This is the End

I can’t believe the semester is already over. Writing this blog and taking this module has been brilliant. My favourite part of it all was probably the Copyright and Promotional tips. And it took a while but i think i’m finally interested in taking pictures. Last Thursday morning i woke up at half six took the bus into UCD for Postering (yeah, i’m one of those people) and of course with my luck it was cancelled and i just didn’t know. Fortunately i had brought in the Nikon i’ve been using and so i went on a mission to take some lovely pictures of the breath taking winter morning. I got so into it and got so many good shots that i actually decided to scrap my theme completely and use the images i took for the photography brief which was due the next day. All of the pictures are available here if any of you are interested and i’ll include one at the end of this post as well.

For the last lecture we discussed Ebooks and the EPUB format and WordPress.org and a number add ons associated with it. I’m an avid reader and i’m not to fussy about whether the books are in a digital or physical format so i’ve been using Calibre for a number of years now.

Learning more about the mechanics behind epub and how it works was interesting.

If i continue to blog in the future i definitely would consider re-using it or using WordPress.org as it seems to have more functions and optimisation possibilities than wordpress. However I definitely think my wordpress experience like my experience in this class has been a positive one.

Pretty Autumn Leaves

How To Be Seen: Part Two

The Photography is going really well! I borrowed my friend’s Nikon and her external lens so that my pictures would look extra fancy and clear. I’m conscious of the fact that i haven’t posted any of my photo’s up so i thought i’d give you guys a sneak peek of what i hope to have in my portfolio.

Artwork in my Garden

This week we explored how we Could use Social Media to optimise our sites. Unfortunately because i was sick i was unable to attend the lecture but i’ve read up on the notes and i have a pretty good understanding of what was discussed. I currently actively use Twitter,Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat, Soundcloud and Vine. I occasionally use LinkedIn, Keek, StumbleUpon, Google+ and Goodreads. All of these being for personal use and not to promote a site or my own personal brand so it was interesting to hear how to optimise these platforms for corporate use. My least favourite site of all of them is Facebook because of it’s corporate nature which is ironic. Youtube which is my favourite social media site is shifting towards a more corporate model and unlike Facebook i think these changes are positive alter the user viewer dynamic in a productive way.
The tips on how to build a successful Social Media campaign are tips i’m going to use next semester as i have a number of events i want to promote to UCD Students.

My focus now is on the photography brief and polishing up this blog, wish me luck.

How To Be Seen: Part One

When starting this blog my target audience was my peers, i never imagined that other people might want to view my content. This week we learned how to optimise our language and our blog to increase our visibility and be seen when searched on search engines.

I used Google Adwords to figure out the things that people would search for if they got my blog as a search result.

I also used WebMaster to analyse my blog

I had no idea that half of these tools existed so it’s been interesting to know that people are using these sites to draw you in. As i won’t be continuing this blog on for long i don’t desire to know more about it. However if i continue to blog in the future or if i create a website for a future business i will definitely take advantage of these analytic tools.

©

This week we focused on Copyright and a few aspects of Information Protection, an area i am highly interested in. IT & IP law is an emerging field i’m considering getting into so it was brilliant to dip my toes into some aspects of it.

One thing that particularly interested me that i did more research on was the Tragedy of the Commons, the idea that we use things freely but bare little cost towards it. The idea implies that we are mass consumers and that if we don’t avail of a resource it someone else will which leads us to reap the majority of the benefits before our peers do. The solution to this is said to be Privatisation or a shift towards Government ownership. The positive side of public ownership is that all the population technically has a right to the resource. However the people who maintain the upkeep of these resources don’t receive any real benefits and if they misuse the resource they aren’t penalised enough. Private ownership solves this issue, maintainers reap the benefits and suffer the losses of their decisions. However this seems flawed to me because if the intent of the user is negative then there is no way to save the resource from exploitation. e.g. Companies over extracting precious gems from countries.

The Free Music Archive which we stumbled upon back a few weeks ago was brought up again in the lectures. I was excited to see it again and to discuss the copyright mechanics behind it. Free Music Archive is an example of a website that uses Creative Common Licenses. These licenses allow the content creators to control how other people use and modify their content as well as if they can benefit financially from them. I think it’s great that websites like this exist because it gives credit where it’s due and it gives the power back to the original creator.

