Hallmark Institute so far...

Hey everyone! I have not written in this Blog in years! But I have decided that now is the time to start back up.

I have recently started a new chapter in my life and its the best one yet. It's pretty much me doing my own thing and doing it for me no matter what anyone else says. FOR ONCE. This is the time I will not let anyone influence me because I feel guilty or discouraged that they will not approve.

So far at Hallmark Institute of Photography I have had the greatest times of my life. I have met so many new people and each one is completely different from the last. The diversity here is astonishing but I love it. I have learned so many different customs and I have only been here for a short 8 weeks. Things are moving by so fast I cannot believe that Phase 1 is already over. I just got done with my first portfolio assignment ever! The review is tomorrow so I am interested in what the instructors will say about my work and my style. I have noticed I am a little more into contract and bright deep colors/ or straight black and white.

I also have been researching photographers that have worked with any animal organization or any kind of humanitarian group ( UNHCR is an example). I so much want to make a change in the way people are seeing each other and the things around them. I recently received an article that was posted on my Facebook Wall with a title that read " Cop kills Pit-bull". Being the anti- animal cruelty activist I am of course I had to read it. The article was one of the most horrific I have ever read in my life. I will post it at the end of this blog if any are in the same mind-set as myself and feel the need to read it. I have many thoughts about it, but my poor heart just bleeds and cries out for that poor helpless dog that never once showed aggression to the cop in question. The cop grabbed the dog and threw it to the ground like a human being with his knee behind the dog shoulder blades and its arms behind it's back. He then drug the dog up over a staircase without releasing it and threw it over the fence to the other side. He then shot the dog point blank in the head.

Am I mistaken or are we suppose to trust cops? This does not make me want a person like that protecting me...

Anyway, my rant about that story is over with and I will continue talking about school. School... School.... where to begin...

First off, it is Nov. We have already had a snow storm that has knocked out Power in 60% of the east coast. I love school and this area, but I could never live here full time. I am def not a snow person because I hate to be cold. Needless to say if I had to work in the snow I would on assignment, but I could never live in it permanently. Being from Chicago I am used to cold weather and lake affect snow, but I have already decided SOUTH IS MORE MY STYLE.

Our Instructors are from all over and have done the greatest things ( very accomplished!) I am so honored to have them teaching me everything I know. Some of the things they have done I can only imagine, they have guts and motivation that I hope to have someday. I should probably have it right now, and I do, but I am still in the learning stage where I am still trying to figure out my own pattern and how to talk to a public figure and persuade people to do what I want ( in a nice way of course). You have to be some what manipulative in this business but always truthful. I would never be anything but truthful either way.

I am going to try and keep this updated the best I can. I know it has been awhile! Thank you for following!

Reflection of MM webtext.

When I first started doing the MM webtext I was totally lost and kind of thought I picked a dull topic. Then I remember that" hello I am a cat lover myself and I ahve owned one in the past ( plus i work with them"). So that made it a lot easier. Also, I am glad we got to stick with a specific topic and be more detailed instead of something that didn't give examples and just kind of stated the facts.

This project was also a lot less stressful and easier to know what you were looking for since we did the podcast and the webtext seperately in the past. This time it was alot easier to know what I was looking for and what types of media to add to my page. I even learned how to post Youtube videos!! I was excited to learn that! All in all I'm glad we had a combo project, as i call it.

Over view of class.

This class has taught me a lot about design. I enjoyed writing and being able to let my creative side out while still being somewhat professional. I learned a lot about the new technology that is available and the certain things you can do with it. The webtext and podcast were hard when they were by themselves, but the Multimodal webext was a lot easier becuase doing the two seperate kind of showed us what you were looking for as a whole.

The podcast was not my favorite becuase I hate hearing my own voice coming out of the computer, but all in all the class was a good one. I am looking forward to the webzine.

Conference.

I am still waiting to do my conference. My web text is coming along great I tihink. The podcast slideshow was easier than i thought is was going to be. But that is probably becuase we just did one. Over all I feel good about this multimodal webtext.

Revised reflection.

I Generally wanted to stay ont he topic of animals when it came to my podcast. So I decided to write it on animals diseases that affect people too. I thought it would be a great way to educate people on something they might know or might not know much about. Also It interested me a great deal. Also in my webtext I talked about animal diseases a little and in my podcast I wanted to go into it more and touch down more specifically.If I would have had more time and education on how to use audacity, I would have added music, maybe sound effects while talking about the symptoms caused by the diseases.
As I was researching, I found that many different websites said many different things. I was not sure on what to believe. So when I wen to work I asked the lab techs what was truth and what was false. They helped me a great deal. I also had my own experirnces with some of the diseases from working at the humane society so that part of the research was easy. I knew a lot about parasites and easily wrote down what they did to the body and what the symptoms were.

Final Project

For the final project I am going to be talking about Cat nutrition. My proposal talks just about the nutrition of cats but I think I am going to go into how to care for your cat also.

My podcast/slideshow will be pictures of cats that have had a hard time in the shelter. some have stopped eating and now they have feeding tubes in them. That shows they are picky with food. I will show different pictures of different cats and how their enviornment effects them. and how we, the staff, are trying to get them back on their feet.

Podcast Reflection

I choose to do my podcast on animal diseases becuase I tihnk it's important to know what diseases humans can get from animals and vice versa.

I also wanted to give examples and symptoms so that maybe if a person experiences those symptoms they can get checked out and prevent the disease from going any furthur.

Podcast

I am doing my podcast on Diseases that affect humans and animals the same. Most people would think these disease are only transmitted from animal to animal. Little do they know that there are so many diseases that animals can give to people and the person who gets it doesn't even know how or where they got it from.

It is something I found very interesting and would like to share not just asan interesting topic but to inform everyone of the diseases you need to be aware of. :)