The document discusses the various technologies and equipment used to create a music magazine. It describes using a Nikon D3500 camera, tripod, and mobile phone flashlight for photos, and Adobe Photoshop, Publisher, and Lightroom for editing and layout. Blogger was used for planning and displaying work. Prezi helped with planning processes. Photoshop allowed for easy magazine construction. Publisher was used for writing articles. Various sites like Slideshare and Pinterest were used for presenting work and mood boarding ideas. Social media like Twitter and Facebook provided feedback. iMacs at school and a Lenovo at home were used for editing and blogging.
1. Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from
the process of constructing this product?
During the process of creating my magazine, I
have used a range of technologies, both
online based and computer programs, also I
used some physical equipment. All have
played a key role in the creation of the
magazine.
3. Equipment
I learnt my lesson from my prelim task when I used only a mobile phone
(SamsungA5) to take the pictures, its low resolution and terrible focus meant
capturing the shots was made 10 time harder. Action shots were also ruled out
by the bad shutter speed.
So in order to improve the quality and ability of my pictures I employed the help
of a professional camera; the Nikon D5300. A DSLR camera, the Nikon D5300 is
the most reasonably price one in the Nikon family with it being retailed at
around $400. Despite the improved quality, the D5300 was a nuisance to carry
due to its large size and weight, making it unsuitable for the location shots.
The camera was a big step up from the mobile phone 12mp camera and it came
with a lot of helpful features.The feature I used the most when capturing my
images was the “Low Lighting” feature.This allowed me and my model to go out
to take photos in the daytime but make it look later than it actually was without
having to manually edit the pictures. I also liked using deep focus pictures with
high aperture as it added to the overall quality of the image.
When taking pictures in the dark tunnel and when it got later on in the day and
the D5300’s flash wouldn’t cut it I used an iPhone 6 add on that powers your own
little flash light.This allowed me to capture my model better in the low light
environment.
4. Software: Blogger
Firstly, of course, I used blogger to display my preliminary task,
planning of my music magazine and my final magazine. It is a
useful tool as I can look back at my posts in chronological order
and make changes if necessary. I have learnt how to
blog successfully and to embed files (such
as prezis/slideshares) using the HTML tool, it also enabled me to
upload all of my work onto a format that is creative and fun to
use.
I have used prezi quite a lot in my planning stages, it's been
useful on posts such as the construction process of my magazines
as it has many types of text boxes and the information can flow
freely around the prezi, so it's useful for a step by step process. I
also used it to create mind maps on how I created my masthead
name and they typical conventions for a rock magazine.The
format made it easy for viewers to pan and zoom freely.
5. Software: Photoshop & Publisher
For creating my magazine I used the software Adobe Photoshop,
the program allowed me to construct the structure and layout
with little to no effort. Its easy to understand layering system
meant that it was harder to make mistakes and being specific
was encouraged by the software. I have had a lot of experience
with Photoshop before, but nothing like making a magazine. I
incorporated all my previous knowledge of the software from
when I worked as a graphic designer into my work.This saved
me a lot of time looking up tutorials and learning how to use the
tools and features.
When writing stories for my
magazine I used the Microsoft
program Publisher. Publisher let
me write all of my magazine’s
transcript and helped me plan
how to set out my double page
spread by using one of its
templates as a reference.
6. Presentation
I have used of different sites to present my work with.To begin with I used blogger to
create my blog on as I felt from research it would be the easiest to learn quickly, also it
was what my teacher had recommended . I had not used blogger previous to my
preliminary task so I had some learning to before. Some of the many things that I
learnt was how to edit the layout and insert search bar and tabs on my blog. I learnt
how to embed codes of online programs into my work.To present my posts I used a
multitude of different sites; Slideshare, Glogster, Piktochat, Prezi, emaze. All of these
sites were new to me so I had to create accounts an use tutorials onYouTube on how
to use them. I managed to pick them up quickly, although some were easier than
others. I found that Slideshare was the easiest to use as you simply upload a
powerpoint of your choice.Where as I found Emaze quite difficult as I struggled to find
certain features. I had learnt how to use; pintrest, and Prezi before hand so I didn’t
have to learn anything more about them.
7. Social Networking
In terms of social networking, I used a few websites to mood board my
ideas. For example Polyvore is a community based social commerce
website where members create 'sets' based around portraying fashion,
craft of interior design videos using a database of shared images, It was
very useful for creating mood boards in a creative way as I could use a
wide range of fonts and templates.
Sites likeTwitter, and Facebook were a favourite of mine for doing my
research on, they allowed me to reach out to my target audience and
gain helpful feedback on posts and my magazine (as seen in previous
posts).
Also, I used Pinterest, which is a visual discovery tool that users use to
collect ideas for their various projects, interests and ideas. People create
and share collections (called “boards”) of visual bookmarks (called
“Pins”), I used it for my photoshoot and magazine layout boards as a
vast amount of high quality 'pins' could be used to quickly 'brainstorm'
some initial thoughts
8. Hardware: iMac
For all of my computer work, I used the hardware school
iMac computers, they have a large, high resolution screen
to enable me to clearly see my editing and construction
processes,Also they are very reliable and fast, meaning I
could get my work done quickly. I didn't use the mac
operating system, I used windows 7 operating system on
their as I feel I know more about it and I am more used to it.
In the future I will use the mac operating system to make
use of it's full potential. I have mainly used it for editing as
I don't have the software at home. At home I used my
Lenovo 7781 hardware computer, it has a very powerful and
fast processor so I did most of my blogging at home,
I didn't really learn about it as I use it a lot for work, and it
runs on windows 7 which I have experience of.