Reflective Journal

Week 1- This week I read the brief of the project that was provided to us, using this knowledge I began to generate ideas surrounding the theme that we had been assigned, these ideas were then placed into a mind map and a SWOT graph where I then analysed them further before making a final decision on what my project was going to be, having this done so early was beneficial as it allowed me to be prepared for the weeks ahead, this is an improvement from my last final major project as halfway through I amended my project and had to restructure the entire thing, this left me with not a lot of time to create my new idea, this will not be happening in this project and I am prepared and sure of my idea, the strengths of this week were that I worked fast and read through the brief thoroughly, this helped me to understand what exactly the project was about instead of just scanning over the brief and being lost however, I was slightly unhappy with my mindmap and believe I could have used a more fitting program/website instead of canva as it was frustrating to put all the elements together when it should have been a simple task, next time I will use a website designated to creating mind maps instead.

Week 2- This week I decided to collect images that related to my project/gave me inspiration, these images were then placed into a moodboard, this allowed me to decipher common themes between the images which is important for me as my project is heavily graphics focused, things like colour scheme and atmosphere are extremely important and so seeing a common theme throughout my inspirations gave me a clear indication of what i needed to have in my piece.

Because I am doing image manipulation with my own sourced images it is also important that I take note of the camera angles used in the images In my moodboard, this will help me select my shots a lot easier as I will have guidelines to reference, we also learned about shot selection in previous years at college so that knowledge will be extremely useful for my final project, I believe that the images I collected were very fitting and there was a common theme running through them which made understanding what I needed to replicate a lot easier however, I do believe that I could have collected some more images as I only made one moodboard, one of my tutors mentioned that having more than one moodboard can show a development of your idea and make the images even more closely related, I certainly should have done more than one and will be doing this in the future.

Week 3- This week I got to work on the powerpoint presentation that I needed to create to present my project idea to the class and to my tutors, there were numerous points that I had to cover within this, I had to explain my reasoning behind choosing this idea, exactly how I was going to conduct my research, my aims and objectives, how I will reflect in the coming weeks, my inspirations and how exactly my project involves community.

The creation of this presentation was very simple as I already had a clear plan and vision for it laid out, I used images that I had previously sourced for my moodboard to add an aesthetically pleasing element and did my best to convey the mood/ambience by using only colours you would find in the images I was inspired by/what I invision my final piece to look like, I believe I made a strong powerpoint presentation as it was not only visually appealing but was also easy to navigate which is a benefit not only for the people who will watch it but also for myself as I will not get lost whilst presenting, I do believe however, that I should add slightly more information to my presentation in order to make it even clearer to the audience what I am trying to convey, this is an adjustment I will make.

Week 4- This week was presentation week, we were given a little extra time to make our presentations better, I used this time to make sure that the idea I was trying to convey was clear and that every aspect was understandable and had appropriate context applied.

When it was my turn to present I was confident, loud and assertive which helped everyone to hear my project clearly, the presentation went well and was recorded by my tutor in order for it to be placed on digital space after we were finished, at the end of the presentation there was a short q&a section in which I answered some of the questions both the class and my tutor had, one of the questions from a peer was quite frustrating as they had asked how it was relevant to community, I calmly explained I was using the city and my friends to create the main image itself, which is both the community of Bradford and also my own personal community of friends, apart from that I was given some advice on software by my tutor but quickly informed him that I had already sourced the software I needed to create my project, I was also given some basic feedback which again was written by the student who asked how my project related to community, the feedback stated that I had not included community in my piece, I felt I had acted on this feedback by answering his question as the explanation of how my project relates to community was already included in my powerpoint which he may have missed however that is not an issue, the other feedback I received was positive and did not need any further action, I look forward to conducting some of my research in week 5, I think overall my presentation was good, I came across the way I wanted to and was clear as previously stated, I do however, think I could have made my presentation better by adding more information, this was one of the things I wrote about last week but unfortunately did not act upon which was a clear weakness of this week, in the future I need to act upon the feedback I give myself in my reflective journals.

Week 5- This week I used my time watching videos and researching the techniques I would need to use in order to create my final piece, this once again showed me how important camera angles are as the people I was watching were only using camera angles which created enough room for them to make large adjustments, I also learned of the importance of directional lighting when creating manipulated images as adding an asset with poor or no lighting can ruin the entire piece, another thing I also learned was about “scripts” in Adobe Photoshop which can be used to automate things like paint brushes and even layer adjustments, although I will be doing my work manually it was certainly beneficial to learn how to automate tools such as the paintbrush as it will most likely be useful in university, I plan on doing some solo research inside of Photoshop next week, overall I think I did a good amount of research on the techniques that I needed to use but a huge weakness of this week was that I did not record as much of the data as I should have meaning that I will most likely have to backtrack at some point in order to correct that mistake, I should have been recording everything that I have learned to make sure that the correct context is available when my work is being marked, next time I will make sure to have a document collecting absolutely everything I learn.

Week 6- This week was all about trialling certain tools/techniques for myself in Adobe Photoshop, this involved using many tools in the program however, with the knowledge I have gained from week 5 this was made slightly easier and more efficient as I practised using some shortcuts (for example keyboard shortcuts to access tools quicker), the main things I focused on during this time was attempting to create a colour balance/correction which would be ambient and set the mood for my piece, the reference I was using was of course The Last of us which has tones of Grey, Green and Purple so my goal was to try and mirror that.

I had some success in doing this using the colour balance tool inside of Photoshop, the tool allows you to change the colour of certain aspects inside of your image such as the highlights and midtones, these can help with lighting and further help to set the mood of a piece which will be important when it comes to the production of my final image, I will definitely be using these tools and the acquired knowledge to make my piece stand out, I think the strength for this week was that I managed to practise a lot of different aspects of photoshop and put time into attempting the techniques I have learned however, I believe I should have probably put some more focus into specific techniques as there are some that will most definitely take priority over others when it comes to my final piece.

