EVALUATION - QUESTION VI 
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

During the process of constructing my music magazine I came across variety of different technologies that significantly helped me to create my final media product as well as build skills and learn new ones. Within some of the stages I used my current knowledge which I used confidently, whereas in other stages I have learnt new techniques which needed more practise. This helped me to improve my skills.

I can confidently start with my strengths as during my production process I have used my own DSLR camera (Nikon D7100 with a 18-105mm lens) for my magazine photographs. I have used my camera for past 2 years, meaning I have a clear and strong understanding of how a digital camera works and what takes to take good photographs. This is also due to the fact that I am studying AS photography. I think I showed the gained skills within my photographs as well as planning as I knew quite well how to manipulate the artificial light lamps and how to set up a camera for different types of shots. This can be seen through my final photographs which I believe are good quality and look quite professional. Within the preliminary task I created a PowerPoint with my classmates in which we shared with the rest of the class our gained knowledge about the use of lighting, shutter speed, camera settings and other accessories. In conclusion, the provided lighting kit and a photographic background allowed me to create a professional working setting, whereas my DSLR camera helped to create a good quality shots. I particularly focused on manipulating the shutter speed to obtain good quality photographs whereas the positioning of artificial lights allowed me to work on the brightness of the images. Although, I felt quite confident with the use of lighting set I found it quite hard to set up the camera manually, as it was hard to set up the aperture (amount of light reaching the camera cadre). This is partly because we didn't have a light measurement. I think this is one of the tools which I could use to improve my images even more.

Furthermore, within my construction I have used few different editing software which allowed me to manipulate the photographs or in order to create graphical content such as logo design. I have mainly focused on three different editing soft wares including: Photoshop, Ipiccy and Photoscape. The Ipiccy and Photoscape program allowed me to manipulate my images in many different ways as they offer variety of tools and filters which I needed for image manipulation for example; brightness/sharpness tools but also vibrancy and black and white filter which I tend to use a lot within my photograph (I have showed these tools and techniques within my image developments found on my blog. Whereas, I used Photoshop software to create a masthead of my magazine due to the options it offered comparing to  Ipiccy or PhotoScape which mainly focuses on image manipulation and not graphical creations. I could comfortably mix fonts, add images and change colours during construction of my logo. Besides, from that I found Photoshop very useful while constructing my media product as it allowed me to use downloaded fonts which I specifically chose for each page of my magazine. Overall, all three softwares were well known to me, meaning I had clear understanding of how to use them however within Photoshop I developed few new skills for example; justifying the text or cropping the a figure from a full photo frame using wound tool. 

Moreover, in order to present my work I used soft-wares including PowerPoint which I have used before within my other subjects. I could comfortably present my work through the use of slides. Besides,I developed my gained skills and I used PowerPoint slides which I then saved in a form of an image. I think this was quite effective as I could work on my page layout creatively and confidently. Furthermore, I created short animations in other to present  my photographs. This made it easier for the viewer to look through my work as they don't have to scroll down, they can simply watch it. Besides, throughout my blog I was uploading my presentations onto Slide share. This website allowed me to upload my work on a open website where other people particularly media students could see my work. This can be seen as a negative thing as they could easily copy my work, but on the other hand they could take it simply as an example. This negative also applies to  Prezi, as it's a website open to other people. Final and most obvious use of technology is the Blogger itself which allowed me to present a continues journey throughout the course.

Another website which I used to present my work was Flicker. I didn't use this website throughout my blog but I decided to explore it within my evaluation. Overall, I think it's a good and quick way of presenting your work. It allows you to manage your time very well as you can access it from your phone whenever you want. I think if I would discover this website before I would use it more often, meaning I would be more familiar with the options and tools they offer. 

Another significant software which I have used throughout the course was the Survey Monkey. I found this website very useful to use as it allowed me to reach wide range of responds in short amount of time. Due to programs like this I could easily improve my time management during research period. For both preliminary task and the final task I used Survey Monkey to find out about what my audience is going to be, what I am going to include within the magazine, what are their interests and what they expect to see. In both magazines I obtained quite a range of responses which made my research more realistic. Using this program allowed me to learnt how to structure open and closed questions in order to gain needed information. Besides, from that Survey Monkey provided me with a variety of options including; multiple choices, drop down answers, text boxes, comment boxes and more. This allowed me to make my questionnaires very professional and realistic. I could repost the link through social media or email in order to gain wider audience or I could also make the questionnaire open meaning that anyone can answer it. This is a definitely good website to use when you need to find information from wide range of people in short period of time. Another reasonable element of Survey Monkey is that is automatically analyses your gathered data. I found this very useful while looking at my results as I could analyse it using graphs that were very clear. I easily saved time during this stage, as after carrying out my paper questionnaire I had to apply the results onto Excel in order to create pie charts which would make my questionnaire easier to read.  

One of the main programs which I have used was a desktop publishing software InDesign. I used this program to construct my front cover, DPS and contents page for both magazines. Looking back at my preliminary task I can say that I was mostly developing and gaining new skills as I haven't used this software before. Overall, I found this program very useful during construction process which allowed me to create margins and grid lines that were extremely helpful when putting the magazine pages together particularly because of the relation to my layout plans. Although I felt more comfortable with using InDesign during my final task I still found some elements challenging. In order to overcome this weakness I watched YouTube tutorials which significantly helped me to understand InDesign tools for example; how to place and format text. This is one of the links which I used - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_YO1-CR6UA. Another problem which I faced was the fact that I had access to InDesign only in school as I couldn't access it on my home laptop. This was a problem for me as it affected my time management. I had to plan out my time during each construction of each page. During this time I took a big advantage of Adobe Photoshop, which I could access at home. I could easily create magazine elements such as masthead, manipulation of images or font change, as I could easily download new fonts which were not accessible on InDesign in school due to the legalisation. I found interfering these two programs very useful in many ways. I could manage my time better, but it also motivated me to develop my skills on both programs rather than one. 

In conclusion, I benefited from all listen above softwares which allowed me to gain new skills as well as to develop my old ones. I am willing to use them later on in life as they all helped me to present the work in many different creative ways.