The past week, I have been preparing the bulletin board for nationals. We decided that since we were going to travel half way across the country to present the board, we may as well make it better (and bigger). We decided to go from 20x30in to 24x36in. We are allowed up to 48in on each side, however to acquire foamcore board that large is extremely expensive, as well as getting the necessary prints. So we went to the maximum width that our printer allows.

I went to Michaels, and was disappointed to find out that the next size up of foam core was extremely large, and I had to get multiple sheets of it, so I ended up spending quite a bit of money on the the boards.

Nothing actually changed in the images, we just decided to make it larger, and do a better job of cutting out and gluing the pieces together. It took me two days to cut out, glue, and package the board up. Friday night, I glued the images to the board (I found that if you spray both surfaces and allow them to dry, they stick better). This took quite a bit of time, as we had to be careful to not ruin any of the images.

The next step was to cut out the individual pieces. I actually tried a bandsaw, but ended up not using it, as a surgical scalpel allowed me to be more precise.

Finally, we packaged up the board in multiple protective layers, to prevent it from being crushed in transit to Missouri. I used two bed sheets, and tons of corrugated cardboard to create the box.

Anyway, the promotional bulletin board is most likely in Lewiston, Idaho right now, getting ready to be shipped off in a few weeks.

–Scott

Last year, I was conned by Mike Mattson into helping present a speech regarding a Promotional Bulletin Board at SkillsUSA State. Our team happened to get second place. We were slightly disappointed that we were unable to go to Nationals. But when we got back to school we had an email telling us that first had dropped out and we were being allowed to go to Nationals in their place to represent Idaho. We didn’t so so well, but I decided that the next year, we would do great… so this year, my brother, Stephen Sturges, and I were on a team to design a new one, and with the knowledge of last year, we created a masterpiece bulletin board and wrote a great speech that gave us First place at state, and qualified us to go to Nationals in Kansas City, Missouri.

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Last week, my photography class traveled to Boise to compete in a photography competition through SkillsUSA Idaho in Boise, Idaho. Our class competed in two different competitions, Photography, and Promotional Bulletin Board. Later, I’ll post the whole bulletin board project as I am finally done with it and I presented it successfully (1st place FTW).

Anyway, for the photography competition, we were bussed to Columbia High School in Nampa, Idaho to begin the competition. After we picked up some more students, we all went to Downtown Nampa for the shooting portion. We were assigned to shoot the Urban Decay of Nampa.

Below are the shots I chose and edited for the competition.

I ended up using the alley way shot a book cover project for the book Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Unfortunately, I do not have the originals for all of them, just the ones I edited, because the judges kind of stole our cards. So below I posted a contact sheet with the originals. Finally, the inspiration of this post was completely the judge, as he set the requirement for it to be urban decay, so I can’t really post an inspiration link this week.

– Scott

As we approach Spring Break, and SkillsUSA for Idaho State, I have been working on my speech for the Promotional Bulletin Board, redoing a few minor things on my board, choosing 11×14′s for the photo competition, and creating my portfolio.

I also have been working on a few projects that I will hopefully get posted during Spring Break, or soon afterward.

Friday, our school traveled to Lewiston to compete in the regional SkillsUSA competitions. I have been working on the promotional bulletin board project (and I will post my total work on it after state, I don’t want to show everything I did, as it isn’t finished), and I presented my board (what it is so far) to the judge panel. Unfortunately, I suckz0rz3d @t the sp33ch, so I either got 4th or 5th.

Anyway, for the photography competition, we were ordered to go take pictures for an hour, shooting for a portrait and a photo that depicts the outdoors. After shooting, we had to edit them, and make a color photo, a b&w photo, and an outdoors photo (any saturation).

After the competition, at the awards ceremony, I received 2nd place (1st place was awarded to Alyssa Schmidt). The prize was a 2gb PNY usb flash drive… super legit.

Abbey Road

For the first picture, the outdoors one, I really wasn’t intending to shoot it Beatle-esque, but after I edit the image together, someone (the Orofino High School Photo teacher, I believe) stated that it looked just like the Beatles’ Abbey Road CD, and that I was obviously a Beatles fan. However, I do not believe that I have ever listened to a whole Beatles song (I probably have without realizing it). Anyway, I think the image is just slightly buenísimo.

Photo B&W

I wanted to create a different photo than what I have done in the past, so I found these sweet steps outside the student union at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, and I took this sweet pic of Erin.

I originally tried using this for my color photo but then I decided that it was better desaturated.

Espresso drip

I wanted to use this image, greatly, but it really didn’t seem to fit any of the categories, so I didn’t use it, instead I used the shot of Blaine.

There was another image I wanted to use, but I realized after I came in, that it was blurry. So sadly, I was unable to use it.

Anyway, below you will see the contact sheet.