One thing i’m definitely going to do now that i know all of this information is i’m going to go back on all of my blog posts and make sure that credit was given to all the photographers whose pictures i’ve reposted.

It’s Go Time

I can’t believe it’s week 9 already, 12 weeks is just not enough time D: Anyway my Presentation is up if anyone wants to take a look at it. It actually went pretty well, i’m happy with it.

So this week we had our final photography lecture! It was all about file types, image hosting and  image meta data! I finally learned how to make a gif and i’m certain my Tumblr followers will dwindle now that i now how to do this. I’m really beginning to love photography, i love finding new photographers and analysing what makes them really good at what they do. However it’s not my turn to step up to the plate and try it out for myself.

Fortunately thanks to a flashcard I’ve kept in my wallet for weeks, i finally understand all of the photography related lingo. I think my theme for the brief will be Power; The power of nature, learning, the body, a vote etc. I think it’s perfect since voter registration for the next referendum is in UCD next week and I have plenty of time to get the other shots. I found this amazing Photography hack video on you tube, i may or may not use the second arty hack. Stayed tuned to find out.

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Pretty cool huh, that’s what i do with half of these blogposts! Image by Tyler Haywood at angulargeometry.tumblr.com

Presentation Prep

Assignment number two’s due date is just around the corner and this time i’m making sure i don’t mess up. Honestly if i mess up this up i’ll lose all faith in myself! This time around it’s a Prezi presentation that we have to do and mine funnily enough is on blogging and captivating an audience, it was originally going to be about Podcasts but i think after last assignment’s debacle i should probably stick to what i know.

I don’t know if you guys know this but because I’m the Human Science Convener for UCD I have to make a surprising amount of presentations on behalf of students. Learning how to use Prezi effectively is something i’m extremely glad i learned and it will help me a lot in the future. Prezi presentations are the best, I think all students love it when you get guest lecturers and they whip out a prezi presentation. I’m hoping i can develop my skills and get on their level.

The rule of thirds is one I’ve always been aware of so i wasn’t surprised to learn that it applies to making presentations as well. I’ve used it quite a lot in my presentation as well which is coming along nicely. Before starting i actually read a blog post about how to master Prezi that was really helpful. If anyone sees this and they haven’t finished yet check out the Prezi Keyboard shortcuts, they save you so much time and hassle! Happy editing!

I found this image on Tumblr, I think my favourite images are ones where photographers play around with light and darkness. Picture taken by JUCO a.k.a Julia Galdo and Cody Cloud

The First Bump in the Road

So our First Assignment was due last week and of course in typical Melanie fashion i completely messed it up. As i posted last week i planned to record Rebecca on her X Factor Experience. The first recording turned out to be like 9 minutes long (we like to talk way too much) so i decided to rerecord it. I was using my iPad, a plug in microphone and an app that i had downloaded and i was super happy with the little set up i had. After the second recording i realized that the sound was absolutely abysmal and the footage was completely un-usable. So i had to embarrassingly ask Rebecca to record it for me for the third time and fortunately she laughed it off and we went in for the third time. It was absolutely perfect! I was super happy. Till a couple of hours before it was due…
So when i went to export it and send it to my laptop so i could upload it the unthinkable happened. I downloaded an app that couldn’t handle the size of the file so it wouldn’t let me send it to anyone. I couldn’t do anything with the audio file with a couple of hours to go to edit it and upload it. Instead of trying to retrieve the file i went straight into survival mode and downloaded a new, more advanced app and re-recorded something. I chose to recite on of my favourite poems Still I Rise by Maya Angelou, i really hate the sound of my own voice but editing thank the lord was a breeze! I’m actually really happy with how it turned out considering it was quite stressful. If any of you are curious to what it sounded like, you can check out the page link here or the main recording here.

As for class work we took a look at photo editing. I’d never used Picasa or Photoshop before and my prior knowledge of photo editing was all thanks to Instagram so it was brilliant to learn how the editing process it actually supposed to look. I like how editing just enhances the existing beauty of the shop, it’s like makeup for pictures.

