Thursday, 17 February 2011

Photo shoot

Today we managed to book out one of the photo studios to learn a bit about lighting and more on photography and why they use things like white screens , soft box'xs and featurs on teh camera.
As explained the soft box defuses the light to give an even lighting which sint hard or reflective while the white screens reflected the light so ti would light the other side of a face or object. 

We had one person model on a chair as we fiddled with the camera adjusting the apature  or its sudder speed  and moved the white screen and the soft box's into place so we could take some photo's foriinstance we where told to tell the model to look or do stuff we wanted too ge thtem involved and get us involved to get a image we wanted.
Unfortunately the time we had in the studio want very long but it was very fun none the less and has god me even more intrested into photography.It was extremely fun.

Wednesday, 16 February 2011

Evaluation

The project its self is capture, this would involve learning about types of capture for example photography, film (motion image), drawing and even memory. This also involved knowing how they were used or why they were used things like photographed images can be used to capture things as simple as a fun holiday or a nice view, but also used for influential things like political views and how someone sees a product.
Also for this project we had to incorporate the way we would capture with a website design.
For this projected I choose to capture in a photo graphical way. the reason for this being i find photography exciting , interesting and can show there is more than just a static image, but an emotion or mood something deeper that was captured as the picture was taken.
Another reason I choose this was because photo graphical media is everywhere in posters on walls on flyers leaflets hand outs adverts packaging and many many more places so it would be interesting to find out how or why they take an image or present it in a certain way.
The way I fore filled tasks was by finding out things about current or past photographers researching who they were, why they were famous what sort of images they took and what I would see in their image, the mood or what exactly they were capturing I also looked at Logos. I also looked at other capture methods for example Drawing, typography and film/ motion images (via adverts) or others like guerrilla advertising and banners.

Some of my most successful thing I did was look at websites layouts and logos and evaluate I believe I could see in depth and write a descent review on them this is something I don't usually do well but I think I got the hand of seeing what should be and shouldn't be in a logo what they should represent but also the sort of complexity of one.
Also designing the website I think I did a good job reviewing other websites and spotting what is key in the style of website I would want, spotting the things that would be necessaries in the website for example a search bar a clear logo and banner and a easy to see and use, My concepts that i designed used all these things and display a basic but neat layout for the website. which I believe has slowly improved and turned into something that a lot better, although the font looks a bit like an Indian take away font.
Finally the facts that we managed ask a store and ask if we could book a date to go in and take pictures which went smoothly. We went in with no problems took some pictures of bikes and other things we wanted pictures of and walked of.

I will mostly use some of the skills I picked up in the future, some more than others for example how I've improved on my evaluation of logos see what its aimed at what it shows what it shouldn't , and what makes it a bad or good logo in my opinion. Also photography, my introduction and small class plus doing some to get my images, I think this will be very useful in the future as I reckon I will need to use it again.
Although I don't think I will be using it a lot the textures via scanner, it’s very cool and useful because I wouldn't know how to reproduce the looks in any other way.

Some of the Photo graphical artists I researched into showed me there’s a lot more to taking a picture  then just aiming and shooting, one being capture a mood or create one, for example lighting can make the item look more appealing. or get a message out there so if its someone doing something on it fun it looks more attractive than just something on the shelf.
Another thing would be aim at your audience choose the main age range you want to aim for then choose how you will get it across, via humour , or cleaver or something flashy , or even rubbish but addictive and viral.
These made me think more about the picture, before I would have just snapped up the shot, but I found myself thinking what would be the more appealing picture what would make me more likely to look or possibly buy it.
the same with my website layout it made me think more about how I would layout the website to make it simple for people but not horrible simple. Simple and appealing would be what I aim for, but also practice and user friendly.
one of the things I realised was that people don't like things that are in your face to clear and patronising. or that's what I think by looking at advertising, they also don't like to many flashy adverts on a website.

