JAHA Update

 

So Thanksgiving break was definitely needed to relax and take a break from school work and spend time with family.

Anyhow I did not really have any specific expectations about the JAHA project other than learning more what it was about and what they did because I have heard of them before. I guess if I had to pick something my expectation was to scan the photos to the best of my ability and do the metadata to the best of my ability. I was able to accomplish successfully scanning the photographs and doing the metadata correctly or at least I think.

I was also amazed by the photos that we were scanning because I grew up around Johnstown all my life and hear people talk about the flood but there are not too many photos that were taken because technology was not available at the time.

The importance of this work is to preserve the history of the Johnstown Flood and bring recognition to the Johnstown Area Heritage Association because nobody really knows to much about this other than word of mouth and stories from the news when they covered this story.

I know most people do not want to see snow but I am so ready for lots of snow currently like California and Utah is getting right now which is FEET!!!

UPDATE:
So we finally got some snow in the forecast and while I am glad I am also bummed because I can't really do anything fun for the next two weeks.... Anyway I can not believe that the semester is already over it went so fast and I'm not sure what the next chapter will bring. This class was a lot of fun to take and I learned a lot of different software programs that I have heard of but not have access too because I didn't own a Mac. I have challenged myself in the several projects that was assigned and my skills in the future will be put to the test when I find a "real world job".

JAHA Project

These last few weeks have been going in a little bit different direction away from my snowboarding content but it is for a good reason. We are working with UPJ's Humanities department preserving Johnstown, Pennsylvania's Flood History.

Last week we meet with Dr. Justus and David and they informed us what JAHA was about and what they did. They have been working on digitizing several hundred photographs right in our own library which is very precise and time consuming. My partner and I each scanned and saved a photograph and will then create a description called "Metadata", which is basically just a detailed description of the photograph then the photograph and the metadata will be sent to Pittsburgh to be approved and then published online for the public to see.

This week we will be really focusing on the metadata and being as specific as we can and following the strict guidelines. Looking through these old photographs is really amazing because you are truely holding a piece of history.

This is a 64 fl oz or 2 quarts glass bottle that Pepsi produced after the 1977 Johnstown Flood so that people would have clean drinking water or for whatever else they could use it for at the time.


UPDATE:
So far I have filled out the Metadata on an outline that David had previously created that we went over in class on Monday. I honestly did  not think it was to hard because I have had previous experience with metadata but not to this magnitude. Friday I will be scanning and saving my second photo for this project and continuing working on my portfolio.

JAHA Digitization Project

This week we will be starting into the Johnstown Area Heritage Association (JAHA) working closely with Dr. Justus and David. I personally do not know a lot about the JAHA program or what they do exactly so this will be a new experience for me and also a great way to learn something new that I can add to my skill list.

There mission statement is "JAHA is dedicated to preserving and interpreting the nationally significant historic heritage of the Greater Johnstown Area through its museum facilities, historical collections, and education programs. JAHA operates as a clearinghouse and catalyst for revitalization efforts based on cultural tourism and historic preservation". They are a non-profit, membership based organization who operate the Johnstown Flood Museum and the Frank & Sylvia Pasquerilla Heritage Discovery Center.

I am excited to see what we are going to do with this project and I can not wait for Thanksgiving break. 

Video Progress

Last week I talked about what the subject matter of my video was going to be about, which of course is about snowboarding. I have gone down to Spokes N' Skis and spoke with Troy, who is in the video and walked me through the process of upgrading my snowboard. As you will see in my upcoming video I choose a snowboard, get fitted for boots, sized the correct bindings, and then how to put all of those steps together so that I am ready for the upcoming season.

My personal favorite manufacturer of snowboards is Never Summer! They are a United States company out of Denver, Colorado. I have two Never Summer snowboards, Pandora and Scarlet. Binding wise the best out there is hands down Union which are based around the world but are in Seattle, Washington. Boots it depends on how they feel I like the brand thirtytwo because you can heat mold them to your specific foot/ankle and they have a lot of ankle support as well.

After going through that process you have to get your bindings set up properly and see if you ride with your right or left foot forward (personally I ride with my right foot forward which is considered goofy) and your bindings will be angled out a little bit instead of straight forward so you have better balance and then all you have to do is tighten everything down and you are good to go!


