Photography - Week 1,2 & 3

This year I have taken a Photography Elective so that I could learn more about photography, different skills and techniques along with getting to have fun taking more pictures and experimenting of how to use my camera.

The first project we were given was a 'self portrait' although your face didnt have to be in it. I decided to take photographs of me dancing as dance was such a huge part of my life when I was younger. I hadn't stepped on a stage for 2 years so getting to put my shoes back on was definitely liberating even if it was just to take some pictures.

The second project was to tell a story with a photograph, which was certainly harder. When I was at home at the weekend though i dragged my six year old brother out into the garden and photographed him. The result was the picture below.

The third project was to photograph something funny. This was really hard. I originally wanted to get a picture of my cat scooping out his cat buscuits from the go cat box but sadly there was no such luck. It ended up though that our house fridge broke and I captured my flat mate with the door that had fallen. People laughed so at least it worked, I can hardly say that its a 'good' picture though. 3 week of photography down and so far I feel like I really need to get Photoshop! 

 

Decorating Doors

Sophia is quite forgetful to say the least and we are constantly wondering where she is.
For this exact reason I decided to create her a fun Calendar to put on her door with little funny memos, like her Birthday, Christmas, Exams, Terms and other such things. Around this there I placed photos of all of us and a few sketches and magazine cut outs.
I got the free calender print outs for Sophia's calendar from http://heidiswapp.com/shop/index.php?route=product/product&path=59&product_id=80 a great website if you are in to smashbooking as well!
As we are not at uni for July and August i only have printed out 10 months which I then stuck to card.

For Rachael's door I went down the theme of Nature. Rach LOVES frogs and has lots of butterflies in her room so I decided that i would create origami butterflies and frogs using some online tutorials on youtube and http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-yoshizawa-butterfly.html . I also covered hers in some butterfly sketches I did and some photos.

Hannahs was easy to decide what to do as she LOVES pigs and teeth, bizarre combination but never the less I went about creating her a movable jaw. I found what I was looking for on http://skulladay.blogspot.co.uk/ where i downloaded the template, stuck in onto card and then scored and cut according to the idea. This Skull template would also be good on a larger scale to use at halloween as you could attach string and potentially move it without the need to touch creating a very scary idea! Along with this I printed of photos of piglets covered in paint and wellington boots, you can find them on google!

Kasturi studies energy engineering and has a labrador back in India so, luckily glamour awhile ago had a photo shoot and interview with Diana Kruger in which she was photographed with a beautiful labrador.  I also hand drew a big periodic table just because who doesn't want to learn their elements.

The boys doors were a little different but I found funny quotes to stick on theirs along with embarassing pictures from last year

Zoology Field Course to Dale Fort

Being stuck out in the middle of no where with no phone reception when in bed and wifi that crashes when any more than 3 people wish to log on is hardly what I would have considered fun when we were told that we, Leeds 2nd Year Zoologists, had a compulsory field course to a small town called Dale in Wales at least a 20 minute drive from civilization and if I'm honest I still cant say that the majority of the trip was a barrel of laughs either. After arriving after a 8 hour coach journey and being told we had a 20 minute walk to the Fort as buses were unable to drive there the trip wasn't of to the best start.

I found a baby crab

 The first day we had lecturer Ian Hope. I LOVED the stuff we got to do with him, a lot of people didn't seem as bothered but I got to create life!. I personally don't think I could have been any more excited as when I looked down that microscope for 4 days in a row seeing my fertilised egg change into a small embryo and then to see the larvae hatch has got to be one of the most remarkable experiences! The sperm of sea squirts is also very unusual in that its tail is over 6 times longer than the body and is a tear drop shape for the main body where the bottom of the tear is connected to the tail.

Alison Dunn was our tutor for the second day where we went down to the shore and examined multiple rockpools for the variation of wildlife with in them. Once we returned to the lab we had a mad dash of a write up to complete followed by a poster. Later on we did get to have some fun where we played a quiz and got to learn all about different shore wildlife that we had collected during the day
On the 3rd day we had Sarah Zylinski. We went to the shore again but investigated whether the size of the trapdoor is ratio to the height of the spire and if its larger when close to the tide. We must have measured at least 120 purple topshells and our hypothesis was proved false. After a report writing we all got to have a nice movie night before crashing into bed.

Our Experiment

The last two days were taken over with Group projects, ours was "What are dog whelks choice of prey?" After we had collected MANY topshells, winkles, limpets and topshells we went about placing the prey in the corners and the dog whelk in the middle and monitoring them every hour to see which the dog whelk had moved towards. Sadly we didn't get any significant results which is very frustrating after you have stayed up till 3 am monitoring the stupid things!! The report writing was the ridiculous part as we were in such a rush to get it finished that we made silly mistakes but hey ho.

TO MUCH REPORT WRITING

The last day we were there everyone had to give presentations on what they had discovered from their mini research projects. Following this everyone headed to the pub and we had a brilliant bonding night for all Zoology students, learning things that I never thought I would about my fellow course friends which is definitely not going to leave my mind any time soon.

But it was all smiles in the end 

So just as we finished the presentations with a rap, I will finish this blog post with the wonderful song that we wrote talking about our project using the Price of Bel-air and silly Dog Whelks!