Week 7- My focus this week was scouting Bradford for locations I could take photos of for my final piece, I was also trying to practise the correct camera angles whilst doing this which was aided by knowledge that I had picked up in previous weeks, in general I discovered that bradford can be quite challenging to photograph in a way which gives me the freedom to manipulate the image and change the scene, the backdrop I have decided to do a genuine practice run on is just the City Park as it is open and includes things like a clock tower which I want to try and give a destroyed effect, luckily the the day I took the photo of City Park was rather dark and dull which helps for setting the tone of what I am trying to achieve, as it is due to get brighter in the next couple of weeks it may be wise to also use the photo I took of City Park this week in my final piece, I will however, take photos when the sun breaks out more to see whether it is beneficial or not to use such an image, next week will hopefully be focused on trying to create some effects on the image/s I have taken, I believe that overall this week was a success and the images I took were good to say that I am not only inexperienced but also because as previously mentioned Bradford is challenging to photograph however, I should have gone to the old broken down mill near college as that could have been a very good spot to photograph, the places I chose were pretty much in the middle of the city which could have potentially been a mistake, I need to be more open in the future.

Week 8- This week my focus was on trying to create an effect that would make it appear as if the clock tower in City Park had been destroyed, this was a very difficult task and honestly I have not fully grasped how to do it seamlessly, the first roadblock was that when I attempted to cut and move the top of the clock tower; the sky would obviously move with it, this fix was actually quite simple though as I figured out that I could use the “content aware fill” tool, which uses elements from an area of the image (such as the sky) to fill in any transparent gaps that you desire by brushing over them and holding left click, the next obstacle was trying to add a rubble effect to the top of the destroyed clock tower, this was tough as finding an image of rubble that would blend was difficult and I personally still believe I could have done a better job, the image I used took some colour correction and re-scaling in order to look like it somewhat blended into the image, this needs to be amended for my final piece as it was still quite messy in my opinion, I think I did a good job managing to create the effect I wanted with the clock tower, but the time it took was not a bit of a negative and I probably need to work faster for the weeks that remain, I also need to enhance the quality of the effect if it is possible in the time I have remaining, this should not be a problem if I remain on track until the end of the project.

Week 9- This week was a frustrating one as I was trying create the effect of a hole through the town hall in city park, although I had researched how to create the effect; it was still a big struggle and has not been completed, the main issue I was running into was that could not properly content aware fill the space which i had created by cutting out some of the building, I was also struggling to find textures that would create the effect of the hole being blown through the building, these textures seem extremely difficult to source and even the online tutorials used the same ones as each other, this may be something I have to exclude from my final piece as there simply is not enough time to source textures and apply them in a way that would be seamless, all of these issues means this week there were very little positives, I believe the smartest approach from now on may be to exclude this effect from the final piece and instead focus the time I would have used on some other aspect of the image, I think doing this will enhance the overall quality of my final project when it is finally completed.

Week 10- This week I was finally back on track and turned my attention to removing all of the people that were in the main area of my image, after doing some research I found out about a tool that I had never used before called the ‘clone stamp’ tool, this tool allowed me to almost seamlessly remove the people at the forefront of my image keeping it clean and relatively realistic, this method was also relatively simple as it required the steps of a content aware fill just with the added section of the clone stamp at the end, the clone stamp tool also allowed me to fix a problem with the branches in my image as I could use it to make sure the sky filled all of the gaps, the strengths this week were that I was able to complete a task that I thought was otherwise impossible given the time constraints and also that I have picked up knowledge of a new tool and in turn also picked up a brand new skill, the only weakness is that this method works worse for the really distant people/vehicles in my image and so they will have to remain,

Week 11- This week my focus was on adding a downed/destroyed airplane to the fountains area of my image, the first challenge was finding an asset that would fit both in the context of scale and lighting as both of these factors contribute heavily to the integrity and realism of my piece, once I had found a suitable asset I began to incorporate it into my image, this involved also adding some rubble assets to the floor to give the effect that it had crashed there at some point in time, I also decided to go one better and add some rust onto the plane with my knowledge of layer masking, this was to give the plane a little more backstory and to give the knowledge to the viewer that the plane has been there for quite a lengthy period of time, the strengths this week were almost identical to the ones of week 10 as I was furthering my knowledge on layer masking, I had not used this tool much before this project but now I understand its importance to creating images of all types in Photoshop, I am now armed with the knowledge of how powerful layer masking can be for the future of my work and this will most definitely aid me in university and other aspects of life, in terms of weaknesses there was not one that I can really put my finger on which goes hand in hand with this being one of, if not the smoothest week I have had developing my final piece.

Week 12- This week was my final week of production and so I decided to add some extra detail to my final image and also create an alternate piece just to experiment, the only adjustments made to my image this week were the adding of moss in different areas around the town hall exterior and the floor near the fountains, this was just to further the effect that Bradford is desolate and has been abandoned for quite a long time, the other small experimental project I completed was just a typography version of my final piece with the word ‘Bradford’ written across it with the image of course visible through the text, apart from those 2 small adjustments I focused the rest of the week on adding the rest of my research to my Digital Space and also completing my problem solving page with updates and going into detail about the solutions that I had managed to come up with, I will be using the next couple of days to complete my evaluation and tidy up my digital space to make sure that the presentation of my work is clear and easy to interpret, overall the strengths of this week were that I met all of my deadlines and that the main pieces of my project are now 100% complete, the only weakness was that I hadn’t added certain things to my digital space earlier that are now taking up small but important amounts of time, apart from that the final week has been smooth and I am satisfied with how the project has turned out.