Monday, February 28, 2011

Church notes

Do any of you take notes in church? I do because I find it easier to concentrate when I'm doing something with my hands.  Taking notes also helps me remember important information, it also makes it easy to refer back to if it's needed.  I take notes in a few different ways I...
1. write down important points
2. illustrate with pictures important examples or ideas
3. write down the names of songs that relate to the sermon or a part of it

I write down important points because it narrows in on what I need to focus on, I usually do it like an outline when writing and essay

like that.

I illustrate (or draw pictures) of important ideas because they make more sense to me if I can picture them and I understand them more quickly if it's drawn out.
The third note taking thing I do is kind of recent, I've been writing down the names of songs that I think relate to the sermon, then I can listen to them throughout the week and remember some details about the sermon.

These three things that I do have it a lot easier to focus and understand what I hear, yes I do use all of them on the same page of notes because separately they each make me remember different things.  Writing things makes me remember the big, overall topics, drawing things helps me remember the ideas, and listening to songs helps me remember details over time.
How to you take notes?

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Friday, February 25, 2011

And the Oscar goes to..........

Okay so unless you never turn on your TV you probably know that the Oscars are coming up in two days.  I've never really had an interest in famous people wearing huge dresses to go get a statue.  And recently it seems like there have been a bunch of award shows like that on.  The Golden Globes, the Academy Awards, the Grammys (which sounds like the board of grandmothers is judging) etc...  So why all the hype? If you saw a movie and liked it that should be it, but it's not you have to hear about the actor's lives, see them on the news, which for me ruins it.  When I was younger my favorite movie was "Star Wars" one of the first two, and I wanted to be exactly like Amadala.  She was pretty, and powerful, she could use a gun, everything a six or seven year old me could want to be.  Now all you here about her is who she's engaged to, if she pregnant or not, if there's a scandal going on etc...  That's why I don't like having favorite actors (and this goes for singers too) the more you know about them the less you like them.  Now I've kinda gone into space here so let me try to come back down to earth.  Okay so, in short I don't like all these award shows I mean these people make more money than the president, they don't need an award.  For example Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) is getting paid 43 million dollar for parts 1 and 2 of The Deathly Hallows.  It's crazy!
and now I will leave you with a quote

"A celebrity is one who is know to may persons he is glad he doesn't know."
~Lord Byron

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Wednesday, February 23, 2011


Have you ever looked at a bunch of tubes of paints?  like really looked, I was just recently painting a picture and decided to take a picture of my paints.  It was just a quick shot I'll admit I didn't take much care.  But when I uploaded it to my computer I was shocked, it actually looked decent... and not only decent but good.  So I did some selective coloring to give it more impact.  Then I got a little crazy... I changed the color of the selective color with the hue saturation adjustment in Photoshop.  And this is what I got.

Then I changed the hue to a cobalt blue

Then I tried red

I like the simplicity of the black and white with selective coloring, I might print these out to go on my wall.
Simple shot, simple editing, simple result.  So here are two quotes about simplicity.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.  ~Leonardo DaVinci

Anything simple always interests me.  ~David Hockney

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Monday, February 21, 2011


Do you ever feel like you're flying through life so fast you can't keep up?  I have, and I think this style of picture taking does a great job at capturing life's hectic, rushed moments.  It's great for showing motion, without total blurriness.  I'm fascinated with the look of these.

You can also give the same style two different looks, the one below, has the time appearing very clearly one bigger one smaller.

However in this 2nd picture it looks like you're going into the numbers, quite literally zooming.

So... Now that you know what it looks like here's how you do it.
1) Slow it down: lower your shutter speed, or take your camera into a dark room to get a slower shutter speed.
2) Find a subject:  Find what ever you're going to take a picture of and arrange it is desired.
3) Focus: figure out where you what part you want to be zooming into, (I chose the numbers on the clock, and the lens on the camera.)
4) Click: Take the picture and while it's taking, if using a DSLR zoom the lens in and out,  if using a point and shoot move the camera forwards and backwards towards your subject. *remember, to zoom, (or bring camera close to) the area that you want to be in focus.

That's about it.  Comment below and link to your blog I'd be super curious to see some results.

