Progress Report

Acquired even more pictures to use this past week. Got some very good overhead pictures of West End Field, showing the surrounding area. The overhead views are good to show the comparison of West End Field and Fenway Park to show the same dimensions of the playing field. However, it will also show the overall size difference of the two stadiums as well. Fenway has significantly more seats and is a much larger overall ballpark. These overhead views will show these differences and similarities very well.

Noon Sunday

Here is a view from my bedroom at noon on Sunday. My bedroom is on the second floor of a townhouse apartment, and has a view of the parking lot in the center of the apartment complex. You can see my Jeep on the right side of the picture. This is my baby. I try to keep my Jeep parked off by itself as much as possible to try and keep away from door dings. This is why there is a space on both sides of my Jeep. You can see in the picture the screen of the window. The screen puts a checkered look to the picture, almost giving it a pixel type feel. It looks as though this may be on an old computer screen with a low resolution. You can tell how dry the area is by looking at the ground in front of the cars in the parking lot. There is not much grass left in the area. Also, normally this time of year the leaves on the tree would have changed, but they have not yet in this case. Some have a little, but not like they normally would have if we would have received a normal amount of precipitation. The shadows from the trees show you where the sun in. My window faces east, so you can tell the sun is pretty much directly overhead, in the south part of the sky, as it is casting shadows almost directly north. This picture has a lot to say about the day.

Progress Report

I have come up with a final list of 7 songs to work with in my video. This accomplishes my first goal on my project time table. Also, I have continued to collect pictures of West End Field and started to collect pictures of Fenway Park as well. I am looking for similar camera angles in order to better compare the fields to each other. I have been somewhat successful with this so far, but have a long way to go. I hope to have collected at least 30 total pictures by the end of this week. I am also trying to determine what is going to be a good program to work with in order to assemble this project. I would like to the video to be approximately 8-10 minutes in length. If this is the case, I must determine the approximate time for each picture to be represented in the video. A good portion of how long the video will be is based on the songs I choose to use in the video and the detail in the pictures in order to give the audience a chance to view the entire image.

Project Progress Report

This week I spoke with the media relations head at the Greenville Drive and found some good pictures of West End Field. I am working on contacting an individual with the Boston Red Sox in order to possibly get some pictures of Fenway Park and get permission to use them. I have looked through my music library and have come up with a few options for songs to use in the video. I have 7 options right now, will probably only need 4 songs at the most, so I will narrow that down once I start putting the video together. Next week I hope to have made contact with someone in Boston in order to get a few pictures from them. I also hope to have all of my pictures that I might need of West End Field and start to think of a natural progression of how to display them.

Project Time Table

Time Table for Project

10/12 Have possibility of 5-8 songs to be used in video

10/19 Acquire 30-50 pictures of both Fenway Park and West End Field

11/2 Have order of pictures determined and what pictures will be compared together

11/16 Have order of songs established related to the pictures used

11/23 Have outline and rough draft for paper completed

11/30 Have video completed

12/6 Have paper completed

A View of Tosh Through Font

I think a good font that describes my personality is the stencil font. I see myself as a person who doesn't wander outside my limits very often. This font gives the letters a specific structure of what they are going to be and confines them to these limits. I think I have a very strong outline of what it is I want to be as a person and I try my best not to wonder outside those limits. When I see this font, I think of how there is first an outline of a what you want to present, and in order to see it you have to fill in the middle. I think this fits my character very well. If you provide me with an outline of something, I can more often than not fill in the middle and help you see what it is you are trying to see. I think I am a very helpful person that can answer a lot of questions people have about certain things. This font also fits me in that it does give a little room for variation, but basically is the same. This is not the only way that stencil font is portrayed. It all depends on who makes the mold. However they are for the most part very similar. I think my molds of how I see myself have changed over the years showing some variations, but are basically the same. I have a strong foundation of how I see myself and stick to that for the most part, but do vary occasionally as my situations change. I think this font is a very good depiction of my personality and character.

Project Proposal

Being the huge baseball fan that I am, I wanted to find a way to incorporate some aspect of the game into my project. When I close my eyes and picture any baseball moment, quite possibly the most important aspect of every moment I can think of is the environment surrounding the event. One of the most unique aspects about baseball is the fact that there are no rules regarding the specific dimensions of the playing field. Because of this, each and every baseball park is unique in its own way. For example, in Chicago at Wrigley Field you have the ivy covering the brick outfield wall or at Fenway Park you have the 35 foot high Green Monster in left field. Each baseball park has its own aura and feel to it, and what I want to do is try to capture this feel of one particular park.

West End Field in Greenville, SC, home to the Greenville Drive minor league baseball team, is a very young baseball park, just finishing its second season of play. The playing field itself is built to the same dimensions as Fenway Park, since the Greenville Drive are a single A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox who play there. However, the rest of the park has it's own characteristics that make it unique in its own way. What I want to do is try to capture the similarities and differences between the oldest major league baseball park, Fenway Park, and one of the newest professional baseball parks, West End Field.

