Skiing and a $6 fisheye lens

Today, my dad took the day off work so we could do something fun together. We had been planning to to to Blue Mountain to do some downhill skiing, but I chickened out and today we rented cross-country skis from a local outfitter and took them for a test run. It was the first time either of us had been skiing in a long time, so there were a few small falls (and maybe some bruises too) but it was definitely a fun experience!

After returning our gear, I hopped down to the hardware store and picked up a 180° peephole in hopes to make a cheap fisheye lens for my camera. Then I took a generic 52mm lens cap and drilled a hole in the centre to push the peephole through. Here is what the lens looks like:

And here are my first few shots with the new addition:

Not the greatest quality, but definitely fun to use!

iStock Update

It has officially been 1 year since my first picture was accepted for use at iStockphoto. It has been a long and tiresome process to get started, but I can finally say that I am now quite comfortable with the way it all works now. I now have 167 photos in my portfolio, and have 37 downloads. It is a lot easier now to consider iStock my second job when am actually seeing results and feedback on my images. Here are a few of my most popular images on iStock:

I find it really interesting to see the types of pictures that actually sell, because some of my downloads have really surprised me. It is also odd to know that these pictures are floating around the world somewhere on ads, in magazines, etc, but I don't know where they are or what they are being used for!

Almost done!

Today is a great day. I have finished my last art projects and midterms of the second half of the second term of my second year of university, and I am definitely ready for the reading week to be here! I'm excited to be able to go home, have a nice bath and be able to sleep in. But, I do have a lot of things planned, such as taking pictures for iStock, seeing family and friends, going to an engagement party, and planning weddings! I am also excited to go home and eat delicious food! Today, my roommate Alicia and I baked pink lemonade-flavoured cupcakes as a mini-celebration of the workload completion. They were very good!

Snowday, Sculpture and Exciting News!

I feel like I haven't blogged in such a long time! There have been so many thing I've wanted to blog about, but haven't had the time, so this post may be quite random. I know it's only been a week since my last update, but February seems like it's going by really slow. Not anymore though! I'm going to have a lot due in these next two weeks, but thankfully, Reading Week is coming up soon. Last week on Wednesday, Mississauga got a lot of snow, and we were granted a snow day. It was really nice to be able to sleep in (or try to) and not have to worry about going to class.

If you read my last post about my sculpture project, I mentioned three methods of working with cardboard. Lamination is where you glue several large pieces of cardboard together so that it becomes strong, and can be cut into as if it were a piece of wood. That is what I used on the main part of the can opener. The next method, skin, is pretty self explanatory, and basically like making a cube or prism out of paper. The last one, open cavity, is a little harder to explain. It's basically leaving parts of the object open and more abstracted than the other two methods. As a warm-up project for the final piece, we were required to make a piece of fruit out of cardboard using this method. I chose a pear as my fruit as you can see below:

In other news, my good friend Taylor got engaged to Josh, her boyfriend of over 4 years this past weekend. I was honoured to find out that she has chosen me to be one of her bridesmaids! They are set to be married this September and I couldn't be more excited for them! It's difficult trying to concentrate on schoolwork when I know something so exciting is just around the corner. On the reading week, we are all going to meet up and start planning together, and I can't wait to start! Here is a picture of me, Taylor, and Becky, another friend and bridesmaid:

Sculpture Project

Hello everyone! I'm really excited about the cardboard can opener I finished for my sculpture class today, and I just wanted to quickly share some pictures. Basically, the project was titled "Analytic Form," and the idea was to pick an everyday, recognizable object and enlarge it, made out of cardboard. We were to use three different methods of construction - lamination, open cavity, and skin. The object I chose was a can opener, and I made the cardboard version five times bigger. I am very happy with how it turned out, and here are some comparative pictures below to show what it looks like compared to the original.

I really enjoyed doing this project, although all of the measuring and enlarging did get quite frustrating. In the end, I was able to make the can opener work, so the handle turns the gear and the slicing disc also moves. It was really neat to see all of the other objects people enlarged today. There was a candle holder, a camera lens, two staplers, a combination lock, a spray bottle and more!

Saturday Blog

I can't believe January is almost over! This second term is pretty much one third done, and there's still so much to do! I have multiple art projects to complete from now until April 1st, and I'm also coming up to midterm time. My last photo project was to take found and old pictures, and combine them with pictures I've taken to change the meaning. It was very interesting because I had used Photoshop a lot, but never in this context. Here is one of mine that I really liked:

I'm really looking forward to Reading week, which this year falls on the last week of February. I haven't been home since the 8th of January and might not be able to see my family until then. Plus, a break from all of these assignments is in order!

Last night, Paul and I met up in Toronto and went to the Royal Ontario Museum (Paul had never been before) to look at the dinosaurs, bat cave, wildlife and more. After that, we walked over to a fancy restaurant for our Winterlicious reservation. Winterlicious is a culinary and dining program across 150 Toronto restaurants offering fixed-price 3 course lunch and dinner menus. We went to a nice mediterranean restaurant and had a fun experience of fine dining.

Pictures!

So, today I was at Sheridan for my photography class and brought my camera with me. I quickly popped in the first and second year show to grab these pictures I had promised some time ago of my sculpture project:

This is not exactly how it looked during my critique of the project, but I think that this looks much better. In my critique, the phones were hanging over the emergency phone and hung by one single string to a wire hanging from the ceiling. I'm so sorry I don't have a picture of that to show, but this will do. I really like the simplicity of the phones' colour along with the colour of the walls, and how they are simply hung by one thumb tack on the wall.