Final Video Project

Audio Podcast!!

Hey all! This week I would love for you to check out my podcast!!
https://soundcloud.com/brooke-espelien/matthew-interview

ComWeek

Hi all!! Long time no talk! I am pretending that I have loyal readers, but I should be honest that I have one, which is Professor Heagney (I am telling myself that Heagney would still read this if he didn't have to). I attended the com week speech by Nadine Strossen. I did not get to see all of it but I will do my best to recount what she talks about and my opinions on it!! In the speech Nadine defined hate speech as statements pointed at a group with a negative meaning. I think this is what is dangerous about the ability of free speech and social media. With the use of technology, people are able to hide behind their computers. I understand that in order to live in a country where we boast of freedom, free speech is a part. There are laws that protect others from libel, but when things are monitored, not everything can be caught. Nadine defines offensive speech as speech not aimed and someone but still offensive towards certain groups. I understand the difference between these two things, but I don’t think that makes it any more excusable to talk badly of people, especially those they don’t really know well enough to insult. The fact is that the way we communicate now is through phones, and they are used in a split second. We don’t even think about what we say before we say it. I really wish I could have stayed longer for the speech. However, I appreciate that I was able to use it to reflect on my own opinions that I already had about free speech. This relates to communications because often articles and editorials are written with a lot of hate speech in order to get more readers. For some reason it makes people feel better about themselves to hear bad things about other people. Thanks for reading this week!! Signing off~ Brooke

Interview!

Hello my loyal readers! (Heagney)
This week I did my audio interview based on Free Speech at High Point University, inspired by ComWeek!! I only interviewed two people, because they had a lot to say!!

https://soundcloud.com/brooke-espelien/free-speechqa
 I hope you enjoy!

Brooke

Dwite is My Spirit Animal

Here is my meme! I decided to make this because I feel like it accurately describes my face when I hear Nido has giant Kit Kats. I always want to despise this crazy man but as soon as I hear the word free, I pop out of the woodwork just like Dwight pops up from behind the fountain.

NATUR(E)al Color PALETTE

So this is a picture of me and my friend 'hiking' in Colorado. I thought this would be a good choice because I was mocking the brochure I read in class for not having an actual picture of himself. Please notice that we were wearing sandals. 

Above is my color palette. I did my best to match the colors in the photograph.

Above are the name plates I created. I think I like the top best. I chose this photo/the color scheme because I thought it would be fun to mix some bright dramatic colors with the dark and sultry natural colors. I think the cursive makes the card look professional.

Resizing An Ugly Car Picture

 In this post I will be displaying how to resize/resample a picture in photoshop. This is important because in order to get the highest quality picture you must make sure the pixels per inch matches your purpose (the screen or if you will be printing). If you simply drag the corners in indesign it will distort your image.

Here is the original image I used:

This is a good example to use because it has some detail you need to be able to read (the lettering) but it isn't too complex where any way you tried to fix it wouldn't do the trick.

The photo above is a resampled version of the original, with a resolution of 72 pixels per inch, and the width linked to the length, changing the width to 5 (the image is a square). I used the bicubic smoother to make the details more prominent.

The last picture is literally a square inch, with 72 pixels per inch. It is reduced from the original size. I linked the height and width and made the width 1 inch.

As you can see, size makes a huge difference!! It changes the quality of the picture. Be careful of going too large or small!

In-Class Sizing

Tomato Soup- Unlimited Perspectives

My objective in this blog post is to achieve the highest quality picture possible of one inanimate object. I hope to capture this photo so it is from an interesting angle and it still shows the object in its “best light”. Since the most interesting thing in my life is food (it’s my favorite thing), I thought the best way to tell a story through my blog post was to take pictures of my meal now that I am taking part in the “new year, new me” craze, where I act like I will change myself for the better that it’s the new year. However, if I redid this blog post in two weeks, it would probably chik-fil-a instead of tomato soup. It was very delicious, and I hope that one of these photos captures how good it was in the viewer’s eyes.

This was my meal as it was when I was sitting there. The lighting was not good, it made a lot of shadows, and although the angle of the layout was kind of "artsy",  the salad and napkins were distracting, and half out of the picture.

This next picture is the birds eye view, which I thought showed the soup well except the light flashed in the soup's reflection, and you can see the shadows from my hands/wrists. 

This photo captures the cool shape of the bowl and I actually like the way the shadow falls on the table with the clear outline of the spoon. However, it desperately lacks the soup!!

I thought this picture was better than the last because you can tell that the object is 3D, but there is more going on in the background, like the napkin box.

This photo was definitely not my finest. The glare was still in the soup and the cup was awkwardly off-center, as well as the napkin box was still in the picture.

I like this one, because it shows the shape of the soup cup and the soup inside, but the corners are at kind of weird angles, and there is still a mess in the background.

This is my final photo. The spoup is shown and it has no glare, and there is much less stuff in the background.

I also tried my hand at using photoshop on my favorite picture. It definitely isn't the best it could be, but I like the crop much better, and I chose a filter that I think improves the quality.

Me, Myself, and I

Hi, I'm Brooke Espelien. I'm a freshman at High Point. I'm from Stillwater Minnesota, which is just a half an hour outside of Minneapolis (one of the best cities in the US- duh). I live on the Mississippi river, and like every other Minnesotan, I love to be out on the lake or the river, tubing. I learned to ski when i was 3, and I still enjoy it, which would explain why my favorite place in the world is anywhere in Colorado. 

I am a music major, on the voice performance track. I am not sure if I want to stick with a double major in communications, or be a choir teacher. Choir was my favorite thing in high school, but as my parents constantly remind me, I won’t have a money tree growing in the backyard.

I have two sisters, and they both went to the same school in Minnesota, so when I decided to come here, I was a bit of a black sheep. My sisters are my best friends, and we still talk every day.

I like to think I have a strong work ethic, but sometimes I lack motivation. I like to have a job, I usually find it fun. On top of that, I was the president of a community service club in high school, and still try to keep that aspect in my life, even though it was hard to last semester, with a cappella and work on my plate.

I am looking forward to this class this semester, and learning about com, to see if I want to pursue it as a career.