Song of the Journey poem in ASL with Dangerous Signs

Dangerous Signs members and I performed my original poem titled "Song of the Journey" in ASL for Dr. Bill Destler's retirement celebration (now former RIT president) this early summer. Eric Severson spoke my written English poem excellently. We, myself and Dangerous Signs members, worked hard on this complicated science-oriented poem. I was amazed that we did this so well without any errors during this performance. The video, done by RIT media, turned out amazing and beautiful. I am honored to have my work get shown out to the public like this. 

The funny thing is that this particular poem was rejected by some kind of committee group for Dr. Bill Destler's becoming a new RIT president celebration a while ago. Now my work got a chance to be seen later for the man's retirement celebration. 

Also, in my deep gratitude and honor, Peter Haggerty (former National Technical Institute for the Deaf English professor) edited this poem before I submitted it to that committee. I also would like to thank Laune Davis Haggerty, director of Dangerous Signs, for pushing this work to be presented with strong support and belief in my work.

Here is the hyperlink of the video:



ENJOY!

I Love You Greeting Card

It took me several weeks to create this card. I took a photo of my hand and a crystal heart thing I have. I then combined the hand and the heart together. After that, I found the stars/landscape photo online, but mindful of copyrights, I changed the stars/landscape in different colors, light affects, and other manipulations. I also cropped the picture to only the far right side of the photo, meaning I removed the middle and left of the picture. So, it doesn't look exactly like an original photo found online at all. I then did a lot of tricks, trying to blend the heart/hand into the background, trying to make the I Love You hand stand out by adding the white on the outlines on the fingers, using Embossed, Drop Shadow, Paint, Fill Bucket tool, and a few more. It was a challenge to make it work. I then used Apple's Page software already in my iMac laptop to create a card. After adding the purple background behind the image, I added the border around the image. I then added the Nature shape (tall grass blades) and two thin lines above and below the image. Henceforth, it's done. 

You can click on this image to see it bigger.

Eddie with Flame

I used an iPhone to take a photo of myself, wearing a red shirt, zebra-striped felt hat, a sunglasses, and a piano tie. I lit up a cigarette lighter in front of me, which enabled the flame-glowing affect on myself. I then manipulated the work in PicsArt app, which created the Cubism-styled shapes on my face and shirt. I then went into PhotoShop to darken the background with a black paint tool at around 50% transparency. I also blurred the background to smoothen it out a little. I had to blur myself to reduce the pixelations and sharp edges. If you look closely on the sunglasses lens, you'd notice a reflection of my iPhone in front of me. That's an interesting result.

Click on the photo to see it bigger.