Sophomore Class Field Trip

Published on October 10, 2009 in Photography. 0 Comments

Last Friday, I went on my sop­ho­mo­re class field trip to the Struthof Nazi con­cen­tra­ti­on camp in France. It was pret­ty cool, and a gre­at pla­ce to ta­ke pic­tu­res. The camp is split up in­to three parts. The first part is the main building/​museum, with exhi­bits and mo­vies sho­wing. The se­cond part is the ac­tu­al camp it­self, with bar­racks, a scaf­fold, and the crematorium.

The bar­racks has been tur­ned in­to an exhi­bi­ti­on of li­fe in the camps, with dra­wings, pic­tu­res, and ar­ti­facts on dis­play. In the cre­ma­to­ri­um, we weren’t al­lo­wed to ta­ke pic­tu­res, but the­re was an oven, a few pri­son cells, and an exe­cu­ti­on room.

After that, we went do­wn the hill a ways and ca­me to the gas cham­ber. It was a small buil­ding with a smo­ke stack co­ming out of the si­de, fai­r­ly non-​discreet. Inside, it on­ly had about three rooms, two of them with stora­ge free­zers to hold bo­dies and bo­dy parts for experimentation.

It was a very so­be­ring, yet good experience.

See the pic­tu­res he­re (all pic­tu­res are full re­so­lu­ti­on 3008x2000px.).

Graphic Arts 2: First Assignment

Published on September 2, 2009 in Design. 3 Comments

I’m back!

After a long pe­ri­od of in­acti­vi­ty, I fi­nal­ly ha­ve so­mething new to show!

In my Graphic Arts 2 class, our first as­sig­n­ment was to draw on pa­per a pic­tu­re, or col­lecti­on of pic­tu­res that re­pre­sen­ted us per­so­nal­ly, then di­gi­ti­ze it with Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. My dra­wing was a map of the wor­ld, with a li­ne tra­cing through the va­ri­ous pla­ces we ha­ve li­ved (see list he­re).

Mission MapThe point of the as­sig­n­ment was to warm up our Photoshop (or in my ca­se, Illustrator) skills.

I’ll soon post pic­tu­res of my com­ple­ted GA1 port­fo­lio from last year.

BFA’s Got Talent

Published on June 4, 2009 in Design. 2 Comments

Last month, BFA had a ta­lent show cal­led “BFA’s Got Talent”, a play on the British TV show “Britain’s Got Talent.” There we­re a lot of ama­zing acts, both mu­si­cal, and the­a­tri­cal. It was al­so the first ti­me I had ta­ken school pic­tu­res for a whi­le. It was ni­ce to do that again.

I would’ve uplo­a­ded the pic­tu­res soo­n­er, but my gal­le­ry was ha­ving trou­ble. But they’re up now. Click he­re to go there.

Personal Flag

Published on May 5, 2009 in Design. 4 Comments

Flag Small

Before star­ting on this pro­ject, Mr. Bryan sho­wed us a few books with flags and ex­plai­ned the ele­ments that ma­ke up a good flag de­sign, li­ke not pla­cing de­sign ele­ments on the rig­ht si­de so that fraying won’t ruin the me­a­ning of the flag.

This is my per­so­nal flag cre­a­ted in Graphic Arts. It took me on­ly about half-​hour to co­me up with the design.

Extract from explanation:

To be­gin, the flag’s pro­por­ti­ons are 16:10, which is the stan­dard for com­pu­ter wi­des­creen mo­ni­tors, which shows my in­te­rest in techno­lo­gy and is al­so an ap­prox­i­ma­te to the Golden Rectangle. The blue rec­tangle in the midd­le is 2.39:1, which is the stan­dard for an ana­mor­phic pic­tu­re in ci­ne­ma. The red stri­pes, whi­te stars on blue re­pre­sents the flag of the United States and France, two coun­tries that I par­ti­al­ly as­so­ci­a­te with. The stars are in the ar­ran­ge­ment of the con­stel­la­ti­on Orion, one of the mo­re re­cog­ni­za­ble con­stel­la­ti­ons in the nort­hern nig­ht sky, which re­pre­sents my lo­ve for ama­teur astronomy.
The seven-​pointed stars are a sym­bol of per­fecti­on in Christian religions.

Letter Design

Published on April 30, 2009 in Design. 4 Comments

Our as­sig­n­ment was to cre­a­te so­mething with a let­ter from our ini­ti­als in Illustrator. There had to be at le­ast 5 dif­fe­rent ty­pe­fa­ces used and on­ly one co­lor. I de­ci­ded on the let­ter L sin­ce it see­med the most flex­i­ble letter.

Over Spring Break I saw a mo­vie on YouTube sho­wing a hex­a­pod ro­bot mo­deled af­ter an ant (See he­re: A-​Pod). Though I mig­ht ma­ke a mo­del of that. It tur­ned out to be a bit mo­re dif­fi­cult to make.

Letter Scorpion

It en­ded up being mo­re of a ro­bot scor­pi­on thing. I wish I could’ve had mo­re con­t­rol over the out­li­nes to gi­ve it a bet­ter sen­se of depth.

