Podcasting - Sepia Tone

6 Week Schedule 

Week 1 - Learning how to use layers.

Week 2 - Adding a sepia tone to your images.

Week 3 - Using the Magnetic Lasso tool.

Week 4 -How to use the Tranform tool, Scale, Rotate etc.

Week 5 - Using the Photoshop Brushes and where to get them from.

Week 6 - How to use the Patch and Clone Tool.

I decided to change my pod cast in the end, and I’m really happy that I did. I used a tripod to keep the camera in the right position and to keep it steady. It is definitely an improvement to my first pod cast and it’s something I’ve learnt, it’s better to do something on your own then you get the results you want.  I changed the technique to teach people how to add a sepia tone to your image, this tutorial overall was better than the last because the end result in the first tutorial I did wasn’t particularly good.  As I did it again I thought I might aswell change the technique aswell. Overall it’s a stronger piece of work.

I quite enjoyed producing the pod cast, even though I made a few mistakes when talking, my English doesn’t sound very good. I can see how it fits on with photography with some senses but in us actually producing it, it doesn’t. Even though it’s not difficult to produce, its always good to know.

Quad - Slow Shutter Speeds

I was totally lost of what to do for the quad assignment, but then an idea came to mind, which is working with slow shutter speeds. I like this idea and I think I can incorporate it into one of the categories maybe the road trip one. I like the idea of working in the day and also at night.

I travelled to Stockport and experimented a bit with the moving traffic. I’ve decided on working with a tripod, because I only want the traffic moving and not the background, I’ve also invested in a shutter remote so this will also help with the camera shake. The images that I’ve produced could be improved but I only wanted to try the idea to see if this is what I wanted to work with, and I think it is.

I can see this idea working really well, I’ve got to make sure I get the right shutter speed and composition, otherwise it will look a bit messy and unfinished.

I’ve also just brought some filters for my lenses so this is also something I can experiment with.

After Effects

I don’t particularly know how to go about the after effects assignment. We didn’t get shown how to work the programme, and its something I’ve never used this software before, and its something totally new to me. We got given a sheet on what we had to do and got told to look at tutorials on the Internet, this still didn’t help.  It seems to me that the whole concept of after effects works only with a moving image, so to me I don’t see how this relates to photography.

I think to me the hardest thing about this assignment is not knowing how to use the software, getting to know how to work the software takes time, and I still struggle with Photoshop, and I used that software for over a year now. I think we need to get taught the basics at least because tutorials won’t help do this.

Ian Shipley - Feedback

I was quite nervous about the whole arrangement of Ian Shipley’s feedback afternoon because we had to show and present our cards in front of the whole class. I thought we would have had a one to one talk with Ian Shipley, but it didn’t work that way. I would have preferred it to be one to one as I would have felt more confident about talking about my work, as I’m not a very good speaker in front of a group of people. Because of this I don’t think I spoke about my work good enough as I could have. I think the feedback I received was more positive than I imagined, so I was generally quite happy with my work.

The only good thing about this format is getting a look in to see what everyone else had produced. There were quite a few people who also produced flower cards, but I found it interesting how we all did the layout and flowers differently. I kind of knew that they would be more than me who had done flowers because they are popular in the card industry.

Because I’m new to the college, it was also interesting to see the quality and ideas that the rest of my classmates have. I think in some ways presenting our images to everyone can help us all with ideas and the different ways people work. Over time, if this is how its done with every assignment, I will grow in confidence and hopefully it will become easier.

Michael Pinchbeck

I didn’t entirely understand Michael Pinchbecks work, he operates more with the insulation and performance side of art. I found his work interesting particularly his piece ‘The Long and Winding Road’, I’ve looked abit further into this project by looking at his blog www.acarhistory.blogspot.com. I understand his reasoning behind this art project but I found it hard to understand the others.

When I can see some pieces of art that have a meaning behind them, they make more me interested in them, as you can fully understand why the person has produced it. I think this is why I only understand and like ‘The Long and Winding Road’ because you know he’s done it from the heart.

Podcasting

Podcasting is quite a simple thing to do really, and actually quite boring. But the reasoning for making them is because they can be very informative, which is an important thing, because if you publish them on somewhere like ‘Youtube’ they can reach and help many people.

