My Picture Lies!...(or does it?)

Below is a picture of a popular glacier taken from Environmental Graffiti, a site that shows different natural elements in an artistic or "graffiti-like" style. I chose this picture because I am quite passionate about the environment but some people tend to take their passions too far and insinuate some unsual things. For instance, in Al Gore's documentary, An Inconveniant Truth, some of the pictures he showed in his presentation of receding glaciers and melting ice caps were in fact doctored beyond the actual recessions. I performed the same manipulation below:


The Original Photo:















The Altered Photo:








By manipulating the same mountainous regions on either side of the glacier and placing them throughout the bottom as if the actual glacier had receded, I have made it to look like the global temperature rising caused the glacier to melt and shrink in size. Al Gore allegedly pulled this same manipulation to raise the level of alert about global warming and its effects.

The manipulation was indeed harmful in the sense that it is exaggerating the glacier's recession. However, from an environmental standpoint, if the only goal was to raise awareness and passion about the issue, which is important in our society with how fast global temperatures are rising, then the manipulation seems morally sound. As participants in the environment who use the natural resources that seem to be dying off, it is our job to do whatever we can to help reduce the problem.

Essential Computer Skills Presents!

The presentations in class this week were definetly above and beyond the quality discussed in my last post. Most notably, I thoroughly enjoyed two specific blogs for their ability to present the ideas or topics they were focused on.

Will's presentation on bonobos was light-hearted, funny, nimated, graphic, and on the whole was an intriguing topic in my opinion. Will had a strong confidence in his presentation and did not seem to be nervous at all. He also kept the audience's interest by moving around and staying dynamic as opposed to static.

Caroline's presentation, in much the same way, was very graphic and involved. Her personal connection to the theatre topic adds an important quality to the presentation that provides the emotion and strength the articles were talking about. She was confident in what she was saying and kept the topic interesting.

PowerPoint Tips & Tricks

While reading through the articles about PowerPoint problems and tips for a good presentation, they started to bring back memories of all of the old presentations that I had created thus far for any number of reasons in school, at home, or just for fun. Playing with all the sounds, animations, transitions, and backgrounds was a blast and the more you threw into it the higher grade you got!

It's funny to think about listening to all of our class's presentations in retrospect because the only one awake was the one presenting at the time. Through all the laser sounds, typewriter effects, spinning slides coming into view, I never remembered what any were about as soon as I left the room. There always seemed to be a pattern of one slide filled from top to bottom with tons of words and bullet points that the presenter would just read as the clicking of the typewriter went letter by letter, and then the next slide contained a bunch of stick figure clip art people doing some ridiculous animations.

After pondering the subject for a while the main things I took to heart were:

1. No Clip Art (at least most of the time)
2. Keep it simple in everything you do, text & charts
3. Make sure to get quality photos and do not expand them for fear of pixelation
4. No crazy animations that involve annoying sounds
5. YOU ARE THE ONE THEY CAME TO SEE, NOT THE SLIDES