Thoughts of Cora Fox

The final project.

To cap off the year, Leah Peterson and I have created a final project in a way of showing off our skills. Unfortunatley this project will remain unfinished. Though we did finish many of the goals we wanted to accomplish with the Opinions section layout for the Hoofprint, obviously some gaps remain.

The things that I accomplished in this story were creating the general layout. I placed all of the graphics we would need minus the editorial cartoon. I wrote the editorial on sumer plans and travels. Leah was to write up a story on Self Esteem and Self image and how it is affecting teenagers today. We would have taken pictures and recorded valuable quotes from teenagers of this school in order to better understand how people view themselves. We would have capped this off with minor secondary coverage along with the graphics that I created in my blog “Picture Perfect” to show the influence of photoshop in magazines.

We do not deserve a good grade on this project because even though we did do some work on the stories and layouts, we really didnt stick to the plan and actually accomplish the bigger parts of the layout. Pictures and actual quotes instead of placeholder quotes for starters. I really regret the way this project turned out and I feel bad about it, but it was my own fault and I accept that responcibility. I vow never to do something halfway again. It leaves me with remorse for myself and a lump in the back of my throat.

With that in mind, I close this blog of unsuccessful attempts at work.

This year my life has been extremely busy. I have done alot of things that I am proud of along with the things that I am not. I know I have tried my best at every task set in front of me, but still I wish I could have tried harder.

To me, journalism class is a time that I have to be myself and do something that I love with the people I love. I try to take my writing seriously, putting effort and my voice into every scentence that I write. Last year in journalism was the first time I ever took my writing seriously, and this year has been a time for me to craft and get to know my writing skills. I know I have a long way to go, and I hope that yearbook next year will act as a final way to perfect this writing technique and prepare me for a future, wherever that may be. I have learned what a journalist is, and even though I have not fully grasped their code of morals, I hope to in the comming years.

Journalism has changed the way that I think. Whether it is finding the meaning of truth, expanding my views of the word journalism, or blogging about recent events in the media, journalism has taught me to keep an open mind but focus in to some of the more hidden views to expose the true meaning of things. This is something I have never thought about doing until this class, and I have noticed a change to the way I think and how I ask and answer my questions. Family members have also noted a different attitude towards certain matters.

One thing I am most proud of is the new technique of photoshopping. I have expanded my knowledge of this fastly evolving art and I LOVE the skills that I have aquired. I hope to get better and better at this skill, making it a key to assist me in yearbook next year.

I will miss everything about this class, but I know I have gained so much from my time in here and I am most grateful.

I am an eleventh grader at BHS. It is my personal beleif that if I try my hardest in school and my education, I will prosper from my efforts in the years to come. This is why I take harder classes, maintain a high GPA, and spend almost all of my free time pouring over the books. Its difficult but I know it will be rewarding. The problem is that sometimes I get so involved in my work that I get overwhelmed. I have had many anxiety attacks and have been burried so deeply in my stress that sometimes I have nowhere to turn. This is where my art comes into play.

For me, art is the way out; a deep calming breath. Through art, I can express myself and relax. Art is one thing that has lasted through all of time. People were finding ways to express themselves, tell stories, or teach lessons through art in the dawns of time (Click to view Art Timeline). From cave paintings from 15000 BC, to the culture rich Renaissance, The Pop art trend, and the Architectual wonders that still are pondered in some of our greatest minds, ART exsists and will continue to exsist no matter what is going on around us.

