Roses

Tammie Klage L603 High Tech Learning Dr. Annette Lamb Fall 2007

**=Fiesta #2: Digital Photography Exploration=**

Hi everyone! Let me just start by telling you, this has been much more of a challenge then I had expected!! First of all, know that I have had a Kodak Easy Share Digital Camera [|Kodak Easy Share] for quite some time now and until this weekend, felt pretty confident in my abilities with it. I load my pictures onto the desktop of my IMac computer or my IBook laptop without any trouble. I have many times inserted photos into Word Documents, powerpoint, Kidspiration, or various other software. I am able to edit and adjust pictures for lighting, color, cropping, or whatever I need. The new part for this Fiesta for me was to upload them to the web. I honestly was not too worried about it, that is, until I tried it.

I had a very hard time figuring our how to resize my photos for use on the web! I use IPhoto to edit my picutres and I resized and cropped them just fine, but the dimensions were still way too big. I could not find anywhaere to change them. I tried to download [|GIMP] and I even tried to download [|Apperture] for Macs. The GIMP site had so many choices, I reallly did not know what to choose. Once I did choose, all I ended up with was a folder on my desktop with a ton of files in it, and I could not figure out what to do with it. I am embarrassed to say that I am not avid or experienced at downloading files and programs unless they are email attachments or oncourse attachments. I also tried Apertrue, but I guess it is just huge, and my computer kept saying I did not have the space for it, which I am not even sure I believe! At this point I was highly frustrated and I emailed Dr. Lamb.

After Dr. Lamb assured me that I ought to be able to resize my photos in [|IPhoto], I played around some more. FINALLY, I found that if I exported the pictures, I had an option for "Web." I could set my dimensions and then export the photos to a folder on my desktop. It actually turned out kind of nice because I got a folder with my images, one with thumbnails, and one with html files for each photo. I was very relieved! Anyway, I had to just strat off and share my frustrations with everyone in case anyone else was struggling too. Don't feel bad ~you are NOT alone! I even had a bear of a time figuring out how to get this page to show up on the wiki, but thanks to numerous emails from our very patient Dr. lamb, I finally think I am in-sync with wiki!

Okay, so about the photos I took. I do a lot of photography of my fiance and I for our scrapbook, so for something different, I thought I would shoot something inanimate. This also helped to alleviate the problem that many mentioned concerning the moving live creatures that they attempted to shoot. I got my inspiration from the artist Georgia O'Keeffe. Here are a couple of links about her and her work...

[|ArtCyclopedia]

[|Georgia O'Keeffe in Wiki]

[|Georgia O'Keeffe Museum]

I have been interested in Georgia O'Keeffe since I was young. My dad is a graphic artisist, and for years, I thought I wanted to be one too (along with being a teacher!) I did one of my first research projects on her work and her life. Actually for all of you school media friends, it was back in the 80's, but it was actually a classroom and media collaboration project with my sixth grade teacher and the media specialist. We had to research a person and write about them, prepare a visual product, and "become" the person for a __Meeting of the Minds__ presentation.

As a side note, __Meeting of the Minds__ is an old TV show where famous people, in unrelated fields, got together to discuss current issues. We teamed up with four other students, impersonated our chosen famous person, living or dead, and wrote a script of a discussion about current issues. We performed it for our parents at the High School theater.

Anyway, Georgia O'Keeffe was my inspiration for my photos.

So here are my pictures...











As you can see, I chose to photograph my roses! I started out with two general shots of the bouquets in the vase.I had to play around alot. My living room was bright and I was getting too much reflection from the sunlight.

I then wanted to zoom in on individual flowers, so I chose one open and one closed and shot them on their own. Again, I played with the angle of the individual flowers to get it set just right. I wanted to be sure the photo captured the key elements of each flower. I used the table as a backdrop for one and a tablecloth for the other.

Finally, I wanted to get a full view of a loom. I did a top down shot of an open flower still in the vase. Again, i had to work with my angle and the lighting to get the image to look its best.

I tried all the photos in all the settings on my camera :


 * Auto, portrait (which was a bit more clear)
 * Sport (which sine the flowers are still did not do too much)
 * Night (With the lights out )
 * Landscape (from far away)
 * Close Up (worked especially well for the individual flowers)

I chose the best examples and placed them on this page. I ended up with at least 75 photos on my camera card!

Moving on to Editing

Moving on to Teaching and Learning