UPDATE:
So I think my video turned out pretty well overall, I am happy with the final outcome. The main thing I would change is turning/filming the video to landscape instead of filming in the portrait position. I hope this video helps all the people who may be just getting into snowboarding or someone who has don't it before and are possibly looking to upgrade to better equipment. I would also maybe take the snowboard off the wall that is hanging so that the viewer can see better and that particular board isn't the most appropriate (sorry did not pay attention until after I had filmed). Overall this assignment was pretty easy except for the tedious position of the introduction when to start and stop the music and the ending with the words.     

Video

For our next project I chose to do a video instead of a podcast. I'm personally not a fan of listening to them so I would rather do a video and also a video will make a lot more sense having it visual.

So I have decided to do a video on how someone new can get the perfect snowboard, meaning the correct height and weight ratio and then how to set up the bindings correctly for you and your boot size and what it should look like all set up.

To accomplish this I am going to be going to my favorite shop called Spokes n' Skies down in Hollidaysburg, PA. My man Troy will help me explain this process in more detail and show you how to do everything from start to finish, from board, boots, and bindings.

This diagram helps a beginner understand things a little bit better about how your height and weight play a factor and also if your "regular or goofy" footed, meaning if you put your left foot forward or your right foot forward.





UPDATE:
So I asked permission of the person I wanted to film (Troy) from Spokes N' Skis and he said that he would be willing to be filmed. Monday after class I had the time to go down to the shop and film, my idea includes someone who has snowboarded before and is looking to upgrade to something better and Troy explains the process about height and weight, then get fitted for the proper fitting boot size, and then choosing a binding to fit the boot and then the process of setting everything up.

Brand Template

This week I will be working on what is called a "Brand Template" which serves as the marketing tool and provides instant recognition of documents and publications that can include a logo, official name, acronym, or slogan. I am not really sure how I want to go about this project exactly.

Some of the things to consider when I am coming up with my idea is to include : Audience I am going to focus on which in my case would be people who are interested in snowboarding or even skiing. Purpose is another important aspect which would be to inform newer people who don't know a whole lot about snowboarding but also make it interesting for the people who are more experienced at it as well. Design will play a very important role as well which will include my logo, keeping the same color scheme that I have been using, and layout/font consistency throughout.

I have my logo design from a previous assignment but now I have to chose a simplified version that I could do if I didn't want to do color so I need to decide on something that looks good in black and white for a possible sticker or t-shirt design.

UPDATE:
I wasn't sure what picture to put with this topic this week but I have looked over and revised my Logo, Infographic, and Photo Story to make them better. I think the hardest part was creating a logo that I could put on t-shirts just as black & white since my other one has color and more details. I hope to maybe someday actually use all of this information in the future if I decide to do or make a YouTube channel about snowboarding or in general going to the places on my bucket list through out my lifetime.

Photo Story

This week I am working on my photo story. I was choosing between doing a story capturing the 4 seasons and what “snowboarders” do in the off-season (or at least me) or going through the steps on how and why I chose the snowboard I have. After talking with some of my classmates and the professor I have decided to go with a story about what I do during the 4 seasons while I wait for it to snow again.

4 Seasons as a Snowboarder

You can do just about any of these activities throughout the year if you really wanted to depending on how the weather co-operates and if you have the correct equipment.

In the spring time my boyfriend and his friends and I like to go fishing and we found the perfect spot to do so and chill out in our hammocks waiting for the fish to bite.

Prince Gallitzin State Park, PA

In the summer time I try to be outside as much as I can and the photo I chose to represent this pretty such sums up all that (riding quads, fishing, chillin’ in the hammock, and if you look closely in the background you will see a camper).

Pennsylvania

In the fall time it is getting cooler in the evenings and it is perfect for a mountain bike ride on some of the beautiful trials with the leaves changing.

Shawnee State Park, PA

In the winter of course I am on the mountain snowboarding as much as I can and we usually take a trip somewhere for “spring break”.   

Sugarbush, VT

UPDATE:

As I said before I am currently revising my photo story. At first it was kind of hard to choose what photos I wanted to use because I take so many but deciding to go with the 4 seasons made it a little bit easier. I have added a title to the story that helps the audience get a better understanding of what the story is about. Most of my photos you can tell what the subject matter is and what season it is. I was a little nervous about not putting a whole lot of text but I got positive feedback from my classmates and that helped a lot.

Humanities Flyers

This week for class we worked on creating several different flyers for UPJ’s Humanities Division classes. I chose to do an English Literature class called “Living on the Edge: Extreme Literature and its Radical Impact on Society” with Professor Stoneham and an English Writing class called “Creative Nonfiction” with Professor Landrigan.