Right now, teenagers are beginning to take new steps to expand their art and their art focusses. Our own Walker Institure has a Teen Art program called WACTAC with the main goal or providing an opportunity for teens to come and share their talents with each other. Just recently there was a “Dont Sleep on It” event at the Walker where teens were able to spend a full 24hours creating and sharing their art with other teens. Musicians played the entire night. Food, Paint, Pencil, and plenty of glue provided, this night was a fantastic idea for us to go. Unfortunatly I was unable to attend, but some close friends of mine did go. (To see some of this artwork click HERE)

Another thing that I am apart of that has helped me with my Art is the Buffalo Art Magnet program at my school. This is a way for students to take and learn all of their regular core classes and experience the exact same highschool atmosphere as all of their peers, with the addition of a Hands-on Art  experience in their AI (arts infused) classes. What this means is that some of their core classes (such as English, History, or Science) will consist of the regular corriculum plus more visual projects, acting out what they read, making videos, dances, songs, paintings, or poems that reflect what they are learning about. This process helps the student understand and enjoy the things that they are learning in a new way. It has worked for me and I enjoy every day of it, even though as a busy Junior I have only been able to prticipate in two of the classes.

A new craze has also hit the art world. Websites such as Deviant Art or Flickr have been developed into a place that Artists can post their art for the world to see in online galleries. They retain their rights and get to sit back as other artists can view their art and they can look at others works. I have used Flickr as a place to get inspiration or find new mediums for my paintings or drawings.

There is so much out theri for the striving artist. Art is everywhere in everything. Even if times get hard or stressful, Art is not going anywhere. Art is the way out.

Me and my drawing "Beyond The Shadows" at the Mississippi Art Competition (medium= Pencil)

Today we take look at the blog of Andrew Ronnie.

What topics did they give the most attention and thought to?

-I find that Andrea’s blog  mainly covers her own opinion about the stories and topics that we are supposed to cover in class. However one thing that appears in each of her blog entries is perspective. She mentions this word in a few of her entries and expands her thinking to include her own views on the matter. She definitely makes sure that none of her voice is lost in her blog.

What insights did they have that you feel are especially strong and meaningful?

-”What do the rich get? They get everything their heart desires. They get the choice to work from home. Or if they do go to work then they get to have a bunch of people pamper them when they are ‘hard’ at work.”- Andrea Ronnie in Blog #10

Personally I feel this is a direct statement without any consern for the people whom it pertains to. However, I think this statement is not true in the least and lacks some finer points of information to back this point that she has made. Even if it is a quote directed to show their opinion on the matter, the quote needs to be something true rather than something assumed.

Give a general suggestion for how they could improve as a blogger with their final two blogs.

-Andrea has covered a lot of important issues but she doesn’t take time to put in extra facts to prove her point.  I feel that she has written this blog to be an outlet for her own opinion rather than voice them orally in class. I really dont know her very well but I do notice her silence and how she fails to join in with discussion. This blog is a way to voice that, but it lacks the information needed to successfully do so.

What is important to this person? How do you know?

-Their solid views.  (“O I’m sorry. I mean the H1N1 Flu. Really who came up with that name?”, “You shouldn’t yell out racist things to the other team because you are embarrassed about the fact that your team is losing.”, “And teens my age are needing something to grab their attention so we can actually understand what is going on in the world.”)

What is the “Theme” of their blog? Do they come back to the same questions over an over or do they get a wider perspective?

-One thing i noticed was that their entries in the beginning were small, quick, and pert. Meaning that Andrea told the readers what she was talking about expanded on it breifly before ending it with her opinion. They never really expressed other views or provided links and facts that may support/refute what they were saying. As the writer grew with her writing se was able to expand more and develope a keen voice and style. Still lacking many of the finer points for writing, she still manages to put her voice into her blog but has also expanded with her thinking providing more details to help the reader see her own point of view.

Something that Andrea should do for her writing is go a step further and find a way to bring in all of the views around the issue she is talking about and reflect not only on her views but the facts and data that might go against them.

I have recently read an article discussing the link between Teen Obesity and Suicide. In the article it discusses that overweight teens or teens that beleive they are overweight expressed more signs of deppression or considered suicide than regular teenagers. (These results were equal for both boys and girls)

Am I not supposed to be concerned? According to the Palo Alto Medical Foundations records, right now out of children ages six to 19, 15% of them are considered overweight (Thats 9 million kids). That number has tripled since the 1980′s.  Not only that, but another 15% of children are at risk for becoming overweight. 

