done, I then took various pictures from the evening and night shots and overlaid them onto the stitched noon shots.  Finally, after I had finished with that, I added the finishing touch of overlaying the picture of the stadium being built on top of the entire image.

What is Art?

I would define art as just elements that when a arranged in a certain way, appeal to the senses or emotions, both good and bad, of human beings.  I believe that it is more than possible to assess and evaluate art, but I think it only goes to the extent of the individual viewing the art.  Everybody is going to have a different opinion about art, however there may be some areas of agreement.  But overall, most people are going to view art differently and have different opinions of what is considered art and what is not.  This also goes for judging what is considered good art and what is considered bad art.  No one person can look at a single piece of art and say that that piece of art is good or bad and that is how it is going to be.  That is just that person's opinion, and opinions are never wrong or right, they are strickly a voice of how one feels. Overall, I think art is much like how one views beauty, in that art is in the eye of the beholder.

Self-Portrait

     
Starting with this piece, I already kind of knew the direction I wanted to go in, but I needed to find an image that I could use to present it.  Thus, searching Google, I came upon this water drop picture in which the world resided in the water drop.  I thought this was perfect for what I wanted to show.  Therefore, using this image I put a picture of my girlfriend and myself in the world.  I feel this is significant because she is a big part of my life and thought it would be appropriate to incorporate her in my self-portrait.  From there, I wanted to include my passion in life, which is photography.  So, I took a picture of my Canon lens and blended it into the picture to give it the presence of being under the water.  Finally, I figured that the piece needed one final touch and took a picture of my hand to incorporate and act like I was holding the water drop of the world.  I feel that the image as a whole is symbolic in that I hold my life in my hand and have control over my destiny.  I consider the puddle to be my life so far, depicting photography as my most resent passion, and my hand adding another segment into the puddle of my life dealing with my most important relationship and love of my life.

Canon EOS Rebel T1i

One of the best cameras on the market right now that buyers have their eyes on is the Canon EOS Rebel T1i. This DSLR is packed with high-definition video capture and other top-end features that surpass others of its kind and make it a competitive rival to the Nikon D5000.

This 15.1MP (megapixel) camera also inherits some top-notch capabilities as seen in Canon’s EOS 50D and 5D Mark II. One such area that is inherited is in its sensors and processors. It gets its 15.1MP CMOS sensor and 14-bit A/D conversion from the 50D. Also, the ISO’s of the T1i can be driven towards a whopping 12,800. Thus, with utilizing the same sensors and processors, the image quality of the T1i can be expected to match that of the 50D.

The T1i is traditional with its LCD display. It has the same fixed 3-inch, 920,000-dot LCD display that Canon’s EOS 50D and 5D Mark II possess. This is a beautiful display that may catch the interest of those more interested in a fine-grain viewing screen rather than an articulate one as seen on Nikon’s D5000. Canon’s T1i’s autofocusing system may also seem familiar. It gets its 9-point, diamond pattern AF array from the EOS Rebel XSi and its center cross-sensor is surrounded by linear sensors.

As for Canon’s T1i’s video capabilities, it has the advantage over others of its kind with its 1920x1080-pixel HD video. However, since the T1i does not have four outlet channels from the sensor like the 5D Mark II, its two outlet channels can only manage 20 frames per second up to a 12 minute clip, making for some choppy video. Because of this and its smaller pixels, its video may be noisier at higher ISOs. The T1i is also only capable of mono sound recording as opposed to the 5D Mark II’s stereo. Although at the lower resolution of 1280x720, video can be shot at 30 fps.

Moreover, the built-in pop-up flash is a basic one that comes with other Canon cameras, but without wireless flash control. And as for the lens compatibility, the Canon EOS Rebel T1i can take any lens from the EF collection, digital only or full frame.

Overall, the Canon EOS Rebel T1i proves to be a prime competitor on the market right now for camera buyers at the price of $800 for the body only and $900 with an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EF-S IS lens. Its features listed here are more than enough to spark the interest of the avid photographer, not only for its picture quality, but also for those photographers looking to capture a little video on the side.