New Website (really)

My new web­si­te is noel​le​.dev.

New Website

If you’ve stum­bled across the si­te, I just wan­ted to let you know that you can fol­low my most re­cent pho­to­graphic work on my Tumblr: noel​le​leigh​.tum​blr​.com

2011 Christmas Banquet

After much pro­cras­ti­na­ti­on, I ha­ve fi­nal­ly uplo­a­ded the be­st pic­tu­res I took du­ring BFA’s 2011 Christmas Banquet.

All ima­ges uplo­a­ded in full re­so­lu­ti­on 3216 × 2136 px.

Taken with a D300 with an 80–200 mm f/2.8 lens.

Gallery Link

High School Play

Our school had this year’s High School Play in November. It was a pro­ducti­on of the 1938 Victorian Thriller Angel Street by Patrick Hamilton. Although the sta­ge was ter­ri­bly dark, I still ma­na­ged to get so­me good shots from the 2nd row.

All ima­ges ta­ken with a D300 with an 18-​50mm f/2.8 lens.

Uploaded in full qua­li­ty 4288 × 2484 px.

Gallery Link

Evolutions

Click for 1920×1200 px. (576 KB)

To de­mon­stra­te our skills in Photoshop for Yearbook, we had to ma­ke a pho­to col­la­ge using 6 ori­gi­nal pho­tos, one of which had to co­me from the scan­ner. My ori­gi­nal idea was to use the va­ri­ous blue doors around the school and com­bi­ne them in­to one door, but the­re sim­ply weren’t enough dif­fe­rent on­es, and the shots we­re hard to get iden­ti­cal. So I tried to co­me up with ot­her things around school that could work as a the­me. That’s when I ca­me up with “Computers.”

Fortunately, the­re are a plet­ho­ra of dif­fe­rent mo­dels lur­king around un­der de­sks, and school had fai­r­ly con­sis­tent lig­hting which ma­de post-​processing ea­sy. I tried to ar­ran­ge them in ap­prox­i­ma­te­ly chro­no­lo­gi­cal or­der, but I found it mo­re at­tracti­ve to do it sim­ply by heig­ht. I wan­ted so­me kind of mes­sa­ge to go al­ong with it, and “Evolutions” see­med ap­pro­pri­a­te. I ho­pe you li­ke it!

New Sunset Photos

A few weeks ago, I was in­spi­red to ta­ke pic­tu­res of the beau­ti­ful lig­ht that was co­ming do­wn over the hills. It was such a beau­ti­ful day!
I’ve uplo­a­ded them in full re­so­lu­ti­on for your vie­wing ple­a­su­re. Click he­re for the gal­le­ry.

Color Theory Painting

Click for lar­ge ver­si­on (2.53 MB)

This is ac­tu­al­ly a re­al­ly old as­sig­n­ment, but I just haven’t got­ten around to pos­ting it till now.

While it seems odd to do so­mething as phy­si­cal as pain­ting for a class de­di­ca­ted to wor­king with Adobe InDesign, it was ac­tu­al­ly a qui­te edu­ca­ti­o­nal. The point of the as­sig­n­ment was to te­ach ba­sic co­lor the­o­ry, and our te­a­cher re­al­ly li­kes pain­ting, so the two we­re an ob­vi­ous ma­tch. She de­ci­ded to work with a pro­ject that the pain­ting class was doing at the sa­me ti­me, which was to cre­a­te a pain­ting of a bi­bli­cal sce­ne in the stai­ned glass style.

I star­ted by brain­stor­ming so­me ide­as of so­me epic sce­nes, dis­re­gar­ding fe­a­si­bi­li­ty at this point. I had a few in mind, but ul­ti­ma­te­ly sett­led on this one for it’s sim­pli­ci­ty. This sce­ne is from Exodus 17:8–17, when the Israelites  de­fe­at the Amalekite army:

The Amalekites ca­me and at­tac­ked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, “Choose so­me of our men and go out to fig­ht the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.”

So Joshua foug­ht the Amalekites as Moses had or­de­red, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites we­re win­ning, but whe­ne­ver he lo­we­red his hands, the Amalekites we­re win­ning. When Moses’ hands grew ti­red, they took a sto­ne and put it un­der him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one si­de, one on the other—so that his hands re­mai­ned ste­a­dy till sunset. So Joshua over­ca­me the Amalekite ar­my with the sword.

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as so­mething to be re­mem­be­red and ma­ke su­re that Joshua he­ars it, be­cau­se I will com­ple­te­ly blot out the me­mo­ry of Amalek from un­der heaven.”

