Question 4What have you learnt about

technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the research and construction of mymagazine and ancillary task, I have used many different forms of technology to achieve my endresult, some new and some previously used butin using all of them, my skills have developedgreatly.

As far as hardware goes, I used a Canon 500D DSLR camera to shoot my images and a Mac computer to edit my images and compose my pieces. Starting with the Mac, being a photography student, I have already had near a years experience using one but by using one for my media work and subsequently more regularly, I am now far quicker and well versed in the keyboard commands and how to use Mac specific versions of Photoshop etc. I even prefer using a Mac to my Dell Laptop! I have had my DSLR for three years and over that time I have became more confident with it and its functions, being able to achieve increasingly better results. For my products, I chose not to use the studio this year as I used it last year plus it did not suite my genre this year. I have gained more confidence over the few months I was taking images as I now can achieve consistently good results rather than five or six good images from a set of thirty or more.

Photoshop was by far the most used program in the construction of my magazine pages and billboard. I have a lot of previous experience in using it due to editing images in A Level Photography so I was fairly confident to start with but by using it to construct a physical page layout with lines and grids, I feel as if I am no longer limited to simple image editing, though, that in itself has improved with my wider use of tools (outlined in my tools post) and HDR image editing.

Premiere Pro was another of the Adobe suite of programs I used, primarily to edit my primary target audience interviews. I had previously used it to edit some small clips together for another project but nothing of any great substance, only knowing a few commands. After editing the two videos, I now know some more shortcuts and understand the program better but there is still much to learn about using it.

Word and Powerpoint were both used to an extent to format blog posts and construct bodies of text for the magazine (the latter being largely Word). I have used both of these to a huge extent over the past five or six years in education and so I am pretty much fluent in their use. I used Powerpoint in a very different way to before though as I used it in conjunction with others like Scribd and Emaze to create media rich blog posts to present my ideas and imagery.

Wix was the web based website constructer used for said purpose. I have used it extensively before and still do, building and operating a business website. However, when starting my website, Wix introduced a new editing suite with improved capabilities which I had not used before. After a steep learning curve and some minor annoyances between the old and new capabilities, I eventually grasped the new suite and can say I actually prefer it, due to the simplified copy and past arrangement plus improved menu’s and building mechanics. I now feel far better when editing in Wix as before I used to feel that everything I did was counterintuitive.

I had never previously used online video streamers Vimeo and Vidme before and so both were a learning curve. My first interview was uploaded to Vimeo with no problems, being very straightforward in set up and use. However, when it came to upload my second video which was some how of a larger format though shorter, Vimeo’s free package limits you to an upload limit of 500MB a week, my video being 537MB. I subsequently moved to Vidme and, although it took far longer to upload, was equally easy, if not easier to use, the sign up process being nearly non existent.

Survey Monkey and Facebook were used in conjunction with one another to gather initial audience research. I use Facebook regularly and have used Survey Monkey to create a survey before. I used the two together this time to increase my reach, posting the survey once done in numerous related Facebook groups instead of just posting to individuals, gaining me better and more results, 40 in fact.

Blogger was of course used again to record and present my progress as per last year but I used it differently this year as I set up a menu and used tags to assign posts to particular tab. This made finding posts far easier and has certainly improved my liking of Blogger and its ease of use.

Emaze, Pinterest, Prezi and Scribd were all used to present my posts in a media rich way. I have used Prezi and Pinterest before but never the other two. Emaze and Scribd were both very easy to grasp for uploading and building powerpoint presentations. Emaze, in my opinion, is slightly better though as it allows more interactivity and has a shallower learning curve.

Throughout the process I have learnt to use many new pieces of software and have improved my abilities on those pieces I have already used before. All of the software has been free apart from the likes of the Adobe Suite which the college provided for our use, making it a very economical exercise.

Photoshop has been vital through the whole process and my already established abilities in its use have helped create the best finals possible.