I have had several classes with Professor Landrigan in the previous semesters and she is very nice. I have not taken this specific writing class with her before but I did have something similar and the class was low key but also a lot of fun at the same time and the small in class activities were interesting especially when working in small groups you get to see what your other classmates think.

I have not had any classes with Professor Stoneham before so I’m not sure what to tell you to expect other than many other students I have talked with really like him and says he is a down to earth kind of guy willing to help anyone. Every time I see him in passing he is always smiling and in such a good mood.

Hopefully after reading this you with take some time and consider one or both of these classes to enroll in for the Spring 2020 semester.  

UPDATE:
So this week after looking at my classmates examples I decided to completely change my Humanities Flyer designs completely and make them look more appealing to the audience. First I changed the way the class was presented and made that the main focal point instead of the professor teaching the course and secondly made the key information like the catalog number, day/time of the week, and then the professor. For professor Landrigan I chose to put the textbook that she will be using on there and for professor Stoneham I chose a more laid back image to get the viewers attention.

Corpus Analysis

For my corpus analysis I used a snowboard blog website, more specifically the top 10 resorts around the world. I chose to do this article because no matter where you go in the world the terminology is going to be the same for the sport of snowboarding. To do this analysis I used a website called “voyant” to analyze the article I choose. The four most common words are “ski, top, resort, and mountain in that order.

I think if you look at the word cirrus it is interesting to see the different countries the article includes from all over the world. I never used or hear of “voyant” before and after using it to do this I think it is a useful tool if you were to write a long paper to see if you are over-using a word too much.

When thinking of the topic snowboarding the first thing, I think of is the resort, mountains, powder, and ski lift which are all the main parts of snowboarding. Hopefully someday I will be able to visit some of the different countries listed in this article and see how similar or different the resorts are from the United States.

UPDATE:
For my corpus analysis I changed the bubble color to match my snowboard bindings, and I tried to change the bubbles to snowflakes but I couldn't get it to be transparent so I just left the bubbles. I changed my original layout and added subtopics to the other main topics and made it more uniform. The subtopics were my own personal opinion so there can be various different opinions. Majority of the photos are my own personal photos that I have taken. Hopefully I have given the viewers more information about the different resorts that are around our own area here in Johnstown, PA but also on both the East and West coast.

Infographic

This week for my blog I will be talking about my experience I had using Spark and Canava to create an Infographic, which I had never used either before. At first I wasn't sure what an Infographic was but when I looked into it more it made a lot more sense.

An Infographic is visual representations of information, data, and/or knowledge intended to give the reader or viewer information quickly and clearly. Basically from my understanding it is like an event flyer because it has the important information about the event like the date, time, location, and a brief description along with photos that go along with the event and catch the audiences attention.

I did my Infographic on "How to Choose a Snowboard" which includes height, board type, and skill level. Your board should be in between your chin and your nose. After choosing the best broad to fit you, depending on what you want to do mostly, decides on what board type you should get based on the flexibility to carve down a mountain, in the back-country, or in the terrain park. Each resort has the mountain marked with a green circle for beginner, blue square for intermediate, black diamond for advanced, and a double black diamond for expert.




UPDATE:

So, my rough draft for my Infographic was a rough draft. After talking with the class today I got a lot of great advice from my classmates which includes using my own personal photos instead of Canva’s generic ones they provide, correcting the size of some of the photos to make them fit the space, fixing the font size, and some small minor details to make it look better. Overall, I really like the layout and it explains to the audience about how to choose a snowboard if they want to know how or if they would just want an idea about it in general.  

Zine

Some of you may be wondering what a “Zine” is, I know I wasn’t sure at first but it is derived from the word “magazine,” a zine is a small press publication that is like a magazine with a twist: it is non-commercial, grassroots, independently published and captures the spirit of DIY/DIY (Do-It-Yourself/Do-It-Together) ideologies. They can have several different genre’s and/or formats. For the purpose of this assignment we will be creating a single page zine that we fold and cut the middle that will make 8 small pages.

For my zine topic I am continuing to go with the snowboarding topic. I will have a title page, a brief introduction about how I got into snowboarding, the three most common styles of snowboarding today (all mountain, freestyle, freecarve), corpus analysis on snowboarding, different photos from different level of ski resorts, video of snowboarding down the mountain, wrap-up/final thoughts, and then the back page.