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Saturday, February 19, 2011


A while ago my mom found this super cool website called wordle.  Now you probably have used it or heard of it, but in case you have no idea what it is or what it does. I will tell you.  Wordle is a word cloud generator, meaning you just type in a list of words and it will give you a word cloud, it's pretty cool and you can do anything I did one with the lyrics to one of my favorite songs, called "Background" by Lecrae, who is a Christian rapper.  Here it is:

The website is linked here 

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Thursday, February 17, 2011



I saw this quote a while ago and wondered if it was true.  I like all the colors and I don't have a favorite but I still wasn't sure.  So right after I saw this quote I drew a small picture on an artist trading card (below), and I liked it but would the feeling of the the picture be different if the iris was a color other than purple? So I conducted an experiment, I photographized (my word for 'took a picture of')  my drawing and photoshopped it to have some different colored irises, what do you think? does the purple one have something the others don't? 

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Tuesday, February 15, 2011

A Power Outage

Yesterday evening at about 4:30 the power totally died on us.  I apparently have not grown out of that stage where this kind of thing is fun so i had a blast.  Unfortunately the power came back on after only a half hour, hardly worthy to be called a power outage.  But during that half hour I realized that we rely so much on electricity, without it we can't: use the internet, use the phone, entertain ourselves with TV, light the stove, we can't even see.  So is it weird to still enjoy the feeling of being secluded in darkness filled with candles? honestly I don't really care I love it, it's not everyday that we take a break from the everyday.

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Sunday, February 13, 2011

The Jetsons, Justin Bieber

If you've ever watched the Jetsons you've probably know what it's about. It's a show about a futuristic family living in 2062, since it's a TV series it doesn't really have a concrete plot line.  And if you have ever watched Youtube, or the news, you'll probably know who Justin Bieber is.  But what do the two have in common?  In episode Judy Jetsons (the 16 year old daughter) enters a songwriting contest where the winner goes on a date with pop star Jet Screamer.  So the similarities aren't really related to the Jetsons as much as to Jet Screamer.  But they are similar.

Similarity 1. They were both famous
Similarity 2. They were both singers
Similarity 3. Both of them say baby way too much, Justin Bieber has a song called baby and Jet Screamer just said it... a lot
Similarity 4. Contests were held to either meet or date them.  Justin Bieber had one song writing contest to go with him to his movie premier and a 'why I should meet Justin Bieber' contest to go on a date with him.  In the Jet Screamer contest  you had to write a song to go on a date with him.
Similarity 5. Both their song lyrics are repetitive
Similarity 6. Their names sound similar
Similarity 7. In the pictures below (which I did not take) they look the same

So... In conclusion the Jetsons were not only ahead of their time technologically but they also predicted the rise of Justing Bieber.  For the record I did not know all of this stuff about Justin Bieber until I was going to post about it, then I researched it.  

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Friday, February 11, 2011

This Time of Year

Hhhhh...  Around this time every year I crave the beach, or any vacation in general, but mostly the beach.  I haven't been in about five years and I really miss it.  A few days ago, we bought some stuffed clam shells, which were very yummy.  What does this have to do with the beach?  Well being as desperate as I am to go to the beach I took five of the clam shells washed them out (aka ate them) and took pictures of them to help curb my beach craving. So here in one picture that i thought was quite pretty and beachy.  I post processed it to give it a dreamier feel.

Another thing about this time of year is Valentines Day.  Personally I think Valentines Day is overrated, unless you have a boyfriend or husband who is willing to spend money on you.  However it does provide a lot of photo ideas because it has a basic color scheme: red, pink, purple.  A general feeling: love, happiness.  and a general shape or symbol: hearts.  Looking for these things is really easy around this time of year, and if you look for things of these colors, shapes, and feelings, taking photos becomes really easy.  So here is a picture I took of a box that covered with newspaper and painted... (you can't really tell it's a box in the picture though)

TA-DA!! well hope you enjoyed this post.

P.S if you want you can link to your blog so I can see some of your Valentine-y photos.

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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Typical Colors

 Have you ever entered a room with a crib, a dresser, and stuffed animal, but it looked like someone threw bubble gum paint all over?  Well you could automatically assume that someone was having a baby girl.  Over time people have stereotyped colors. Blue is automatically a boy color.  I found this website That actually says that the favorite color of 57% of males is blue and only 9% of females favorite color is red.  This site also shows gender preferences for least favorite color, which I though was very interesting.  The least favorite color for 33% of females is orange.  while for 27% of males it's brown.  look at the site it's really interesting and actually squishes the idea of "boy" and "girl" colors.  So just an interesting thought. 