This is not something to be proud of. Being overweight has many disadvantages including a weakened physical health and a shorter life expectancy. They have a greater risk of becomming a bully or being bullied because of a low self esteem. And now we can make the conection to a greater risk for depression and suicide because of the mental aspects of being overweight.

Something I have noticed that intensifies the disturbed feeling I have is that people have begun to accept their weight and society is actually helping their cause (in many cases). These things can go both ways, in the case of Pro or Con, but stores like Deb have come out with a “Junior Plus” section to satisfy the bigger needs of teenagers and their weight…. But like I said this can go both ways because it can make a teenager feel confident in what they are wearing. I just feel if you are overweight instead of trying to cover it up or ignore it you need to fix the problem.

This is a video of Beyonce’s Single Ladies song danced to by three overweight women. If you watch the video, you can see that they use the same moves as Beyonce in the regular music video and dance extremely well considering their body form. It just astounds me that these women can do this. But this video goes both ways for the Pro and con. Pro- is that these women are using their talents to dance to a popular song. Con- is that they are advertising the fact that they have a weight problem and using it to get views on You Tube. They are getting views and I don’t know if the people are watching them perform because they are good dancers, because they think the weight is beautiful, or if they are disgusted. This is not a good way for people to live their life.

I feel that society is experiencing changes so drastically that people are beginning to accept the fact that we are overweight. People are making allowances for them and beginning to find beauty in their curves. Pro- Good for them, accepting who they are. Con- You could hide the problem or you could actually do something about it making yourself healthy and fit. This nation is heading in the wrong direction when it comes to health issues. With so many people overweight, views changing along with the economy, suicide and depression are already on the rise. Staying healthy should be a priority  to keep people happy and functioning in these hard times.

The evolution of man into this new economy.

In my previous blog I talked about some of the influences of photoshop in the media, and how many pictures that are circulated in the newspaper and magazines are not real pictures but are created from fake photos to show what the editors want you to see. I wanted to try to show you this by photoshopping my face to make a perfect face. A perfect lie.

Please. Keep in mind that my skills in photoshop are not the best, and even though I spent hours watching youtube videos on Photo Manipulation to try to create a better me, I still struggled with creating what I saw.

This is the origional Picture

 

This is the Finished product.

I changed so much from my original picture I feel like an unreal person… I am an unreal person. Feeling violated, I changed everything that I like about myself. My freckles, by lips, my eyes… I changed things that I didn’t necessarily like change too, like the deep circles under my eyes, my nose, and my eye brows. I changed my face to make it smooth. I changed the tone to look paler. I made my eyes larger, and sculpted my face to look like a models. It was horrible. And it shows. (Even the people that know me and look at this picture were shocked. I looked like a completley different person, but you have to understand, I am a different person in this picture. I’m not even me.)

Why did I feel this way while changing myself? I believe it is because I changed myself so much that I realized that I wanted to look unreal.  I wanted to look a certain way and I couldn’t make myself look like the mental picture in my mind.  The people in the magazines that I compared myself to in order to change my face, were not real. I was feeling bad about my nose, my dark circles, and eye brows because I was comparing myself to the people that probably had the same circles and nose that I have.

The media has changed the very way that we think about the things happening around us, the way we look, and the perfect lifestyle. Everything is changed or manipulated by the different techniques that are circulating around the world. Yes, this issue has been evident since the 90′s as I covered in my previous blog when explaining the history of photoshop, but it is getting worse as even new technology is being developed to make us even more “perfect”.

Below is a quick movie of the manipulating of a person.

 
Even now, Adobe has been planning and getting information out about their new CS4. Though this Photoshop has all of the old features updated to do more things, the new photoshop will work much like an I-phone. Meaning, that with one quick drag of the mouse you can toss, throw, or drag a picture away and pick it up later. Another new feature is their Spherical Panorama feature. A special button that turns a 2D image into a 3D image in a second. This means a huge step towards new wonders, but this also means an even more manipulating of models. Not only will a model’s flawless beauty be on display, but their altered thin and fabulous shape will flaunt itself in more places than one, ruining a teenagers’ already low self esteem.

