Photo-Retouching

As our keyword search was photo retouching, I decided to find one of the more extreme examples as posted above. Now, I'm sure that no magazines do this much extreme retouching, but it can happen.
Magazines retouch photos everyday for their advertising pages and interviews to give celebrities or models the look and idea that they are "perfect". Perfect skin, eyes, teeth, complexion. If you can think of things "wrong" with you, then the editors for retouching can certain help you out.
And it's right at our fingertips.
When I searched photo retouching, I found a lot of tutorials on how to retouch photos from your very own computer.

Photoshop Makes Retouching Pictures Easy
Anyone have Photoshop? I know I have the "free" Photoshop package on my computer, which limits my editing possibilities, but hey, I can make my hair go from frizzie to "frizz-free". If anyone has never experienced using Photoshop, it is a downloadable editing tool that gives you those capabilities of adding extra elements or taking away unwanted elements (like that unflattering zit you got right before Prom night).

Wait...You Didn't Look Like That on Your Facebook Picture
Photo retouching has made it easy for a lot of people to go from looking like they just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, to making it look like they're models.

Plain out and simple, photo retouching could be very misleading. Especially for people who always retouch their photos and post that as their social networking profile pics.

Anyone seen a photo of a celebrity before it was retouched?

Say hello to the camera, Brittney Murphy!

Art
It is very artistic and more jobs are being created. Which can't make photo retouching all bad, I think though that because it's exposed so widely to Gen Y, that there are going to be a lot of people out there who consider themselves artists to an extent because of it.
My friend and I have messed with making pictures look better, but sometimes retouching a photo is just a bad idea. Some people just shouldn't tamper with pictures.

Overall
Photo retouching can benefit in the number of jobs and even make a person feel better about themselves, but we can't really run from who we really are.
So I think GenY has to take that into consideration.

For now, here's an interesting YouTube video that shows photo retouching.

"I Think That Possibly Maybe I'm Falling For You"

Love.



Everyone wants this feeling. Out of all of our emotions, love and hate are the strongest ones. The biggest difference between love and hate is that love makes us feel good.
Marketing executives know this.

And they want to create this feeling when you're watching a commercial.

The article, "What's Love Got to Do With It?" addresses the fact that they want customers to think about what products they buy. Are they number one? Do they make you feel good? Are you in "love" with whatever product you buy, even if it isn't number one?

It's Programmed In Us, Even When We're Little.
Thinking about when I was younger, I always wanted my mom to come home with the "best" product. Especially when it came to food. I wanted the "authentic" Doritos, not the knock-off generic brand. It just didn't taste as good. Yea, they were basically the same thing, but it wasn't the same to me.

When we're purchasing clothing, what makes you feel good? Or better yet, what's the best? Because we want to be cool, happy, successful just like the girls in their commercials. A lot of girls go for Hollister, Ambercrombie & Fitch, Ruehl, and other expensive stores.
Marketers and advertisers for these brands all knew what they were doing when they created their logo or commercial.

All companies want you to fall in love with THEIR brands because once they've got you hooked, it's hard for the consumer to even look at anything else.

A Great Example of This: I love Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi and regular Diet Pepsi. When I go out to buy pop (yes, it's pop, not soda...) I look directly for Pepsi products. Not Coke. It's not the same. I don't love Coke. It's the original cola, yes, but I grew up loving Pepsi. So it is number one to me.

I instantly thought of Kay Jewelers when I was reading this article because marketing strageties are focusing on pulling at your heart strings, making you feel some degree of love.

"Every kiss begins with Kay"

It sticks in your head and instantly know when the phrase is said what they're selling and who's selling it. They also want you to fall in love with their company and products, so by showing commercials that have a happy woman and man in them, you instantly want that feeling and it gives you the idea that "Hey, if they can be that happy, why can't I be that happy after I buy my wife a diamond necklace?"

And generally, after someone takes a chance on a new brand and it works for them, they stay dedicated. Just like falling in love. You don't want to look at any other products similar to it, because yours "is the best because it's never let you down".

I must say, it does make an awful lot of sense; to use love as a strategy.

I Feel Like I Should Be Doing Something About It..I Think I Got Angry.

