Picture Journal Day 1

This is my beautiful roommate and best friend Michelle. I chose this picture to represent day 1 because  this day was dedicated to her. She gets married on Saturday, and so our lacrosse team had a surprise bridal shower for her instead of practice! This is her wearing the 'Bride-to-be' sash and jewelry we made her!

Perks.

I learned something new about Klout this week! Klout, the site that calculates your social media influence, has this new feature called Perks. It’s the coolest thing ever. Basically, companies that get involved with Klout can see people that are influential in specific topics. Then, they offer ‘Perks’ for people that are influential in their type of business. For example, a snowboarding company could see that someone is very influential and talks about snow sports online a lot. They might send that person a Perk, like a free pass to a ski resort or free gear, in hopes that that person will tweet or post a status about. They know that that person can drive traffic to their site or store.

Companies can tell who is influential in what topics because of something called +K. On everyone’s Klout page, there is a list of topics that they might be influential in. Next to each topic is a +K button.  It looks something like this picture below. 

I know Julie is a really good photographer and very influential and involved in this topic, so I gave her a +K in photography. When you give you someone a +K it’s basically vouching for your friend that they are influential in a specific topic. Getting a lot of +Ks in a certain topic can increase the amount of Perks you receive!

I got my first Perk this week!!! It was for 15 dollars off sporting event tickets on the website ScoreBig. Super excited to go to a Utah Jazz game!

 

Klout.

What's Klout?! Just my new obsession. The first day in my social media class everyone was buzzing about this weird thing called Klout. I figured out what it was and now I'm hooked! Klout measures your social media influence by giving you a number between 1 and 100. You connect Klout to your Facebook, Twitter and whatever other social media sites you use and it determines your score based on how people interact with you. How many likes you have, how many friends and followers you have and how many people re-tweet or share your statuses are all considered before spitting out your final score. I've really been trying to make my score higher and guess what?!... Today my score went up to 50! That's the highest mine has been for the whole two weeks that I've had Klout! Yes, I might have started with a score of 14, but I've been learning how and when and what to post about so I can get people involved.

What is the point of even having a Klout score or caring what it is? For me, Klout is really important because I'm studying advertising. I'm going to be using social media for campaigns and advertising for companies that I work for. When I am interviewing for jobs, I want to be able to show that I have a good social media influence. I want to show that I know how to get people involved and that I know what is effective online.

Depth of Field.

I had no idea there were so many things you could do with a camera! Until, of course, I started actually taking the time to learn! There are literally hundreds of settings and lenses and filters and things that make a photograph look the way it does. There is a lot to learn!

SO, to start out the semester, I created photographs with shallow and great depth of field. For those of you that don't know, a shallow depth of field is when you are close to a subject and it's in focus and the background is all blurred. Great depth of field is when an entire scene is completely in focus. Here is my shallow depth of field pic.

This is my gorgeous roommate Michaeline. *Favorite tip: "If you get to pick who you take pictures of, make sure they are attractive people. They make for better pictures." Good thing all of my roommates are super cute! They will make the perfect models!

Last Saturday we went out to this abandon swing set in the middle of Rexburg and took pictures. In order to keep her face in focus and the background blurry, I used my macro lens with a large f stop and focused on her eyes. This picture was taken in the middle of the day, probably around 3 or 4. I took the picture in the shade so there weren't super hard shadows on her face. The wind was also blowing a little bit so that made the perfect hair-blowing-model-effect. There was actually a piece of hair that was blowing across her face so I took it to Photoshop to fix it up.

Photoshop is another project in itself! There are also hundreds of things you can do in Photoshop, but for this assignment I just learned a simple, basic editing tool called the healing brush tool. I was surprised at how easy it was! All you do is click on the color of her face that you want to use to cover up the hair and then drag the tool over the hair and it's gone!