I think what this project will accomplish is a lot of different things. First, it will show how baseball parks have evolved over time considering West End Field is 94 years younger than Fenway Park. Secondly, it will be a good comparison of a large Major League Baseball park and a much smaller Minor League Baseball park. Also, it will show how each park has its own unique atmosphere to watch a game in even when the game itself does not change.

The way I want to approach this project is through a movie of still pictures. I will try to use as many similar angled pictures and views as possible. Through the video I will try to show as many comparisons as possible of the two ballparks. I will add music to the video as well to create a mood for the video. I would like to get pictures of the ballparks empty when there is no game going on as well as full of fans while there is a game going on. I would like to also try and capture the surrounding area of the ballparks a little as much as possible. Each park has it's own representation to the neighborhood surrounding it and I want to try and capture this as well. I think I can really represent West End Field very well through this process.

The essence of my video is the comparison of how two unique ballparks from different eras, different geographic locations, and different levels of competition are used to facilitate an environment where baseball is played and viewed by fans. Fenway Park in Boston is a hotbed of baseball history and tradition. The stadium has been around since 1912 and has housed some of the most memorable moments in baseball history. West End Field was named the number one new ballpark in America two years ago by multiple publications and has brought new life to the downtown Greenville area. I would like to try and capture the different atmospheres of these two different ballparks and compare how they provide an environment to view first hand professionals competing in America's pastime.

Second LIfe Party

Last week in class I enjoyed the interaction between many of the members in a class in a virtual familiar location for everyone. Hanging out on the virtual Clemson campus with everyone was a good time. I enjoyed hearing from Dr Reifert as well. He seemed to be very excited that we were there and more than happy to show us around. I think he is very proud of the progress Clemson's virtual campus is making, and hopefully got some good feedback from our class. Before meeting up with everyone on the bridge by Cooper Library, I was out and about checking out a few other places. In my travels I found a virtual basketball court. It was kind of interesting having my avatar TJ bouncing a ball around and shooting some hoops. It is kind of funny that even in a virtual world, my love for sports and activity comes through. I probably spent 15-20 minutes shooting around, and most likely would have continued given the opportunity. I think this second life world has unlimited possibilities, and I am very excited about finding some that interest me.

Changing the Face of Poverty, A Question

George states that the poor are usually depicted in the media one of two ways, either as "dangerous, intemperate, low-life thugs, or as helpless victims" (p. 214). Why do you think this is? Is there something visually about the poor that puts them into one of these two categories? What kind of characteristics do these two categories share that would relate the two? If you see a poor person that does not represent a thug, does this make them a victim, and vice versa? Where did this visual stereotype come from and will it always be like this?

Second Life

This is a snapshot of my avatar created in Second Life. It has a few physical characteristics that resemble my own, but also has a few that don't. For example, I made the face to look close to what I look like, with the blue eyes and brown short hair and everything. But also, I made my avatar a little more tan than I am. Also, the clothes he is wearing is similar to those that I might wear. I could see myself wearing jeans, a blue t-shirt and a black jacket. My avatar is in a random atrium I found on the mainland. He has explored a few places on the mainland, but there are a lot more that he can go to. I look forward to venturing out and actually interacting with some other avatars, maybe at some high traffic areas where there are some sort of social events going on. I am a pretty social person myself in general, so I think my avatar would be pretty social as well.

Project Ideas

The main theme of my idea is a way to put together my cross country trip two summers ago visually. I have some good pictures that I took while traveling from state to state to visit friends and family and watch a lot of baseball. It may turn into more of just baseball pictures but could be the entire trip. Ideas that came about were doing some sort of day by day display of where I was and what I was doing. Another idea was to put captions on some pictures as I used them to tell the story of the trip. I was thinking of building a continuous montage of pictures set to music telling the story of my trip. All the pictures were taken by me so there is no concern about gaining the rights, because they are mine. The only question is how to display them and what format to use, but the idea is coming together.

PeteSpace

The MySpace page I would make for my friend Pete would have a sports theme, similar to my own page. He is a big NY Mets fan, so it would most likely have a Mets background, with his other favorite teams, the NY Giants and Clemson, talked about with pictures under his background. Pete takes a lot of pictures with him and his friends, and I would have a part of his page have an album rotating through such pictures. I would have a hip-hop song playing on his page, as Pete listens to a great deal of hip-hop music, probably one that is fairly current. Pete also likes a lot of similar comedy as me, so I would probably have a video of some Family Guy or Gay Robot clip. I think under his interests and about me sections, I would put more pictures of what he likes as opposed to writing about what he likes. This is where I would put movie posters of his favorite movies, logos of his favorite teams, pictures of his favorite tv characters, album covers of his favorite music and things like that. Under his pictures would be a lot of pictures of him and his friends and him and his fiance. Lastly, for Pete's quote I would probably put down "I'm Batman!" considering he always makes that statement, for some random reason.

What is Visual Communication?

Visual communication to me is transferring messages through the use of pictures or objects that can be seen. Basically it means the ability to let someone know what you are trying to say by showing it to them. The use of pictures or videos or actions to show someone or a group what you are thinking, what you want them to know. It can be through colors or objects or movement or anything that can be seen. Visual refers to being able to see something, and communication refers to the transfer of messages. Therefore, to me visual communication refers to transferring messages through sight. It's as simple as that.