Maybe angry wasn't the word for it. Maybe it was aggrivated or upset. Or a mix of all of them.

When Bob Wigginton came into our class today as a guest speaker, I guess I didn't expect him to be AS passionate as he was. Maybe I just didn't think about it hard enough before he came in.

He was a reporter for about 24 years so I guess one would have to assume that he was passionate and cared about his art of journalism. I can only imagine his inspiration from reading the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal.

Still though, when he was speaking to us before we could ask questions I felt...just upset I guess. Like when he said that in the past two years over 6,000 journalists have lost their jobs I felt like saying "And...? What am I supposed to do about it?!"

I realize we are Gen Y and we will be in control of and running the majority of this crazy government pretty soon, but thinking about all of the other problems in this economy is just making my mind feel like it's going in a blender and it's not going to stop spinning.

I Don't Read Newspapers.
Newspapers do form a connection with the outside world..but I also believe that CNN does too.
I honestly and knowingly recieve more of my news information from television because my tv is literally always on when I'm in my room. I find it easier to do something else at the same time the news is on and that's what our generation's becoming about: multi-tasking.

I would rather be studying and listening to the news and then stopping what I'm doing if it catches my attention than dedicating 20-30 minutes reading a newspaper a day. It's my preference.

I don't take anything he said though for granted. I consider him to be a very informed, intelligent man. Things are just changing. Times are just changing.

Maybe when I'm a little older I will be wanting to pick up a newspaper more, but I'm not sure.

Actually, I think I felt guilty after this because before I walked to my next class I picked up the latest copy of The Legacy...

Only Rule: Never Say No.

Ever since beginning of High School I was dedicated to Theatre. I participated in all of the musicals I could (except Annie, that seemed like zero fun times).

When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up one of the many changing answers was "rich and famous" or "an actress".
Last year I was a Theatre major at my community college.

Now, here I am, Mass Comm major taking a Jill Falk Survey of Professional Media class.
I still consider it entertainment though.
Professional entertainment, if you will.

So for Sibley Day of course I jumped at the opportunity to attend the Improv Workshop with Proffesor (not sure if that's his correct title) Quiggens.
We played two games.

Whaddareyoudoing?!
This was the first game we played. It starts with two people on the main floor. One will be pantomiming (pretending to be doing an action) of anything. Ex: person pretending to be fishing. The next person will walk up to them and simpley ask 'What are you doing?'.

That person pantomiming, our exampling fishing, will say anything ridiculous and opposite of what they're actually doing.
So our fishing man says "Saving the world from Gladiators".

Person #2 that asked the question then has to act out saving the world from Gladiators.

This goes back and forth and you can switch out people in the middle of the game.

Party Quirks
If anyone has seen Whose Line is It Anyway? has seen Party Quirks performed.

It consists of 4-5 people (the number can always be more after everyone gets the hang of the game). One person is the host and must leave the room prior to starting. The others are the guests who get assigned to be either 1. People 2. Object or 3. Animal. When all are assigned the host comes in and let's the guests in one by one after they step off to the side.

The host has to guess what/who each guest is before the game ends. There can always be a time limit added on.


--I thought Whaddareyoudoing?! Was a better game because you get to think on your toes and it's a little bit more freedom with your actions.

Overall I believe Sibley Day to be a success. Everyone should come see and Improv show at the Black Box over in the new Performing Arts building!


At a Renaissance Faire that I work at in Kenosha, Wisconsin we have a group called the IMPROVables. They do the same kind of games.

They're fun to watch!

Citizen Journalist..Formerly Known As The Audience

The term citizen journalist is pretty literal; just normal, everyday citizens contributing to collecting media and making it available to the masses.
But it's more than just taking a picture of an event with your Iphone and posting a story about it online. Granted, that is a part of citizen journalism, it's just not the whole.

There are actual types of citizen journalists, which I found to be very interesting because at first when thinking about this term, I took it just as we were talking about it in class. Very literal and thinking just about people pulling out their picture phones and showing everyone what they've discovered or what happened to them on the way to work.