Initially the whole idea was slightly daunting, but once I realised what needed to be done it wasn’t so bad.

Our team decided on a series of Photoshop techniques, which seemed to be the most obvious thing to do really, I think Photoshop techniques is the most important as beginners to Photoshop really appreciate people posting tutorials.

We each made a decision on which area of Photoshop we wanted to do our pod cast on, and we filmed the screen with us each doing our method.

I think the filming process overall was abit of a shambles because they was zooming in and out and the whole pod cast looks abit messy, it would have made more sense to have the video recorder still and just focusing on the whole screen instead of how our team did it, the video looks quite confusing. I would like to re-film my technique but I’m not sure whether that will be allowed because the deadline was for 1 day.

Cards - Flowers

The card assignment has been more difficult than I first imagined, with the flower images I decided to go in the direction I was heading in the first place. I wanted them to look like cards instead of just images on cards, so I decided to play around with the layout, and decided on a square format and a layered look to the cards.

I’m quite proud of the finished items and I could see them on the shelves of the smaller craft shops, the only problem is that the theme flowers isn’t exactly unique which I was hoping to achieve when we first got set this assignment, but I think the layout I’ve given my cards are different to many of the flower cards which are selling.

There are many different approaches I could have taken when photographing flowers:

• In the studio
• In natural surrounding
• Black and White
• Colour
• Close Up
• From a Distance
• Singular
• A few flowers bunched together
• Artificial/ Real
  

My favourite way to photograph flowers is close up to capture the details of the flowers, and this comes across in my images, which is what I set out to achieve in the first place. Above are the finished items and as you can probably see they work well as a set of cards.

Quad

Our new assignment is set my Quad in Derby. We are to produce 5 images from one of these themes:
· Road Trip
· Film Star/ Femme Fatale/ Hero
· Photo Story
· Film Still
· Film Noir
· Suspense

These categories potentially could be quite difficult as you have to think of original ideas instead of thinking of the obvious. The two categories which stand out to me are road trip and suspense, I have some kind of idea of what I would like to work with but I’m going to look into each of the categories before I make a decision. We have about a month to do this assignment so I’m going to learn from past mistakes and start as soon as possible.

I didn’t fully understand the tour of Quad due to the fact that I found it hard to understand what the bloke who was leading the tour was saying. As far as I could hear it didn’t relate to the assignment, apart from the presentation at the beginning.

There was a guest speaker talking to us about his work, which was really inspiring to see. His inspiration of creating his work comes from his background and the fact that he’s mixed race. I found it interesting how he came to produce work to help him find his identity with experimenting with body as his canvas. I found the whole talk fascinating and I loved his work.

This has taught me that if you have a unique and different approach to your work then you might get the chance to get noticed.

Halo Shoot

The halo shoot was more difficult than I imagined. I would have liked to know how to work the lighting myself but all that was done for me, it’s definitely something I would like to learn in the future.

I was quite lucky because I needed to buy some plastic guns for my model to hold and I found some that looks similar to the ‘spider’ gun from the game, and with abit of photo shopping, I think it will look a lot better and realistic.

Back to the shoot – I was finding it difficult to focus on my models mask because I was lying on the floor, it was automatically focusing on their hand, and it was too dark to focus it manually, so this is the only disappointment of the shoot.

After looking at the shots, there’s a few ok ones, they need abit of adjusting but I think it might just be a success, hopefully.

New Media

I haven’t been very organised with this assignment at all, it was only two days before the assignment was due in that I fully understood what was asked of us. So this has definitely taught me to be more organised. I haven’t quite got into the flow of the whole assignments yet, I’m used to doing long project at a time, whereas because we have a few going at a time, it doesn’t seem like we have long producing them.

So this is something that I will have to be aware of when were set another assignment and to make sure that I set out a plan on when I want certain things to be done by otherwise I’m going to find myself in the same situation again.

Once I knew what I was doing with this assignment, it all came together quite easily. I decided on doing a PowerPoint as I wasn’t entirely sure how in depth we had to go into when writing an essay. I’m relieved this assignment is complete as I can now carry on completing the card assignment which is due in next week.

Even if I was more organised and started sooner with this I probably still would have come out with the same outcome, but luckily it was only all written work as I didn’t actually have to produce any images for it, otherwise I would have been in trouble.