Muisc Genres

On Tuesday 23rd Feb we were given a task to do with music genres where we had to give examples of what makes up a genre and what is included aswell as stereotypes that go along with them, we given 4 genres to right about, Rock, Pop, R "n" B and Dance. we worked in groups of 4 and did a genre each. I did rock where I mentioned examples of bands, examples of songs and the style of music it is.

Editing Magazine Cover

On Thursday 12th February we had to edit and compose our front cover of our school magazine which includes at least one medium close up of a student. Unfortunately I had a dentist appointment on this day which overlapped with part of our double Media lesson. I was back from the dentist with 70 minutes left of the double lesson. I found the right classroom as we needed ICT to use photoshop. I had an hour less than everyone else so i was behind straight away but i managed to get it done with the schools colours being my colour scheme of maroon and white.

Taking the photos

On Tuesday 10th February we had to take the pictures we wanted to use for our school magazine front covers. the first picture I took was a low angle shot of the schools crest that is on a banner outside the English department. I also took photos of the library, a friend (who agreed to be in some photos) looking through a book, I also took a picture of the section of wall in the 6th form block where the year photos of the 6th form are hung, (this was for a section on my magazine that would be "The History Of The 6th Form"). After taking the pictures me and Dan returned the camera and batteries to Mrs Rogers and uploaded the pictures. We were then let go 10 minutes early.

Drafts

On Friday 6th February we had to plan and draw our front covers. We had to think of a catchy name (which I struggled with) and sort out how our school magazine front cover would be laid out, with pictures and text. i decided to have mine divided by a slightly diagonal line down the middle of the page and a small triangle at the bottom right of the front cover where a small blurb/contents of the magazine could be place. I also put a low angle view of the schools badge at the top left had corner next to the title.

Editing Nature photos

Because we had a snow day on Tuesday 3rd February we had to do the editing on Thursday 5th. This didn't help much because the photoshop tutorial Mark gave us was a week ago so a lot of the skills had slipped my mind by now. This obviously made it a lot harder than it had to be but it was doable. We didn't have the best pictures to work with so that made it a lot harder to do. I found a picture I took of an overview of the pond across the road of the school with a floating platform in the pond and many ducks on with a background of many trees. i made this the background of my A4 size picture for the magazine. To give it more affect I increased the red in the colour to give it a different feel to the picture which I felt gave it more personality and a more peaceful look. Then i added some text, I added the word "Nature" at the top of the picture as a title. I also added the text "January 2009", i made this into vertical text so it ran down the side of the page.

Nature Magazine Front Cover

On Friday 30th January we were given a task of taking a medium close up picture that would be suitable for the front cover of a nature magazine, were given a camera between groups of 2/3 and aloud out of school premises and around the local area. Me and Dan decided we would go to the pond over the road from the school because there is usually wildlife there such as ducks, swans and other birds. we had an opportunity for a very good photo of a robin in a tree but unfortunately before we could turn the camera on and take a picture it had flown away. We did get some good pictures of ducks in the water although a lot of the time they would swim away from anyone getting near them. after around 30 mins taking pictures we returned to the classroom and uploaded the pictures onto Miss Rogers' laptop.

Photoshop Tutorial

On Thursday 29th January we had a tutorial of how to use Photoshop given by the school's ICT technician Mark. He showed us all the basic editing techniques and how to do most things we are likely to need, he then let us ask him any questions about things we didn't understand or things he had left out.

After the tutorial we were given a copy of 2 front pages of university magazines, QUAD (Queen Mary University of London) and Newsman (Newman House, University of Birmingham). we had to annotate the front pages and explain the techniques used in making the front covers attractive to the reader.