Production Monitoring Blog 28th March 2011

Progress

This week i have made some progress on my front cover. I have set up my front cover ready for the image from my photoshoot to be inserted after my photoshoot on wednesday, and i have started writing my article, so it will be entered into the double page spread on thursday afternoon. I have also fully prepared my double page spread ready for the article and have now writen the kicker and headline. Everything went acording to plan, with no faults or problems what so ever.

This is my Front cover, it still needs to have some sell lines added to it and the image and its good to go.

This is my double page spread, all it needs is the article and its finished.

This week i just need to finish the sell lines on the front cover and the article for the inside, then it is all completed. I also need to complete the photoshoot, and build the lego model. the main problem i have is if my source doesnt bring the lego in on that day I will have to find another source but will not have long to do so.

Production Monitoring Blog 21st March 2011

Over the last 2 weeks, I have completed a location photo shoot, manipulated images, and started to design my double page spread. For the photoshoot, I went to redcar to take a picture of my friends car against the industrial background, as seen in the post below. I then put it into photoshop and manipulated the image colour and white balance to be able to get the effect I wanted. I also laid out my double page spread read for my article. Everything went according to plan, everything ran smoothly and went very well.  

I used a Canon 350D with a sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens, I have learned how to set the camera up effectively in manual mode, and know how to frame pictures effectively.

Over the next week i need to write my article and set up my front cover so that it is read for my article and the picture from my photoshoot. I will need to use indesign and photoshop to do this, I will make sure that this is done, so that all I have to do next week is complete my photoshoot, manipulate the images and put it onto the front cover.

Shutter Speed Experimentation

Long Exposure photography is when the shutter is opened and a significant amount of time passes before it is shut again. This is used to photograph in dark conditions, and by photographing moving objects you can make some interesting effects. In the images bellow, the Shutter has been opened for between 10 and 30 seconds. It allows the light to come into the camera, and as it goes past it produces a streak of light. as  you can see, to start of with i wasn't getting very good results, but once i started to get the hang of it i got some very good results. When taking images like this, we need to use a tripod... unless you are incredibly steady, there is no way you can take a picture for 30 seconds without shaking.

Worse ones to start with

As you can see the first few images i took were very glarey, this tuned out to main be down to the fact i was zoomed right out, there was more light getting into the camera. once i zoomed in a bit, there was less light entering the camera, and it wasn't picking up as much white light straight into the camera, which was creating the glare. Both of the above images were taken at 10 seconds, aperture f/9 and ISO 400

Better Ones

The above images are much better. They are taken at the same settings, but are zoomed in, and are staggered to make sure that the white light does go past whilst taking a picture of the red trails. 

This picture was taken in a different location, and with different settings. Because it was white light, it needed to be a much lower aperture. the aperture setting was set to f/40, shutter speed 10 seconds and ISO 200. 

Photoshop

The above image was taken using the same settings as the red trails above, but after it was taken, i took it into Photoshop and added a rainbow colour gradient overlay on the image, by creating a new layer, filling it with the gradient, then adjusting the opacity of the layer so you could see the image underneath. 

Final Product Image

This image was taken for my double page spread in the final product. the image was taken at Redcar using my friends car, and the Corus plant. I used one of the colleges Canon 350Ds and their Sigma 10-20mm lens to allow me to get a wide angled shot. The picture was shot on full manual. The picture took a while to shoot as i was using various different settings to allow the picture to be perfectly exposed. The settings I settled for were:

Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
Appeture:f/5.6
ISO: 100

This allows the image to be a nicely exposed as shown below.

Because the image was taken around 4 o'clock, the colour wasn't quite as I wanted it to be, meaning it didnt suite how i wanted it exactly, so i put the image into Photoshop and adjusted the exposure level, the white balance, the tone curves and added vignetting to create this image:

Magazine Mock Up

This is my mock up front cover. We were asked to create a magazine aimed at young people. I decided to make a music magazine aimed at males, aged 16-25, that like to here about the latest music, and whats happening in the industry. I have used formal language, that allows the users to feel that they are being treat seriously, and that they are given respect. I started of with a blank A4 photoshop page. I decided to use this piece of software, as it is of a professional standard, and allows you to do some cool effects with images and text. I then added the picture of Adam, and started to build up the page. I created the title using a Photoshop Text tutorial Here, but decided to stop at step 2, as it think it looks nice as it is. I then added the strap across the bottom using the shape tool, and the bar-code on the top was copied from Google. The text was all added using the text tool, then loading the slection by clicking on the layer whilst holding the Shift key, and expanding the selection, and filling it the inverse colour to create the outline.

This is my magazine double page spread mock up. It has been designed in InDesign, using columns, dropcaps, images, frames and text link. As you can see my InDesign Skills are very basic, they are just good enough to create a half decent looking product, but are not good enough to create my double page spread for my final product. As you can see, i need to develop my skills, in order to produce a high quality image, and make sure that it enables me to get the best marks i can in my final product.

Aperture Pictures

The aperture on the camera acts simplar to shutter speed, but it as a hole within the lens that grows and shrinks depending on the setting. The bigger the hole is the more light is let into the camera, the smaller the hole, the less light is entered into the camera. But this can also alter the Depth of Field. Depth of field is the amount of picture that is in focus. if you have a shallow depth of field, then there isnt much of the picture in focus apart from the subject, if you have a deep depth of field, there is alot of the picture in focus including the subject.

The link between the aperture and the depth of field is that the bigger the aperture, the shallower the Depth of Field. the smaller the aperture, the deeper the Depth of Field.

Aperture is measured in a numerical value known as an F-stop. most cameras can handle f-stop 3.5-30. The smaller the number, the bigger the appeture. so f-stop 3.5 is a larger aperture, a big hole and a shallow depth of field, and f-stop 30 is a small aperture, a small whole, and a deep depth of field.

Here are some example images:

F/4.5

F/29

F/20