The beginning of my AS year was very hard. I didn't have any of the skills that I have now. These skills have been built up over time. I now feel much stronger this year and know my work will be more successful now I have the skills that I gained last year.
The beginning of last year we was set the task of making a college magazine, this was just to get us introduced to the course. The first step was to think of ideas and do some research of college magazines, we did this by looking at magazines and the use of internet. After this I set start on the college magazine, so I went out and took some pictures. The model I used had a SLR camera, I had never used one before so this was new to me. I had to learn how to use it properly, the right settings, the right buttons and how to hold it properly. This was all new to me as I was used to the normal average working camera. It was very different to a normal camera so the skills I learnt from using her camera are were all new to me. I had to figure the right settings to get the flash right and anti-blur. This was important beacuse if the photos werent done propely it would look unprofessional, I needed it to look as professional as possible. Once I had produced the photos I need to edited them on the programme Photoshop. This was a huge step for me as I had never used this programme before or similiar programmes.It took me a while to get used to it, how to put text on pictures, layers, adjusting colours, cropping, fading and resizing images so they wouldn't look pixalated. This is very important beacuse if my photos looked pixalated, badly cropped or the colours werent right once again it wouldnt look professional. When I look back now to my college magazine, I'm surprised how much my skills have moved on from then. My college magazine looks nothing like my next project which was making a front cover, contents and double page spread to a music magazine. By this point my skills had developed so much more.
For my music magazine my skills were so much stronger, I knew how to use SLR cameras with no problems, I knew how to use Photoshop and I began to use Blogger. I found Blogger very time consuming at first I couldn't understand it, took me a while how to figure out how to make posts, change the layout, the background and make polls. Making a poll helped me find out information I needed to know, this helped in some of my essay and researchs. When making my music magazine I had to create a questionnaire, to make this I used Paint and Microsoft Word. I couldn't make it on Blogger so I used Paint and Microsoft Word instead, I knew how to use Microsoft Word and Paint before hand but I had never made a questionnaire on them before, so it was a little bit of a challenge. Once I had my results of my questionnaire I needed to put the results into graphs, so I used a programme called Excel. I had never used Excel before so this was a new thing to me. My skills increased loads by using Excel as I had to learn formulaes and create graphs. Graphs are important as it adds up and sorts data out into a easy way to see. It also helps me on my research and eveidence on my music magazine project. Once I had figured out how to make graphs on Excel it got easier but was very time consuming.
Another skill I have learnt from last year is how to use YouTube properly, I did know how to use it but I didn't know there was more too it. I didn't know you could have an account, view other peoples accounts and see videos that a similar.This helps me in my project beacuse I can look at videos in similar genres easier than seacrhing around. Another factor my skills have grown better on is using the Internet to research properly. I used sites like Wikipedia and music magazines sites like 'Q' and 'NME' this helped me find out how mnay copies of 'NME' were sold last year, what age group by 'NME' and gender. This helped so I could understand the audience that would by my magazine.
I learnt many skills last year and how to use programmes like Blogger, Photoshop, YouTube, Excel, Paint and how to use an SRL camera, this year I hope my skills get even better and will grow, all these programmes helped me improve my work, and my work look professional and not ammurure like. I reckon I will understand the programms more this year and find them easier to use, perhaps I will even learn new things.
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