Photo Album

To accomplish the set task of creating a photographic album on the theme of “All work and no play”, I brought my own camera into University. The camera was a digital Canon 450D with an EOS 18-55mm zoom lens and in good working order.

During the beginning of the session I collaborated with two other students to create our own team. We decided that our storyline would focus on one day in the life of one student. Showing how he would spend the start of his day being studious and solitary. Then as the day progressed his life would become more enjoyable, as represented by spending time in conversation with a friend in the café that led to a drinking session.

As we were under the time constraint of one hour we decided to use the facilities around the University as a backdrop. Featuring places that the majority of university students may frequent during each day to try and give the story a feeling of reality, for example the library, computer classrooms, the local café and bar.

The majority of the photographs were taken by me and I, due to nerves, decided to rely on the camera’s auto functions. This is something I’d never do when using the camera for my own personal needs. However, I felt pressured (by myself) into gaining properly exposed images and I mistakenly believed that although these auto functions wouldn’t provide any award winning shots, they would give sharp properly exposed photographs. However, mixing this with my nerves and existing medical condition led to lots of poorly exposed, blurred and badly composed shots.

Post production was initially carried out during the practical session of Entertainment Computing. I used Adobe Photoshop for the first time and managed to create a flash based album of all the shots that were taken on that day. I also tried another application package based on recommendations from a fellow student, namely ‘Windows Photo Story 3’. Both applications provided functional and enjoyable views of the photographs.

However, I could see the biggest draw back was the content not the applications, so I took a copy of the photographs home. There I began to select photos based on their relative superior quality and began to use the application ‘The Gimp’ (The GNU Image Manipulation Program).

Using ‘The GIMP’ provided means to crop and select different parts of the images. Then through use of ‘The GIMP’s’ functions, I changed different aspects of almost all the selected images by use of basic features such as the brightness, colour, contrast. I also used some of the artistic features, ‘scripts’, to help add feeling to the overall story. Once I was happy with the selected images I put them together with the aid of ‘Windows Photo Story 3’ into an album.

We tried to create a story of an average solitary student going about his day. How his time was spent initially studying and working hard. Then showing how he would relax and enjoy his leisure time drinking with friends, to recharge and be ready for another day of hard study.