Now I ha­ve to fi­nish my per­so­nal flag…

Ambigram

Published on April 2, 2009 in Design. 3 Comments

An am­bi­gram, al­so so­meti­mes kno­wn as an in­ver­si­on, is a typo­graphi­cal de­sign that spells out one or mo­re words not on­ly in its form as pre­sen­ted, but al­so from anot­her view point, di­recti­on or orien­ta­ti­on. The words spel­led out in the ot­her view point, di­recti­on or orien­ta­ti­on may be the sa­me or dif­fe­rent from the ori­gi­nal words.

–Wikipedia

One of my first re­al as­sig­n­ments for my Graphic Design class was to cre­a­te an am­bi­gram out of my na­me. It tok me a whi­le to fi­gu­re out what I was going to do, but then it hit me: I could do my na­me in hex co­de! I look­ed around for a hex co­de trans­la­tor and found this si­te, which of­fers hex co­de and a lot mo­re! It took a lot of ske­t­ching and help from Mr. Bryan to get the forms just rig­ht. I’m ple­a­sed with the over­all result.

ambigrams

Noah Leigh (Note: the “N” and “L” are in up­per­ca­se)

4E 6F 61 68   4C 65 69 67 68

I’ll ha­ve mo­re as­sig­n­ments to post later.

New Site

Published on January 14, 2009 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Yay! I got my new si­te de­sign up! My Dad and I crun­ched du­ring the last few days of Christmas bre­ak sin­ce all our ti­me be­fo­re was occu­pied with pre­pa­ra­ti­ons for my litt­le sister’s 13th birt­hday. I wan­ted to im­pli­ment sIFR in the post tit­les, but I couldn’t get them to sty­le cor­rect­ly, so it’s scrap­ped until I can fi­gu­re it out.

The Gallery has not been up­da­ted ho­we­ver, and I don’t when that mig­ht hap­pen con­si­de­ring it’s a com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent be­ast. I’ve been toying with the idea of in­te­gra­ting the gal­le­ry in­to the blog using a plug­in, but I haven’t found one that suits me yet. But we’ll see…

More Photos (Overdue)

Published on January 3, 2009 in Photography. 1 Comment

I fi­nal­ly got my pic­tu­res from the Christmas Banquet and from December up on the gal­le­ry. There are still so­me that we­re ta­ken on the last days of school that I’ll need to get, so they mig­ht be a while.

Enjoy!

Christmas Banquet

Published on December 1, 2008 in Life. 0 Comments

Christmas Banquet. People we­re tal­king about it sin­ce mid-​October, ma­king it out to be the big event of the se­mes­ter, which I sup­po­se it was, though I saw it from dif­fe­rent per­specti­ve: a photographer’s.

In ca­se you didn’t know, Christmas Banquet is a big din­ner that hap­pens at the end of November. The guys ask the gi­rls to be their da­te for it, of­ten with ela­bo­ra­te pro­po­sals. I was not one of them, sin­ce I didn’t ask anyo­ne, despi­te my friends con­stant houn­ding of me to ask so­meo­ne. But I didn’t re­lent. I was plan­ning to ta­ke pic­tu­res du­ring the event, so­mething would be ma­de much mo­re dif­fi­cult by ha­ving a da­te. During the who­le month of November, I had to en­d­u­re con­stant prod­ding by well me­a­ning friends to get a da­te, whi­le at the sa­me ti­me he­a­ring about the pe­op­le that ot­hers had asked.

They star­ted sel­ling tic­kets on Thursday, Friday, and Monday. And I ma­na­ged to miss it every sin­gle ti­me! I as­ked Mr. Bryan about what to do, and he ma­de ar­ran­ge­ments and I got a se­at! I as­ked him about which ca­me­ra I was get­ting and was de­lig­h­ted to he­ar that I would be get­ting their top end stuff: a Nikon D300 with an 80-​200mm f /2.8 lens!

For Christmas Banquet, we’re ex­pected to we­ar a suit, which I had boug­ht be­fo­re school. I’ve ne­ver worn a suit be­fo­re, and it was a bit un­com­for­ta­ble. But I lived 🙂

Along with the ca­me­ra, I al­so got a flash, which was pret­ty much a re­qui­re­ment for the low lig­ht (think ro­man­tic ca­me­ra lig­ht), and a mo­no­pod, which al­lo­wed me to shoot at 1/​40th of a se­cond and get a sharp picture.

Once I had gi­ven the ca­me­ra back to Mr. Bryan, I could sa­fely say that it was one of the most en­joy­a­ble pho­to­graphic ex­pe­rien­ces I’ve ever had. The sub­jects we­re in­te­res­ting both on sta­ge and off, I didn’t feel li­mi­ted with in­fe­ri­or equip­ment, and I got gre­at food to boot!

I took 414 pic­tu­res at the Banquet, so it mig­ht be so­meti­me be­fo­re I ac­tu­al­ly get so­me up he­re. I’m al­so wor­king on a re­de­sign of the si­te which will, at be­st (me­a­ning highly un­li­ke­ly), go li­ve be­fo­re the end of Christmas bre­ak. Here’s a teaser:

Tomarrow’s my birt­hday, so I’ll be fe­as­ting on ba­na­na bre­ad all evening!

Thankgiving Pictures

Published on November 27, 2008 in Life and Photography. 0 Comments

Yeah, so what if we had it on the 13th? Since I hadn’t pos­ted the­se yet, I fi­gu­red to­day would be as good as any to put them up. Taken with a D70 with a 18-​50mm f/2.8, the sa­me one I took the­se shots with.