Keep it colorful! :)

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Monday, February 7, 2011

The Last Installment

We have arrived at the last installment of my three part series regarding the 3 camera settings you need to know. The final setting that you need to know is ISO.  ISO stands for International Standards Organization
1) ISO: 
In simple terms: How sensitive your camera is to light
In the camera: when you look at your ISO speed in your camera (i can't tell you where to find it because it's different with all cameras.)  You will see numbers like 200, 450, 1600 etc...  the lower numbers should be used on brighter days and the higher numbers should be used on darker days.  Why? look below 
How to use it: Since the ISO determines how sensitive your camera, or more like the "film" in your camera is to light, it's a setting that can vary a lot.  low ISO gives you crisp clear images when you have enough light.  You see a low ISO setting means that you need more light to get a good picture. Why? well the lower your ISO the faster the shutter speed is in bright light.  But if you have a dark room and need a fast shutter speed, then what do you do? crank up the ISO doing this makes the shutter speed faster enabling you to take better pictures in the dark.  However when you raise the ISO is also adds noise to your photos.  Noise is that colored grainy stuff you'll see in some pictures.  SO if you have lots of light use and ISO of 100-200 (you can sill use this setting in the dark but the shutter speed will be slower.)  If you need a fast shutter speed in the dark turn up the ISO to 800-1600 but be careful of noise

this first picture is taken with an ISO of 200

and this one was taken with an ISO of 1600 see the noise?

   Now do you see it?

Well now you should know the 3 basic camera settings.  Knowing these settings will help you be able to look at a picture and figure out how to take one like it.  It also makes you seem smart around your friends when you start talking about changing the aperture size you focus only on that one flower.  Well thanks for tuning in.

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Friday, February 4, 2011

Shutter Speed

So this is part 2 of my 3 part series on the three things you should know about your camera. It makes taking pictures easier and you'll be able to achieve a certain look very easily.

1) Shutter Speed: 
In simple terms: how fast the camera takes the picture
In the camera: Yes shutter speed is the technical term, on your camera where you find your settings it will just be a number like 60, 1500, or 3" the (") next to the 3 means that the shutter speed is set to three seconds, the others are fractions of a second.
what it does specifically: Lots of things affects how long it takes to take a picture, light, aperture, ISO. and the shutter speed basically tells you how fast the picture will be taken based on the other settings. 
How to use it: The larger the shutter speed the faster the picture can be taken, making it easy to get sharp images.  Fast shutter speeds are ideal for; sports photography, little kid and pet photography, and things that move around a lot.  Slow shutter speeds are used when there is less light because it takes time for the light that is there to reach the "film"  so you'll most likely need a tripod or something to stabilize the camera when using a slow shutter speed so you get crisp photos.  Slow shutter speed is great for; night photography, still life photography etc...  Now you can also do tons of fun things with slow shutter speed, like light trails, zooming and light painting.
this first picture is taken with a shutter speed of 1/500 meaning i 500th of a second

and this one was taken with a shutter speed of 1/6 meaning one sixth of a second

So that's it for shutter speed next i'll cover ISO.

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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

the 3 basics of a camera

Okay so as you probably know from one of my other posts, I like to take pictures.  This is not unusual for girls who blog, they take pictures and post them to there blogs, it's a popular topic.  However when I post my pictures I don't want you to just see them I want you to be able to recreate them so I will, like in the last post, tell you my camera settings for most of the pictures I post.  Now this won't really help you all that much unless you know what these settings mean.  So in the next 3 posts I will tell you about the 3 main things you need to focus on when you take a picture.
1) Aperture:
In simple terms: the thingy in the camera that determines what is in focus and what is blurry
In the camera: when reading camera books sometimes to aperture will be called the f/stop but it's the same thing
what it does specifically: It determines how much light can reach the "film" inside that camera,  it also determines how much of the picture is focused and how much is blurry.
How to use it: the lower the f/stop number the less that is in focus and vice versa.  So if you want a picture where only one small part of the picture is in focus use and f/stop of 4.5.  If you want a picture that has a lot in focus then use and f/stop of 16.  Now if you want a lot in focus the shutter speed (covered below) will go down making the picture blurry if it's too dark.
this first picture is taken with an f/stop of f16

see everything is in focus?

and this one was taken with and f/stop of f4.5

see the blurry parts?

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