I think overall this will be a fun project and will be interesting to see what topics my other classmates will choose to do theirs on. My goal is to give some of the basic background knowledge to my viewers about snowboarding and how much fun it can be.



UPDATE:

Like I said before I did my Zine on snowboarding. I explained how I personally got into snowboarding by watching Shaun White at the Winter XGames and I had asked for my very first snowboard for Christmas and then took lessons at a local resort and have been getting better and better every season. There are three different styles to snowboarding and I gave a brief description what they all mean which include all-mountain, freestyle, and freeride. To make it more personal I used my own personal photos that I took at several different resorts including Blue Knob, PA, Gore, NY, Sugarbush, VT, and Killington, VT.   

Final Logo Design

After discussing my logo with the class and once again after creating three more different variations, I have decided to go with my first logo design but with some minor changes. When we went through each of our three other logos, I said I liked my first logo and received some great feedback and took that into consideration.

Looking over the list we created as a class I believe my logo falls under each of the categories that include: simplicity, relevant theme, versatility, professionalism, and creativity.

Some of the revisions I did for my final logo include, taking out the “&” symbol and the “O’s” in the word snowboarding and replacing them with the snowflake, which Kyleigh suggested, at the bottom that I did take out at least at the bottom and it gives it a better look overall. I also took Max’s advice and found a better camera to go in the middle to fill in the white space.

Hopefully this is more appealing to the viewer and a little bit more simplified and not as cluttered but still gets the point across that we love to snowboard in the mountains trying to find that fresh snow and we love to travel to different resorts trying to cross several off our bucket list.   

Logo Progress

So for my final logo choice I am going to choose the Ski and Snowboard logo with L&J Snowboard Adventures since my blog is mostly going to be about Snowboarding.

The "L" is for my first initial "Lexi" and the "J" is for my boyfriends first initial "Justin". Like I previously stated we can do both Skiing and Snowboarding but are very good

at Snowboarding. I added the word "Adventures" since I will be talking about several different resorts we have visited both on the east coast and even out west and the potiential future resorts we want to go to.

I specifically choose this logo because I liked the angle of the skis and snowboard and how the wording fit nicely inside the middle and added a little curvature.

The camera in the middle symbolizes also that we love to take photographs, which who wouldn't, because these resorts are beautiful and you want to remember them in the future. Most of the photos I will use are from my phone (Samsung), Justin's phone (Iphone 7), or my GoPro Hero 8 Black.


UPDATE:

So in talking with my group members I have taken some of their advice and am going to choose to use my first logo that I created with the snowboard and skis with the mountains in the background but I have decided to take out the snowflake on the bottom and changed the image to a better looking camera just to kind of fill in the white space and I took Kyleigh’s suggestion and changed the “&” symbol to the snowflake and also in the word snowboarding I took out the “o’s” and changed them with a snowflake as well. I really like the suggestions and hope you do too.

Logo

Juggling around different ideas I have decided to create two different logo ideas that are shown on the left and right side, for this class I am going to use the first one just because it is narrowed down a little more specifically to snowboarding. I chose the Ski and Snowboard logo because my boyfriend and I can do both, but we mainly snowboard 98% of the time.
There is also a photo of a camera in the middle because I love to take lots of photos wherever we go and some GoPro footage for a possible YouTube channel later down the road. This logo I feel really suits what I love to do in my free time during the winter time and to travel to the numerous resorts along the east coast and out west.
If you are not familiar with skiing or snowboarding there are around 178 ski resorts on the east coast alone which is awesome and hopefully, I can have the opportunity to visit each one. So far, we have been to 8 of the 178 resorts. I can not wait to share my adventure stories from the resorts we have visited and just giving pros and cons about each of the resorts.      

Introduction

I am interested in a lot of different hobbies inside and outside so if I was to have a dream career I would say working/traveling around the world taking pictures for National Geographic or something very similar. I have even thought about being a photographer for a ski resort out west who would take pictures and interact with the skiers/snowboarders on the mountain and in the lodge.

                                         
I have been lucky enough to have visited 22 out of the 50 states so far and my bucket list is to visit all 50. My boyfriend and I have been traveling up the East Coast at least once a year to several different snowboard resorts and we are eventually going to do a YouTube channel just about the resort including what we like and what we did not like.

My blog is going to be mostly about the ski resorts that we have visited and want to visit in the future. Of course we have taken many photos and also GoPro video but just haven't set up what we need to to start a Youtube Channel. This class will also allow/teach us how to create a logo which will be a big help to us so that we can "establish" ourselves.