What have you learnt about technologies from the process of

constructing this product?

Adobe PhotoshopFor the production of my magazine, I used Adobe Photoshop to create my pages and edit photographs. I have had experience using Photoshop as I used it at GCSE and at home in my spare time so I had some knowledge of the tools and how the program worked. I found that as the process went on I became more familiar and confident with the different tools and their effects and I began to realise which I needed to use in order for my magazine to look professional, publishable and realistic.

Here is a hyperlink to a blog post I created on the different tools included in Photoshop and a few examples of where and when I used them.

A major think I learnt when working with Photoshop was that there are issues surrounding the use of in in magazines. I created an essay style blog post to summarise my ideas and views on the subject as I read a lot of articles which were concerned with the effect that edited images have on women and teen girls. As my magazine was targeted at young females I wanted to make sure I fully understood the consequences of using Photoshop to manipulate in certain ways. After researching, I made sure that I used minimal editing and use of it to create anything which wasn’t already there- i.e. Change model’s figure.

DSLR camera and lighting equipment

I chose to use a digital single lens reflex camera as I knew from previous use that DSLR cameras provide speed and precision aswell as settings such as flash and no flash in order to create your own perfect setting. I thought this was important as I would be using it in different settings.

I used a Fujifilm FinePix S1000fd digital camera for my photo shoots (all except the tour photographs which were taken on a different personal camera). I chose this camera as I was aware that it could produce photographs of a high standard which would benefit my magazine in the way that it would make it look more professional and realistic- it is a 12mp camera . I tweaked the settings such as having the flash on and off and trying out different photo styles such as potrait/beauty, action, scenery etc. I also gained different effects by switching between the LCD screen and the viewfinder when taking my photographs as I found that the viewfinder was more accurate and easier to get the correct focus. The twelve zoom lengths also helped me to get just the right shot when taking similar photographs of different models (The Voice UK shoot).

I also used lighting equipment such as photography umbrellas to increase the light capability of a flash aswell as reflectors to allow direction of light.

BloggingWordpress, Slideshare, Google docs, Youtube

I used Wordpress to create a blog to store my research and progress throughout my task. I found that using a blog to upload my thoughts and development on to was helpful as it meant that I could access my work on any internet providing machine therefore I didn’t have to carry my work around or try and remember things I wanted to add to my work if I was elsewhere- I could just log on and write it immediately. I also thought it was a good idea to blog as I was then increasing the use of a media based website/new technology which is becoming increasingly popular in society as internet and technology develops. I learnt a lot about the different aspects of blogging on Wordpress such as different Plugins to allow certain embed codes and even simple things such as adding photographs, creating new posts and organising my posts into categories.

Whilst blogging, I also learnt that you can display and present ideas in many different forms, e.g. Slideshows, video clips, recordings, annotated images, essay style posts etc. I found this was exciting as I have never had the opportunity to express ideas in so many different ways in a subject. I learnt how to use Youtube to upload videos and which code I needed to embed it into my blog. I learnt how to use different online sites to host my work such as Slideshare and Google docs which allowed me to upload PowerPoint presentations and PDF files such as my questionnaire samples which I scanned on to the computer. I learnt a lot about different file formats in the process as a lot of the websites such as Google docs and Wordpress uploaded itself only accepted certain formats therefore I often had to resave work in order to upload it which was time consuming but it taught me to always check before saving (e.g. Photoshop files (.PSD) didn’t upload onto Wordpress so I had to save them as JPG. Files).