prisoner106

#2 in General a Puffin?? Info in Shadows

by

village-jim-grooms_John puffintransblog I started reviewing the footage from the General to find information on what might have been saved when things blew up. I think it was a plan from the start – who to trust?

Looking at the video – I was able to slow it down enough and see the shadows – look at #2 as his shadow reveals!! and there seems to be some invisible fairytale puffins in the room as well.

Truth in the shadows

Background process:

  • Clipped out frame from The General video
  • Imported into Photoshop
  • Deleted background within circle cut out
  • Used Eliptical marquee tool and rounded out edges of cut out to make it smoother
  • selected with quick select tool
  • Select>Modify>Contract 2 pixels
  • Modify>Refine edge>smooth and contrast
  • Cleaned up #2 with Select>Modify>Contract>Refine Edges
  • Added gray background layer to fill hole
  • Used Rochelle Lockridge”s find of the aristocrat puffin – selected and filled with one color of gray and added noise to create shadow – copied and added to working file
  • Used Transform>Perspective to create shadow
  • Added layers with fairy puffins and lowered opacity
  • Exported and saved as jpeg

AND THEN  – my own mind’s critic kicks in! Needed the context of #6 and the setting! So added it in. 🙂 just went back and instead of erasing all in the circle – I lowered the opacity after cutting it out and then futzed with making it fit in the circle.

Truth in Shadows 2

Penny Farthings and Puffins Everywhere

by

village-jim-grooms_John  puffintransblog  Penny Farthings  – It is like when you get a new vehicle or a new addition to your life – you begin to see them everywhere when you had thought they were unique.

So goes the Penny Farthing. Since summer of Prisoner106 has started I am seeing the dang things everywhere!

Cathy Jo Nelson – who I follow on Flickr and some ed tech groups posted this picture recently.

Let's go ride a bike...

We were out at a consignment shop we like to browse thru and again!

Then my husband and I are watching American Pickers on TV and they are looking and buying a penny farthing!

Then as I was watching “The General” I kept the stream running when it was over to watch the credits and the Penny Farthing was there again.

Needless to say – this called out GIF to me. Add to it, Rochelle Lockwood created another puffin with a Prisoner106 theme. Puffins are showing up as much as penny farthings and gnomes…..

I downloaded the end of the General, used MPEG Steamclip and trimmed to capture the penny farthing. It turned out to be 450 frames! Wow! At first I thought I was going to have to take each and figure out how to remove the text credits. After going through the clips I found there were at least 1 text free frame between each credit change. So I went through all 450 and came up with about 20 frames – much more manageable.

  • Loaded them as a stack into Photo shop.
  • rearranged layers so they were in the right order of building the penny farthing
  • Created frame animation in timeline
  • set timings to .2 seconds and a little longer at the end to smooth it out.
  • exported for web as GIF


Next was adding the puffin. I duplicated the file and then added the puffins by merging them into a layer. I added the aristocrat puffin as a new layer and chose add new layers to all frames. Worked on some timings again then exported. I also did a little color change. Because of the tones it did not give a dramatic effect but I tried 8 and 16 colors which give it a different look.

I wanted to have the princess puffin flying through the frames – but truth be told – I was tired and not up for the steps at the time….but it may come yet.

Village Architecture Mishaps

by

village-jim-grooms_John I was out walking on my way to a bungalow design session for #7. I was a little concerned as I don’t know who #7 is or what his history is in the village. After taking the hidden shots of different signs in the Village I have been a little on edge not knowing who is a friend, who is a guardian, who is a warder – or if friends have gone to a different side. Perhaps this is how isolation happens? I need to work on making sure it doesn’t overcome – so I walked faster and looked up instead of down to not cause attention and to see what was around.

Being that I look for design, form and function I started looking at the architecture. In assimilation I was taken around and all looked so perfect and maintained. Being out on my own, I found other areas where things were not always perfect. Could these have been experiments or just buildings added on to multiple times?

Take a look – The first is a huge structure – not sure who resides in it.

The second was a dead-end I turned into when trying to find #7’s bungalow. You would think #7 would be right next to #6 – but resident numbers don’t always seem to go in order.

Process:  Photos were created as an attempt at VisualAssignments954 where you are to take multiple photos of buildings and splice then together to make a new structure. There were no submissions to this assignment, but it sounded a fit for Summer2015 in Prisoner and in Burgeron106. Using a photo editor – I chose Photoshop. The utterly fantastical portfolio of work created by Jim Kazanjian, was inspirational – but not attainable in these first runs – but do make me want to explore more and try. 

The time sucker is finding photos – lots of looking at photos, licenses and rights, quality, parts of buildings, perspective. Color was not an issue as turning them black and white when finished pulls it together. 

I wasn’t sure on canvas size either. Doing this again I think I would start with a large canvas to allow for adding and providing enough white space for environment to be added effectively. I was constrained by what I had started.

You need to be in the mood for lots of manipulations. My strength is not perspective – which seems to be critical. Looking and using flips of pictures helps. The Warp feature in Photoshop became more useful than scale and skew or perspective.

It was fun and I certainly think I would do again. The discussion boards for the artist argue over if this is art, is it photography etc. Nothing I was really interested in getting involved with as an opinion. It is what it is. 

Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs

by

village-jim-grooms_John@mdvfunes asked if I had seen any signs on my walks through the Village.

I did! – But you know they are watching! So I carefully placed a  camera in my hat and tried to capture some of the signs as best I could for Mariana to research. Because of the covert mission – they are not following any artistic or creative interpretations – pretty much pointing the lens as directly as I could and snapping.

I hope I don’t get in trouble – Number Six did this too and we know what happened with him.

Good Luck Mariana – I am not sure what these all mean, but they raise questions.

Here is the album of photos of the signs.

A few stand out to me-

Who is number 7?

Who is #7?

A bar with no alcohol?

Non-Alcoholic?

And I thought this guy retired a few times? Maybe he really resigned?

A big deal!

 

 

Photos of Information – but whose side?

by

no6wcamera at fountainvillage-jim-grooms_JohnA photo safari as a resident in the Village is a challenge. It does need looking at the Village differently and in finding meaning in what is right under our noses. Will this assignment keep us from becoming fully assimilated? Or are there hidden subliminal messages in the village to convince us in accepting our stay and conforming? Will the photo safari make you independent or conform? How will viewing other resident photo safari interpretations sway our thoughts? Are the warders setting us up for conforming or escaping?

 

Imprisonment

The photo above is from the deck of my village bungalow. A hint of the lovely gardens provided for our pleasure – but I also noticed at this time through shadows that we are imprisoned! A beautiful path that is fenced so that we can not go farther – the confines of boundaries everywhere and amplified by the late afternoon shadows that I would not have seen if not taking photos.

Photo Safari Album – I am a collector by nature and one who finds looking at things in multiple points of views and arrangements before choosing is necessary and enjoyable. And once chosen is looked at again for yet another iteration. I am going to continue to shoot as I remember during this week and at week’s end see if I have come up with pictures to convey the subjects requested in a later post.

Information is in art. Keep your eyes and mind open. Will you find information in your photos? Will the photos help you in escape? Do you need to escape? Will the photos help you accept your stay?

When asking “What does it mean?” and being told “it is what it is.” , really a reminder not to seek information and an effort for residents not to look deeper –  that information is only for No. 2 and the committee?

I am still figuring this out and will need to gather more photos to check for messages.

n06wcamera Be seeing you.

css.php