At first,
I had quite a few ideas on what I wanted to do. My first option was
the wedding idea, as I found a few photostories online from weddings,
which gave me inspiration, as previously talked about in my blog. I
knew this would be hard to get into as most photographers I assumed
wouldn't allow me to go. After contacting several wedding
photographers around Cheltenham, nobody replied, so obviously meaning
they didn't want me to follow them. Therefore, I had to think of my
next proposal. In my head, I wanted to do something around the
community, so when I was researching careers and places to visit
around Cheltenham, there were only a few options. Cotsworld Wildlife
Park, the Animal Shelter and a few more. I have an interest in
animals and appreciate any work that goes on with them, which is why
I liked both of these ideas. After doing a quick search on the
Wildlife Park, I realised it was too far out for me to go as I do not
have a car in Cheltenham, so I messaged the Animal Shelter via both
email and the social networking site, Twitter. They took a while to
respond but they eventually emailed back allowing me to visit. As
previously mentioned on my blog, I had planned what types of photos I
was going to take. This made it easier for me once I had arrived as I
had clearly thought about the structure to the narrative I was going
to take.
Overall,
I found this project extremely fun once I had got into it as I enjoy
editing photos and enjoy evaluating my work as I go along. Making the
InDesign magazine spread I found fairly difficult as it was a
completely new software for me. Thankfully my lecturer had helped me
out with InDesign by giving me basic printouts on how to do the
simple things in the software such as adding text and inserting
images. My final InDesign was planned out on paper before I actually
started to do it, so it would save time and I could organise the
layout knowing exactly what I was going to do. If I was going to make
a magazine spread again, I would consider using InDesign as it looks
professional and it wasn't hard to use. Before InDesign, I would have
just used Publisher which is also simple, but I find now that I know
how to use InDesign, I would use it over Publisher as I found it
easier to use. However, in order to use it an more complexity, I
would need to have a basic tutorial in order to develop my skills. I chose a middle aged audience for my magazine design as they tend to be the age range most interested in the community. I went for a light colour scheme as it would make the photos stand out more and make them bolder.
As for
the powerpoint, I have used it before and understand exactly how to
use it, so found making this simple as it was just to display my
photos. I used a basic effect on my power-point so that it was simple
and wouldn't be too much for the audience. The most difficult thing
for me while making my powerpoint was changing my mind a lot about
which order the photos should be in. Although there was a clear
narrative to my photos, some photos clashed with the next ones and it
didn't look right. After checking over it a few times, I eventually
put the ones on my power-point and re-changed my blog post to match
it.
I am
extremely happy with the photos I took during my day at the animal
shelter and am very grateful to them for letting me go there to spend
some time doing my project. I enjoyed this project however, if I were
to do it again I would try and do more research before starting, and
look at other photo-stories more in depth so I know exactly what
types of shots to get and what kind of angles to use in mine. I think
my biggest weakness throughout this photostory was thinking of
captions for the final 18 photos that I used. Although the captions
state exactly what is happening in the photo, I feel as though they
weren't flowing enough and didn't make a very strong impact. Next
time I make a photo story, I would think more about the captions
before posting them for definite.