I came across this fantastic photography blog over the weekend it’s a compilation of Lomo shots, I don’t quite know if some of them are shot that way or if they are edited that way. If anyone has any answers please let me know.

Lomo picture of a camera by  lomographicsociety.tumblr.com

The 411 on Podcasts (Part Two)

This week i created my Podomatic account and created a sample podcast for the assignment. I’ve completely ruled out creating a video podcast for the assignment as it just won’t fit in with my idea for the podcast. I am going to interview a friend Rebecca Hart about her experience auditioning for the X Factor and the negativity and artificial nature of the whole thing. I’m hoping we can do it in one take but i reckon there will be a fair bit of editing to do. I definitely think that this is going to be my favourite assignment, i think i just like the idea of being on iTunes.

I spent the week doing some research on how to make the most of the little i have to make the best sounding podcast possible and unfortunately didn’t find anything to inspiring but I did catch up on a load of my favourite podcasts. I’m really enjoying Grace Helbig’s Not too Deep, Tyler Oakley’s Psychobabble and Bitch Media’s Popaganda. I like the conversational nature of Not too deep and Psychobabble and i really enjoy how the content is structured on Popaganda. I think the interview nature of them is definitely what inspired me to interview Rebecca.

I also spent a lot of time scanning through the Free Music Archive, I’ve Always wondered where people get the jingles they use in videos and on podcasts and radio show. I think it’s great a service like that exists. I hope i get an opportunity in the future to use the service.

Outside the podcast sphere i tried taking the camera out again and it just didn’t look right so i returned my Aunt’s point and shoot and traded it in for my Uncle’s Nikon. I’m hoping the extra settings will help me improve and not just confuse me. Hopefully by the end of this module i will love photography so much that i will actually invest in my own camera. 

The 411 on Podcasts (Part One)

So this week we were introduced into the world of everything Podcast, an area that fortunately wasn’t as daunting as Photography. I used to Use Audacity to edit music when i was younger and i’m subscribed to a number of podcasts so i was really excited to learn some more about the mechanics of it. I’m considering making a video podcast for my project as video podcasts are something I’ve never really seen before. I would have always thought that using YouTube and the subscription system there would be a better way of recording video footage. I might do a bit of digging into it for next week’s class.

My favourite aspect of this week’s class was actually learning about microphones. Good sound quality in vlogs and podcasts is something that is essential for me so learning how they eliminate background noise and the different mics you need for different productions was really interesting. The idea of spending 150 euro on a mic kind of seemed a bit absurd to me at first but for professionals i think having that clear sound and minimizing editing time is really important.

Funnily enough i stumbled upon a cover of Kiss Me by Ed Sheeran recorded using the apple headset microphone, although i imagine it is heavily edited i think the quality is pretty great so i am definitely going to use my headset to record my piece.

 Image by AllPosters.co.uk

Photography for Dummies

Step 1) Get a camera…

Funnily enough this was the hardest step. As i don’t own a camera i had to borrow one from a relative who managed to wipe the SD card clean so i have no evidence of my horrific UCD lake shots.

Step 2) Learn the lingo

Shutter Speed, Aperture, F stops, Depth of Field, ISO, DSLR. It was very intimidating at first but with a bit of hard work i hope that by the end of the meaning of all these terms.

Step 3) Find an inspiration.

So after discovering in class that there are many different types of photography styles i scoured the internet for contemporary photographers and i had a look at a lot of different styles. I found Tumblr to be the most useful site for viewing Photographers work and i found some incredible photographers whose work i’ll put in a little gallery with links below.

Step 4) Get out there.

At first it was a bit daunting and i was a bit worried that i would look like an obnoxious hipster but the best way to improve is to really just get out there and do it. I walked around UCD last Monday and just snapped pictures of anything and everything that looked remotely pretty. I also made sure that the camera was on manual settings rather than automatic so i can learn practically what exactly the aperture and shutter speed are.

http://posta-kutusu.tumblr.com/

http://posta-kutusu.tumblr.com/

http://laurenlemon.tumblr.com/

http://laurenlemon.tumblr.com/

http://meganmcisaac.tumblr.com/

http://meganmcisaac.tumblr.com/