Evaluation

In Media Communication and Production, I have acquired various new skills regarding Photoshop and photography.

In Photoshop, I learnt how to use shortcuts including 'Cntrl + T', which selects what I want to transform so I am able to freely move it where ever I need it to go, I also learnt how to avoid stretching an image while changing its size through the use of holding down the ‘shift’ key. I now know how to include shapes using the rectangular or elliptical marquee tool, and then fill it in with a colour, and how to paste images onto the background behind my text, by opening them up in photoshop, then copying and pasting. I thought it looked to be a very complicated thing to use, and that I'd never get the hang of it, but after a while, I think I got the hang of it. I learnt how to downloads fonts and use them on photoshop, by going on dafont.com, downloading them into a folder I named 'fonts', the, extracting the font (as it was in a zipped file), then moving it into the local disk in a file named 'WINDOWS'. But, after much deliberation, I decided not to use the font I'd originally chosen, as I preferred one of the more basic fonts that was already available to use. I used a basic colour scheme of red, black and white for my magazine font as the are accent colours and create visibility. The red has the shortest wavelength in the colour spectrum, so is the first colour the eye sees, creating a more eye-catching look.

While using the cameras and taking my own pictures, I have learnt how to focus the camera correctly, so not to create out of focus shots, where to place the eyeline in a head/shoulder shot, these should be placed a third of the way down, the correct ‘T’ stance that you should stand in while taking pictures, which helps create a sturdy way for you to stand so you can move around on the spot without falling over, and the difference between landscape/portrait. We also used manual focus so we were able to focus the pictures ourselves. While taking photos, I had to think about what background I wanted, and how I wanted my model to stand, what facial expression for her to show, and think about how I could present the whole thing. It was a little tricky with everything to think about, and to get my model to look exactly how I wanted her to, but eventually, I think, it all came together. When deciding lighting, I had to take 3 different typesof photos; back, side and front-lit. These created a different look for each of the photos, and for my final product I decided to go with a front-lit photo. I think while using people skills to explain how I wanted my model to pose, I lacked a little here as it was slightly awkward and I didn't completely know what to say or how to explain the vision I had in my mind for her to do, in the future, I will try to improve this further so my model doesn't feel awkward in any way, and knows exactly what I want her to do.

Some of the images I took either weren't in focus, the eyeline was completely wrong, were landscape rather than portrait, or that i simple decided not to use, such as these:

In this photo the eyeline was way off,
and too far away from the camera,
this helped me develop my skills as I went on,
because I learnt how to do it properly.



This picture was landscape rather than portrait.
I improved this later on by taking
more photos that were portrait.

I liked this picture, I think the eyeline was great and the fact that she's smiling gave a positive outlook,
however I chose not to use it as it wasn't the right look I wanted my magazine to have.

This is my finished front cover:

I think that one of the best aspects of my product is the colour scheme I chose, to enable the writing to stand out against the picture, and the colours also compliment each other in this way. Another strong point I have is the sell lines I have included on my magazine, I have used various techniques such as alliteration, assonance and exclamatives which draw the reader in and hopefully get them to buy the product.

One of the weaknesses I had while creating my product was probably getting the eyeline in the correct place. It took me quite a few tries but I believe I got there in the end. Another weakness I have is it took me a while to grasp the concept of landscape and portrait. While taking photos, I would end up taking quite a lot of them landscape, whereas I needed them portrait. To improve it, next time I would choose a model more suited to the type of magazine I would like to do, such as a male or somebody interested in the type of music that would be displayed in the magazine.