Moses built an al­tar and cal­led it The LORD is my Banner. He said, “For hands we­re lif­ted up to the thro­ne of the LORD. The LORD will be at war against the Amalekites from ge­ne­ra­ti­on to generation.”

Once I had de­ci­ded on a sce­ne, I star­ted ske­t­ching small si­ze con­cepts, trying to get the pro­por­ti­ons of the pe­op­le rig­ht. Humans are hard to get rig­ht! Once I was sa­tis­fied, I did my fi­nal full si­ze ske­tch on an A4 pa­ge and trans­fer­red it on­to lar­ger thick stock for pain­ting hen­ce the lack of any re­al boun­da­ries. Then, I went over the li­nes I had to de­fi­ne whe­re the paint was going to go. The next step was to choo­se the co­lor pa­let­te for it. I sett­led on a col­der, blue-​purple for the cliff fa­ce to con­trast the warm glow abo­ve. The most an­noying thing about this pro­ject was the mix­ing of the paints. I haven’t ever mixed paints with a go­al in mind be­fo­re, and get­ting enough of every litt­le dis­tinct shade that I nee­ded for each cell was an exe­r­ci­se in patience.

At the end of the pro­ject, the pain­ting stu­dents pou­red a black ink all over their pain­tings, then was­hed off the co­lo­red parts, le­a­ving the whi­te. Unfortunately, this pro­cess tur­ned their beau­ti­ful­ly co­lo­red, brig­ht pain­tings dark and dirty-​looking. When I saw that, I re­que­sted to not ha­ve this pro­cess do­ne to my pie­ce, sin­ce I li­ked how it was al­re­a­dy much bet­ter. I re­a­li­ze that Moses doesn’t ha­ve his staff in my pain­ting, but I didn’t look up the re­fe­ren­ce whi­le I was doing it, and I pre­fer the emp­ty spa­ce abo­ve his he­ad bet­ter then ha­ving a stick there.

Download hu­ge ver­si­on (1615×2569, 4.31 MB)

BFA Student Newspaper Redesign

20091028chrons

At the be­gin­ning of the school ye­ar, in my Graphic Arts class, one of the things that was plan­ned for us to ac­com­plish was a re­de­sign of our stu­dent news­pa­per The Chronicle. I was very ex­ci­ted about this, sin­ce it de­li­vers good con­tent, but with a lou­sy la­yout and typo­grap­hy. I couldn’t wait to get star­ted. It was the first big pro­ject of the ye­ar, and with on­ly 2 pe­op­le in class, I knew it wasn’t going to be ea­sy. We star­ted brain­stor­ming va­ri­ous chan­ges we could ma­ke, cri­ti­quing pre­vi­ous is­su­es, and le­ar­ning a lot about news­pa­per la­yout and de­sign at the sa­me ti­me. Working on The Chronicle en­tailed lots of back-​and-​forth be­t­ween the Journalism class (who wri­tes and pu­blis­hes it) and us to fi­gu­re out if we we­re meet­ing their needs. Near the end of the pro­cess, it was re­al­ly co­ming do­wn to the wi­re with de­lays in con­tent and prin­ter is­su­es, but me ma­na­ged to get it out on ti­me. The re­acti­on was very po­si­ti­ve from the stu­dent bo­dy. Next is­sue, we’ll try to ma­ke the on­li­ne ver­si­on in color!

Here is an ol­der is­sue that you can com­pa­re to (links to PDF: 676KB)Previous Issue

This one has been on hold for a whi­le, due to techni­cal is­su­es with get­ting the pa­ge la­yout of PDF ver­si­on cor­rected. It ca­me out on October 28th, but hasn’t been fixed till recently.

Click he­re to do­wn­lo­ad PDF (1.9MB), or use my lo­cal mir­ror.

Letterforms in the Environment

Poster Layouts

For this as­sig­n­ment, we had to go around town and find, well, let­ter­forms in the en­vi­ron­ment. It’s har­der then it looks, and re­qui­res look­ing at things in a dif­fe­rent way then nor­mal. It ori­gi­nal­ly had a blank back­ground, but our te­a­cher sug­ge­sted an old pa­per tex­tu­re mig­ht look better.

Link to high-​resolution PDF (11MB).

GA 2 Landscapes

One of our Graphic Arts 2 as­sig­n­ments was to ta­ke 12 lands­ca­pe pho­tos that exhi­bit shape. Gave me a chan­ce to get out with a ni­ce ca­me­ra and lens again. Kandern is so ni­ce in the autumn…

Gallery (uplo­a­ded in full resolution)