I thought I would jump in and create something to share/model my/a process.

1. Inspiration. I was talking to my mother today on the phone. She said she was going through some old photos to reconstruct family history with someone who shared part of our family history. She said that I had to see pictures of my great great grandfather, great grandfather, and grandfather together to see how I shared some of their characteristics. I told her that I’d like to see them. A few hours later, I received a text message from my mom with scanned images of these old photos. (I can’t tell you how wild it is that my mom is texting me scanned photos!) I sent the photos from my phone to dropbox and got the idea that I could make an animated gif with the photos.
2. Tools. As KSU faculty, I’m able to download the whole CS5 Adobe Master Collection, which includes Photoshop. Jealous? Don’t worry; I’ll show you how to access the collection via “the cloud” by booting up a virtual machine on your personal or classroom computer. I suspected that I could make an animated gif using Photoshop. What can’t you do with Photoshop, right?
3. Knowledge. I don’t know how to make an animated gif with Photoshop, and I don’t have the time to figure it out for myself. So, I searched YouTube for “CS5 Photoshop Animated GIF.” I included the version of the software because I wanted the video to look like what I was seeing. I clicked on a couple videos and found someone who is clear and slow enough for my learning needs (and is a Dr. Who fan–always helps). Here’s the video I used:
4. Production. Making the animated gif was pretty easy. I cropped and resized the photos, so that the head size would be similar. And, I put all of the images into the same file using different layers. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, there are videos out there that will teach you cropping, resizing, and layers in Photoshop. You just have to search (and know what you need to know). The first part of the video wasn’t helpful yet was interesting. I wasn’t using a video clip, but it was cool to learn how to make an animated gif from a movie file. I followed the second part of the video and had no problems putting it together. The four pictures of the animated gif are:
   –> my great great grandfather James Bruce Hagerty
   
   –> my great grandfather Gilbert Hagerty
   
   –> my grandfather James Hagerty
   
   –> (I skipped my mom)
   –> my high school senior picture (it was what my mom sent with the rest of the pictures)
   
   
5. Share.The last step is sharing the animated gif with my mom and you. I don’t see as much in the photos as my mom may. There is some pretty dominant stuff coming from the Rish side (nose, chin, etc.). I do know that I have some serious mustache envy of my great great grandfather, James Bruce Hagerty. Now that’s a ‘stache. I decided for this first one, I would share with the class (as a demo) and ds106 (to check the feed). Therefore, I used both the ‘engl3241’ category and the ‘ds106’ category I am using to share with ds106. Here’s the result:

Interesting to think of our own faces as hereditary remix.