Social Networking

We have always tried to find better ways to connect to one another. At one time, it was through telegraphs and letters, then the telephone, then email. As technology advances, so does our desire to find new and different ways to keep in touch with out friends. This is called social networking; something that has grown exponentially in the past decade. While there are many different forms of social networking out there, three of them have made an extreme impact on society, especially ages 13+.

The first social networking site that seemed to explode onto the scene was called MySpace. MySpace was founded in 2003 by Chris DeWolf and Tom Anderson, two friends who were inspired by one of the earliest social networking sites, Friendster. When MySpace first started out, bands became the predominant members, trying to get their music out to the masses. MySpace came with the idea of having “friends”, or people who can become “friends” with your profile, much like cyber fans. MySpace took off and companies took notice. Many companies looked to buy MySpace, most notably of which was News Corp Fox Interactive. However, MySpace slowly developed into a breeding ground for sexual predators and overexposure for some teens. As soon as these concerns arose, other social networking sites jumped in to take the reigns.

Facebook became the next big phenomenon, boasting to be the “world’s largest social network”, with over 400 million users. Facebook was originally only started to be a social networking site for colleges (first was Harvard University), and was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. Facebook became the seemingly safer alternative to MySpace, making it more exclusive with greater privacy settings (when I first joined, I had to be invited on by someone in my network!). As Facebook grew in popularity, the founder began to extend the networking site to High School students, complete with newly established photo-sharing features. Eventually, in 2006, Facebook opened up to anyone that had an email address, whether in middle school or middle aged. It continues to grow and change, much to some people’s dismay, constantly, with new applications being created everyday. It has become the ultimate way to not only reconnect and stay in touch with friends, but to spend your time playing games or looking through photos.

Although Facebook is still considered the most popular social networking site, a new site has become very popular recently. This newly developing phenomenon is called Twitter, a social networking site where people can post up to 140 characters at a time. Although it was developed in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, it is only recently that is has gained extreme popularity. Twitter became the most popular way for celebrities and other social figures to connect with fans and update on their daily life. Just like MySpace and Facebook, a person can have “followers”, or people that subscribe to see every “tweet”, or post, done by a certain person. It is incredibly popular among celebrities (though there are some reports that twitter is losing its edge among social figures) and is spreading throughout the world.

As technology grows and develops, there will always be the next new social phenomenon. As a culture, we are so obsessed with staying connected, though ironically, all the connection has become extremely depersonalized – go figure. These sites have many pros, especially according to the teenage age group, but also some cons. With any social networking site, or rather, with any website, there is always a chance for danger. It seems that as our desire to connect grows, so does our desire to retain our privacy.

(click on links for sources)

Animated Postcard

You need to answer all questions in THIS POST. Problems, etc. Talk about each stage.

Font Poem

For our second project, we had to make a font poem, using Photoshop. This project helped me learn how to use layers (since we eventually had to animate the poem). For my text, I chose an excerpt from the poem "A Love Story" by William Carlos Williams. I chose this because I found the language very descriptive and beautiful, so I wanted to compliment that with visuals.

At first, I just wrote out the whole text in one layer, in one text box, which ended up not being very beneficial to what I decided I wanted to do with the poem. I ended up re-doing this poem about 3+ times, first just creating one new layer to stretch the word WEIGHT, then I decided that each word or line I wanted to animate should be a separate layer. Therefore I did the project over a third time. I am fairly happy with the outcome, even though it really is all about type face and not shape of the poem. I tried that out at first but then felt that the poem was too beautiful to have any more unnecessary distractions.

The fonts I used were:

Abadi MT Condensed Light
OCR A Std
Koch Antiqua LT Std
ITC Ozwald Std
ITC Isadora Std
Hobo Std
Pepperwood Std
Organica GMM Std
Magnolia MVB Std
Klang MT Std
Cascade Script LT Std

Contact Sheet

This was a perfect first project. It helped me get comfortable with using Photoshop, since I had never even touched it before. I encountered some difficulties with this project, but I can go into that later. First, let me explain the project.

Row 1 (Resolution): For this row, I used a picture that I took of my friend Amy (which my sister says looks like an ad for Volvo). We had to put the picture into 4 different resolutions, 72 dpi, 300 dpi, 600 dpi, and 1200 dpi. With each increase in dpi, the image gets sharper. The difference in sharpness between 72 dpi and 300 dpi are very obvious, but the differences in the others are less prevalent, but still there. I wasn't quite sure how the resolution changes would effect this picture especially, because it was taken with cross-processed slide film, therefore it was scanned onto the computer and not taken digitally. Aside from that, it seems to have worked fine.

Row 2 (Format/Mode): For this row, we had to take a picture and format it into different color modes. I took a color photo (normally in RGB color mode), and put in into CMYK mode, greyscale, removing all color except black and white, and then duotone, which consisted of black and one other color. The photo I chose to use was one that my sister took when she was in the Czech republic. I chose it because I not only loved the colors, but the composition of the image itself. Also, there was another version of this picture that she took in black and white, so I knew that this version would look good in black and white/duotone.

Row 3 (Orientation): This has to be one of my favorite pictures of my sister and I. For this row we had to take a picture and crop it to change it into a portrait, a square, and landscape. I chose this picture, not only because I love it, but I wanted to use a picture with people in the center of it, so the cropping was obvious.

Row 4 (Cropping): For this row, we had to take a picture and close up on one thing in it, then gradually show more and more of the picture to finally reveal the whole image. I chose a picture that I took because I wanted to show one person, then zoom out (if you will) to reveal the rest of the picture and how it is really just the one person with a lot of space around her.

Row 5 (Content): For this row, we had to take an image and crop a section of it to make and abstract image and slowly reveal the rest of the image until it was representational. The image I chose to use was one that I took of the King Phillip Hotel/Apartment building, behind CVS. I chose it not only because I felt that the complete image looked very forboding, but because of the lines and angles of the picture. I had a little trouble figuring out a good crop to be completely abstract, but after some trial an error, I decided on a crop that, hopefully reads as abstract enough.

Row 6 (Purpose): For this row we had to take a picture and format it into different artistic modes. I decided to chose a picture my sister made that encompassed many lines, so that it would be interesting and easy to see the different artistic modes and formats. The artistic formats I chose were Fresco, Dark Strokes, and Neon Glow.

I really enjoyed doing this project. One reason is that I liked finally being able to learn how to use Photoshop, and also because I got to look at great pictures while doing it. I had some problems along the way, but I guess that is just part of the process.

My favorite photo in this project (although I like all of them) is probably this picture that my sister took. I just think it is a beautiful and very odd photo. She's just a great photographer.