In conclusion, the experiment I did explains the drastic changes that a person goes through to become beautiful in the media’s mind. Many of the pictures that we look at daily and automatically judge are not real and are changed by even the tiniest of photoshop features to fit the will of the media. Are things ever going to stop?

Our generation’s children will be growing up in a world completley new than what we see now. If the models that we look at and judge now are completey different, I know our children will be exposed to even more modified models. Completley alien to humans as they are now.

Ronald Reagan crying one BIG FAT tear for the republican party. The tear is fake.

It came to me while I reading my new 17 magazine that the women and girls in the pages were beautiful. They had the perfect hair, the perfect white teeth, a perfect complexion, and the brightest eyes. They are gorgeous. But at a second glance I find myself automatically comparing myself to them. How could Iever hope to be so pretty? Then I realized, I am not alone in my thoughts.

People across the world are being lied to on a daily basis. In the wonderful world of “Photoshop” your wildest dreams can come true. Wrinkles and dimples and annoying pimples can disappear in an instant. Your skin can glow with an inner beauty, your slightly stained teeth can shine white and bright, your matted or even slightly dulled hair can ripple and shine like the hair on the glamorous hair shampoo commercials. Deep shadows under the eyes are wiped away, and you can even get a face lift in one quick click of the mouse. Photoshop can make you perfect. But is it really prefect?

Magazines: pop cultures favorite trends. Using a combination of snappy sayings and pictures, they attract their readers because of the interest that they have displayed on the cover. But because of the many different magazines out there in the big big world, rivalries raise the stakes on all of their designs. Magazines use phtoshop almost constantly. Even Time Magazine’s cover of  their March issue features Ronald Reagan (picture above) crying one big fat tear for the Republican Party. The tear is over the top, and completley fake. But when you look at the cover you see our dear Ronald crying and looking sad over what has become of his party. Wonderful, I think I will buy that issue now. ONe question I asked myself was “Was the tear even necessary?” Ronald looks so sad and glum that the tear is just a peice of bonus material, yet it automatically becomes the focal of this magazine, therefore becomes the focal they need to have an excellent headline.

Magazines also use different photos of one thing to make a “better” picture to use for their own resources. ABC has a really good example of this (look at the Star mag picture below). This picture is actually made up of two different ocean scene pictures of Ange and Brad’s fabulous vacation. Notice how it fits perfectly to their title, but I am sure the origional photos that they had taken would have worked perfectly.

This is a magazine cover from Star. It is actually a fake picture made up of two different ocean scene pictures of Ange and Brad.

Allan Detrech added a basketball to this picture to make it more of an "action shot"

But how much is too far for photo manipulation? Gelf Magazine had an amazing article on the topic of a journalist who was fired from his position on the paper because he touched up a photo. Allan Detrech of the Toledo Blade, also a Pultizer Prize candidate for his amazing photos, was discovered for being a “serial digital manipulator ” for news photographs.  He added a basketball to a woman’s basketball game when he took a picture of some of the players in action. (click the piture below to take a look at it). When asked about it he told the newspaper that it was a mistake, that he manipulated that picture for his own personal files, not for the paper. While on suspension, the paper found that he had taken and manipulated over 900 pictures. Of those 900, over 200 were published and made public.

this is one of the origional pictures taken from the Kent State shootings

Photoshop has completely altered the way our world looks at the media. Some people cannot even know for sure if the pictures thay are looking at are real or fake. As Gelf mag said in the article that I linked before, tools like Dodge and Burn help us completley change the darkness and light values in a picture. Crop or Lasso tool can move and transfer peices of one photo and put it onto another picture. You can use various layers to add different affects to the skin, eyes, hair, lips, nose. With those layers you can make them look smoother, brighter, more colorful. With the Liquify tool or Warp tool you can make people look thinner, fatter, more muscular. The possibilities are endless and it is completley changing the way that people look at things.

