Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

 

Since starting this project I feel like I have learnt quite a lot about new technology and software to successfully construct a magazine. I already knew my way around cameras and the process of capturing an image but I found that I have learnt the importance of head space when taking a medium shot of a subject that will be used as the front cover of my magazine, looking at my images after taking them I found that I had quite a lot of negative headroom present in my images, this means that I need to learn how to centre my images using the metering function in the camera. I also learnt more about the importance of soft boxes and extra lighting used in studio shoots, I learnt to how to measure the distance needed from my subject and the soft box. I learnt how to use the different functions a Canon EOS 400D, which is the camera that I used for both my preliminary task and the final magazine. There are many pros that come with using a high quality DSLR camera like the 400D, the main one being the quality of the images produced. Most companies/institutions that provide a visual service use DSLR's rather than manual SLR's which take up time to get the image developed and it's also expensive in the fact that we would have to buy chemicals to get the images processed and there is no guarantee or way to see how your images have come out until after you have developed them. So by using a Canon EOS 400D I was pleased with the result and quality of my images. 

Through this project I have also learnt how to use most of the tools in Photoshop CS3. I did find it a bit challenging at some points of editing my pictures such as changing the background of my pictures, I tried too but the colours didn't work too well and came out blotchy using the paint bucket tool in photoshop. My teacher advised me to leave the background as it was because the lighting I had in the picture was good so I just adjusted the brightness and contrast a bit using the image adjustment tool.

The other tools I learnt to use in photoshop were the text tools I used to write my text with; I also explored using the line tool to create some boarders/lines to divide my text like the ones I used in my contents page. These were very easy to use as they are similar to the Microsoft word text tools. To enhance these I used the special effects 'stroke', 'inner shadow' and 'outer shadow' effects. These all helped make my text more colourful and stand out a bit more in the double page spread where the white text can clash with the white shadows of the denim jacket.