Evaluation part 6

What have you learned about technologies from the process of construction of the product?

When I began this course, a lot of focus was put on researching magazines and the music industry. During this part of the course I found the search engine Google and Wikipedia very helpful as they gave me all the information I needed to know in order to complete certain tasks. When I set up my account on Blogger it also appeared very helpful as not only did it allow me to post any work or progress I had made onto my blog whilst also allowing me to see the progress that my class had made as well. Being able to see other people’s research and progress it allowed me to gain inspiration from them but also motivation to work harder on improving my magazine. Whilst doing my research I used a site called Prezi to make interactive presentations about all the information I had found out. I fund this website easy to use as it allowed me to brainstorm ideas as well as adding pictures and videos as well. I collected all my inspiration and research into the Prezi’s and used them whilst creating my magazine for inspiration.  I created my magazine using software called Adobe Photoshop, which has allowed me to create a realistic and professional magazine using features which are included in real magazines. Doing research I discovered that this software is actually used by big magazine companies to create their magazines. Using Photoshop has allowed me to add many more features to my magazine that I would not have been able to include if I had created my magazine on software such as paint. The most important feature for me was how simple it was to cut out images, by using colour range and colouring in the relevant areas you want to cut out, and then applying a feathering effect to give it a smooth edge. This tool allowed me to use bubbles in my photo shoot, as I knew I would be able to cut them out effectively, which is shown on my double page spread. On my front cover I used an intense colour scheme of red, white and grey so in order to make my image stand out I changed the brightness and made it into black and white. I used these tools throughout my magazines to make it more interesting and stand out. I decided to take a lot of photos in my photo shoots, so I tried to include as many as possible in my magazine, because of this a tool that became very important to me was text wrapping which allowed me to fit the article around the pictures. I used the stroke tool in a lot of my headings on the front cover as I felt it made the words stand out more and also emphasised the important articles to the reader. However although these programmes were all helpful, the most helpful piece of technology I used was the camera, which was a Canon SLR. The camera allowed me to take professional pictures in a variety of ways on both location and on set. By being digital it gave me an advantage over past students who would have had to use a film camera. Another benefit of using a camera like this is that it allowed me to view my pictures as soon as I took them, this allowed me to see which shots worked and which didn’t, which lighting worked and didn’t etc. For my location shoots I used an aperture lens, allowed the camera to only focus on the model in the foreground giving a blurred effect upon the background which made the photos look more professional.