Digital Photography

This week I wanted to talk about photography, but was unsure of what to say and how to organize it. So I guess I’ll give a little background.

For Christmas I received a photography book, and while I have not read much into it, I can agree that it is a great way to learn photography and to understand how to take a good photo, it goes through the basic dynamics and offers small projects with a specific focus to slowly improve your skills.

I would have mentioned this sooner; however, I haven’t picked the book up in a month and was hoping that writing this post would give me some motivation to get back to photography.

I also wanted to mention some other resources that have helped with my photography skills. The one main one being Digital Photography School, a blog dedicated to teaching you about photography. And let me tell you it was the first time someone’s explained the exposure triangle to me and it actually clicked, I was like “Oh that’s how that works.”

Writing Course: Final Week

My first Writing Course is now complete. There is no exam, and I handed in the last assignment early. The final mark is a 92%.

Yay!

But also Boo!

I enjoyed the course and how I could see it improve my writing. More than I felt the course I took in high school did. It was more organized and had a more definitive focus. Both classes had their pros and cons, however, Writer’s Craft (high school) I was able to interact with others and bounce ideas off each other, it was a group learning environment and was by far my favourite class I ever took in high school.

This course was online and had zero interaction with other people, but I enjoy learning and teaching myself (in a matter of speaking) and overall both courses benefited me and my writing.

As sad as I am to finish the course, I’ll be happy to move onto the next or just something else completely.

Writing Course Introduction: Creative Writing: Online Course

-Brittany

Favourite Music and Songs

This week I wanted to talk about Music, because it means so much to many people and its helped me get through some tough times. Anytime I’m having a bad day I just flick on some music and immediately start to feel a little bit better.

But I also wanted to talk about the different genres I listen to, because I can listen to about anything at this point. I grew up listening to pop music, but when we’d visit family there was always Classic Rock playing, and then my dad got me into 90s rock and then my sister threw me into post- hardcore music. And when I write I like to listen to movie soundtracks, so there are no lyrics to distract me and it keeps me focused. That’s a lot of different music, thus I’m going to outline some favourite artists and then some favourite songs.

• Imagine Dragons
  1. Believer
  2. Polaroid
  3. Warrior
  4. Dream
• Coldplay
  1. Viva La Vida
  2. Yellow

Writing Course: Week 10

This week in the Writing Course was the first time I deliberately put off an assignment, I just didn’t want to do it. so I put it off for about a week (because I did start it early in the first place) and then I knocked it off in about two days and stopped caring what the mark might turn out to be.

The joys of school, right? Some assignments are great, other’s not so much.

The assignment was to write a screenplay based on a poem called “Frankie and Johnny” and I didn’t like the poem when I read it so to try to turn it into a script was boring and rather irritating. Hence the reason I sat there and just got it over with.

Anyway, there is one more week to go; hopefully the last assignment isn’t terrible like this one was.

Still can’t believe it’s going to be over.

Writing Course Introduction: Creative Writing: Online Course

-Brittany

Big Magic: Book Review

Told you there would be Book Reviews coming up.

Out of the three books I posted last week, I have now read two of them, Cross the Line, and Big Magic.(I have yet to actually go out and buy The Elements of Eloquence).

I’m not going to do a review for Cross the Line, only because I didn’t feel it lived up to its potential. The crime genre, in my opinion, has been dried up in terms of creating fresh new ideas because a lot of it has been done in movies now. Not to bash James Patterson, his novels are popular for a reason and he is very successful and has used that success to get people interested in reading. I just thought it was missing the usual description that I’ve grown fond of.

Anyway, on to Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. This book was awesome; I read it in two days because it pulled me right into it.

Writing Course: Week 9

There’s only two weeks left to go for my writing course, and this week was the easiest one so far. There wasn’t an assignment so there was only a quiz and a chapter to read. However the chapter was quite long I was sitting and reading for over an hour, when the other chapters took me half that time.

The focus was imagery and sound, so it went over the basic concepts of poetry and how the English language naturally has a rhythm to it when you frame certain words together. It’s how song writing works and goes far beyond simple rhyming techniques, to the point where I just started reading and stopped trying to understand it all because that was not happening.

Reading List, March-May

Disclaimer: All book excerpts and book covers were found at goodreads.com.

Time for another reading list, considering I haven’t done one in months. (I was reading Harry Potter ok).

There are a few books I’ve been wanting to read, but I have to be careful with what books I decide to buy and when. So I kind of prioritized the list a little and have three books to share today.

• Cross the Line, by James Patterson

WC: Week 8

Out of all the assignments I’ve had to do so far, this was probably the longest. Time and Thoughts were the topics for this week, and actually trying to intentionally write about time and thoughts proved quite difficult. I ended up sticking to one main story and went through each part of the question. The first was an illustrative example of the when the story was set, and then we had to write an action sequence, and write about duration and flashbacks.

I always tend to enjoy the assignments after I’ve mulled it over for a few days and let my brain think of a decent idea I can write about. Even with my own personal writing I tend to write page after page only to not even open the word document the next day, [deep sigh] “Oh the life of a writer.”

Depression: My Story as an INTJ

This week I’ve been kind of stumped as to what to write. A lot has been going on recently, personally, and it’s been difficult to focus on something that I plan on sharing with other’s that won’t be depressing. So I’m just going to write and see how this blog post turns out.

Like I said a lot has been going on recently, my sister if you’ve glided over to her Youtube Channel at all, talks a lot of depression and mental health issues because she too is dealing with anxiety and depression. And while I have shared a bit about my own struggle with anxiety and I think have mentioned my own bout of depression, I’ve never gone in-depth not wanting to share too much online.

However, I think people learn from other’s stories, I know I have and would like to share my own, not every little detail, but overall the experience and what I gained from it.