This picture to left is one example.  Please look at the picture BEFORE reading on. This is the origional picture, but notice that it looks like a fence post is sticking out of the wailing woman’s head. Did you honestly notice the poll when you first looked at the picture? If I were to remove the poll, it would be a tiny miniscule change, but it would actually change SO much to the picture. Already the picture holds such meaning and weight. The poll means nothing. You are more proan to look at the pain in the woman’s face, the oblivious and confused looks the students watching have, and the body laying on the ground. Not some stupid poll. Meaning—> photoshop does things that doesnt even matter, but we change them anyways to make them better, so we do.

I have decided to do an experiment. I have practiced with photoshop before, and I am going to try to manipulate and change a picture of my face to make it look like the pictures in the magazine. I have already started researching and figuring out how to do this, and I know this will take alot of work. In the mean time, please look at the news and media and just think about how it is changing the ways that our world is thinking.

I am disturbed.

I recently read an article about a Massachusettes mother who stabbed her two year old daughter. The article talks about how this mother was able to stab her daughter with a scissors over 100 times, and ever used a peice of electrical cord to strangle the child.  In her mind- she was being followed and stalked by a cult. In her lawyers mind- she’s paranoid. In my mind- Your pshyco.

Over 3 million cases of child abuse are reported each year in America (The rate for 2003 rising above 4 million) with one report being issued every ten seconds (statistics show). Whats worse is that not only do 90% of the children abused know the perpitraitor. They know, understand, or even possibly love their abusers but they don’t realize what is happening to them because… why would you suspect someone you love to do these things to you? Who would you go to?

Today, Friday April third, San Pablo California reports that a “Horrific” child abuse case involving a thirteen year old girl and her 11 year old twin brothers were forced to live in the backyard, being fed maybe once a week, for two years.  “Their own personal hell.” as quoted from the article.  The children’s grandmother, Faasese Fiu, 56, and an aunt, Satu Diaz, 34 were the perpitrators. How could… How could someone who is supposed to love you and care for you…Hate enough to treat a child this way? The answer is mind boggling, the cure unknown, the pain already done.

Child abuse is a hateful act of violence. It is terribel what is happening, and I cringe away from the headlines that blink in my head like neon lights on a billboard sign. I shudder as I realize the terrible ways of humanity. Today headlines like, “A life scentence for Boys Rapist” or “Boy’s abuse not known to his school before death“. Tomarrow, who knows.

This isn’t a new thing. Child Abuse has turned into a common thing. Some people live with it. Others ignore the headlines; “Afterall, what could I do?” . Other people, like me, watch the headlines. I feel the pain, I can see the children in my mind. Their trust in the people; a child’s un yeilding trust in their elders is what makes Child Abuse a sick and twisted thing.

You can find them around you. They are everywhere. Family Watchdog is one site that allows you to type in your address to see if any of the locals around you have alerts that would have gone missing. Child Abuse is something that we need to know about. We need to become aware of it instead of shy away from it. If we become aware, we can help prevent it. We can help keep children everywhere safe.

Today in class I made my layot in 30 minutes.

First I made sure that I had drawn out my layout so I had a plan ready, then I created a graphic a few days before I did this challenge. Using a story that I wrote last year, I was able to create a layout that was colorful and semi organized.

If I could re do this, I would make sure I had all of the things ready for my secondary coverage. I knew exactly what I wanted in that box but it involves: a set of number graphics (much like the one I used for the headline), knowledge about why InDesign doesnt let me place my desired text into the fitting, and try to make everything fit together better. You can also see that the headline is cut off… I would change that. I would also like to insert a “Written by/ photo of the writer” thing before the story (much like the Opinions pages in the Hoofprint paper). I would also try to pick a different color for the text to lay on. Pink maybe too bright… I would try different ones.

I guess my main goal would be to make everything organized. Honestly, it looks messy and not professional. I wish I had anticipated the problems I would have with the secondary coverage. I also wish I could have more time to tune up and make better graphics for this story….Yeah, I wish I had alot more time to make this layout look better.