The website Poynter Online actually lists the different types of citizen journalists. From commenting on editorials and newspaper articles to the new hot commodity of blogging, everyone has the opportunity to become a citizen journalist.

In the Poynter Online article, number four, The Citizen Bloghouse I found to be the most interesting. A main company contains a blog and can choose to allow citizens to contribute to the information they've posted, possibly even start a blog of their own addressing that specific topic..and get paid for it.
I mean, we were talking about people taking on social networking jobs, I think it's even crazier to think that people are getting paid now to just sit in front of a computer and blog about a company's ideas/topics.

Addressing the same article, I feel like citizen journalism might take away from the actual honest opinion of the average reporter. There's opportunities now for people to give their advice and input into a reporter's article before it's even published. It makes me think that originality is going to be thrown out the window. And say good-bye to media reporters doing their assignments on their own.
But then again, we are Gen Y, and we do prefer to work in groups and feel that sense of community, so I suppose it might not be such a bad thing.



Citizen journalism has a lot of benefits, one of them being spreading information from overseas. This article discusses about violence in Kenya in December of 2007; a woman by the name of Okollah started blogging about what exactly was going on. What the media wouldn't talk about. Her blog escalated into people using Google Maps to pinpoint exactly where the violence was taking place.
It seems like without citizen journalism being formed, people might have never really known about this.
It really makes me wonder what other information we're missing out on.
...but it also makes me really excited to think about what media we'll be receiving soon.

I found this awesome video via YouTube covering citizen journalism...check it out.

The Medium is the Message

I have to admit, after searching "Herbert" Marshall McLuhan I found his achievements to be very impressive. For a man to be gaining an education "out of spite" of his professors made me even more interested in him.
Still, searching his name, I've found this: He was the co-editor of Explorations magazine, taught at countless universities (including St. Louis University from 1937-1944) and received the Gold Medal Award from President of the Italian Republic at Rimini, Italy, in 1971, I felt that I didn't really find all that I needed to on this man.

I found he was a philosopher for mass media, how cool is that?! He wrote Understanding Media, which passed along the phrase, "The medium is the message".
When I first read this phrase, I took it very literally. Ok, so we take in media (t.v., radio, internet, ect.) and we use that as the "message" that today's society and government are trying to tell us.

I was very wrong.
But I also found out that most people are.

McLuhan's point in this, is that we all look at things from an obvious point of view and then we miss so much more.

Apparently, McLuhan REALLY means that medium is "any extension of ourselves" and message is really "the change of scale of pace or pattern" when something new is introduced to today's society.

Why Would I Want to Feel Like I'm Being Spied On?

I do not own a smartphone.  Yes, I want one;  I'm even determined enough to plan to have it by April of this year.  
But do I want an application that gives me and others in my Gmail account an application that let's them know where I am (and vice versa)?
.....Not really.

For our GenY article, I chose "Did Google Just Kill All Other Mobile Social Networks?".  Before I read the article, the title caught my attention.  I knew about Google making a phone with certain applications, but after I was done reading this article, I was completely turned off by it.

The article cover the topic of Google having a type of applications for their phones called "Latitude".  Latitude makes it possible for the owner to view where people can view where their "friends" from their Gmail addresses, RSS readers and people who read their blogs to see exactly where they are.  
I find this slightly creepy.

I appreciated that the article covered the issue of "our real friends aren't all the readers or in our Gmail account address list--they're on social networks like MySpace and Facebook".
This would be Google's downfall because if someone's real friends aren't on Gmail or don't read their blogs.Reviewing this article even more, it addresses that this would give a "Big Brother" feel to anyone in possession of this.  Latitude doesn't even allow chat conversations (yet), just the "comfort" of knowing where your "friends" are, at all times.And this goes to the title of this post, 'Why Would I Want To Feel Like I'm Being Spied On?'.  There are all kinds of people in this world, some not very mentally stable as others.We joke about things over social networks like "Facebook stalkers" (someone who views other people's Facebook profiles, whether they're friends or not), but what about real stalkers?Will Google take responsibility for something to go as sour as that?I, for one, will steer clear from Latitude.  For now at least, until it improves and it's possible to use Facebook or Myspace instead of Google accounts.