Some of the things i would of done differently would of been the text, i choose a text that made it look like a Indian take away flyer. Only because of the text type but i stuck with it because i liked the curves i would definitely change that. Also although i think the photo shoot on the bike store went well i think a better quality image would of made the images a lot better which is pretty obvious but something i didn’t really , think about i guess at the time. Next time i will definitely put more effort into images epically now after I’ve realised how important lighting or back ground or the angle is to the image. Also I’d really like to create more interactivity into my website as it would be a little more fun more captivating and exciting. By adding more interactive things I mean things like animations. Maybe some videos people can click to preview things or even logins for people, although that could be a bit more excessive. Finally there was one thing I would change and that would be the colour scheme the logo and banner looking very nice before I added the black back found, although I do not think it’s terrible but I do think the colour scheme could be improved. I am pleased with it how ever being my first time designing something like this and actually achieving something I could visualise as a website which would not annoy me and id be pretty happy to browse about with.
Overall I think I learnt loads some I believe will be more important and vital to my projects and some less. One which I think is the most important was pictures how to take a detailed picture which has more than just an image but emotions, feelings and that section of time can be captured and show people about it. Being able to use dream weaver I’ve never used it before this but I find it nice being able to use it and feeling comfortable with it, it was a completely new experience for me.  Evaluations of other peoples work was another thing for example my logo work which I never really knew how to see if I t was a good one or a bad one what you would look for in one or need to get across in one before I did research into it. Finally another major thing I found was deadlines I know it sounds simple but the planning side made this task a lot easier saying I would do this and this by this date and do this and that on other dates, it made the whole task a lot easier and smooth  and a fair bit less stressful. Overall I do think it was a success learning new style opening and broadening my views on media and understanding what capture really is, the ability  that was required to actually make a website isn’t massive but the more effort that is put into it and the more you refine it really shows. I believe my work was good maybe not perfect but shows the skills that I learnt along the way and improved my overall ability’s digitally which is something I wish to continue doing. I am pleased with my final work and would definitely be comfortable with trying it again and even researching in more depth into this field as I found it fun and very interesting.

Info page On bmx


This is the page which would open if you wanted to look in detail at a product. This would allow you to add it to your basket and then buy it later once you check out. it will have its specification so you can compare with other bikes. 

This will be the layout for other product pages, parts and stuff a like.
The reason the layout is like this as its easy to use, easy too see what you can click . but also its slightly universal people are used too seeing stuff like this which makes it easy for them and more enjoyable for them and less frustrating.]

Bmx page

This shows what the lay out of a page would be like once you click something , in this it is the bmx page.
This also shows the product show list layout which will be used for all products


The bottom has a page feature which will allow you to get around the pages of related products by clicking the arrows at the bottom next to the page you are currently on and the pages remaining.

When you click a product it will bring multiple image's oh the product you have chosen and also show the info on the bike. the Specifications or what it may contain.

It will have a feed back collum so you can see comments from people who have brought from you and the shops own opinion of it.

Tuesday, 15 February 2011

Index Updated


l  Stage 1 Investigating past and current practice in capture


l  Stage 2 Planning your capture

Maybe
l  Stage 3 Exploring and experimenting
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l  Stage 4 Completing your capture work
Maybe
l  Stage 5 Reviewing your own work
http://mmm-investigation.blogspot.com/2010/11/history-of-photography.html
Maybe
l  Stage 4 Completing your capture work
Maybe

Final first page of my website.(home page)

These will show what my final Website will look like. as this is the lay out I am going for and contains almost everything I wanted , although I changed the banner because i thought the other one was to colourful and i personally think to much of bright colours can ruin a website looking tacky or such.
. The image below is my first final design. i was pretty pleased. but i thought it was missing something. 


After looking at websites i was getting ideas from and thinking of what I would want on the website i came up with. the Search bar and banner idea.
I thought the banner was to plain just being text and so i took just the cog from the original banner and shaped it into the back ground and faded it a little so it didn't have such a potent impact but also drew the eye of the customer to look at the name. 
the search bar well is a bit standard on a website so I thought it was best to incorporate it. 



The image shows some of its features. the image  is to show off the store although it could be used to advertise events or deals or so. it also has a tab which will slowly scroll though events or products as customers are on this page and  the image its self will be linked to something appropriate if someone wanted to know more about it, or they could see the previous image by clicking the tab bar below it , which will allow you to go though the images manually if you wished. 

Also the bar at the side shows that if their are multiple section to that product list , it will bring out another list and you can choose which you want from their, in this case Bmx or Mountain bikes. 

Their is a cursor over bmx which shows off how it will be highlighted so the customer knows what he is over.
Please click this link too see what the bmx page will look like if it was clicked. 

Website Concepts




The First concepts of my website, the name has been changed now.