For this project we were given the task of creating something that
was to do with a social or ethical issue. For example: racism, sexism, crime,
bullying, discrimination etc and I did about deforestation because it's
something that I feel strongly about and that us human beings need to take a
lot more seriously than we already do and I'd like to shed some light on the
topic. We got told that we could use anything from graphics to photography but
not videos just yet. Some people did posters and others did bits of graphics
and drawings.
My research went really well and I actually got tons of
information! I conducted both primary and secondary research but found that my
secondary research came in as more useful as it would give me an insight into a
lot of things that I didn't know even though my primary research, which was
survey monkey gave me a really good understanding of actually how much other
people understand about this topic. I conducted a lot of quantitative research
but not any qualitative research because the type of people I was asking
questions too, they'd probably end up joking around on the open questions. My
target audience however was to target people that are aged 16+ because those
are the main people that came make a difference, but also I want the younger
people that are aged 8-16 because those people are the now/next generation so
the demographic information of the people that I'm targeting is from 8+ and
probably unemployed until the age of 16+. The psychographic information of the
people I'm targeting is people in schools and mainly young people that can make
a change however I'm targeting all types of socioeconomic people, especially
the richer types because they have more money and can donate more, or I'm
hoping they would anyway.
The screen shots of my primary research on survey monkey are here
for you to see:
Also my inspiration for this whole thing
is a video on climate change and how the world is going down the wrong track.
The video is called "Dear Future Generations: Sorry" and it's by a
man called "prince EA". Prince EA is someone who has created lots of
very controversial and inspirational videos. If you'd like to take the time to
have a quick watch of this video then the web address is here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eRLJscAlk1M
The artists that have also inspired me to do my work are called: Hannah Höch, John Stezaker and Jesse Treece. Their art inspirational work is on my blog. Their collages is what made me create this for my website:
Both of these images are pictures I took
while at Sherwood Forest, i ended up using the magic wand and the pen tool to
make sure there wasn't any white parts of the image, faded the image to 40%,
positioned it correctly and feathered it to make sure that it faded correctly.
For the pre-production settings of the
camera I thought it was going to be a bright day so I set the camera to a low
ISO but it was actually quite dark so I had to up my ISO to 250. I set the
stabilizer on my camera to on and I also set the shutter speed to around 1/30
seconds and then the aperture to around the f/20 mark. Those settings let me
get the best pictures that I possibly can get.
I chose to combine my photography with my graphics and created a
website that showcased powerful pictures and information on the subject that
I've chosen, deforestation. The reason I chose to do a website is because we
were learning how to create one on WIX.com and I quite liked it so I kind of
just decided to go for that and create one. I knew that it would be hard work
because it's a whole website and it needed to look professional and it needed
to work.
As for creating my website I first needed to
pick a template and this is the template that I chose because I wanted it to be
unique but to also look the part.
However I didn't like how it had four main
parts of the home page so I just simply deleted them and added two home page
boxes and the rest went to the navigation bar at the top. After I picked my
template I then headed over to Sherwood Forest with my family at the weekend to
take pictures of the deforestation that's happened there and I got quite a lot
of very good images. Unfortunately I didn't get to go to my dad’s wood cutting
company which would have been amazing for the project but I still got some very
nice pictures. What I then did was I made a contact sheet for them and stuck
them into my blog for you to see.
The next step was that I needed a logo for my
website so I loaded up illustrator and created one for myself. I used the pen
tool at first to draw the outline of the tree as you can see from the picture
here:
I also used the rubber to clean up the
stray ends as I zoomed in and rubbed them out. I also used the paint brush tool
to colour in the branches that you can see within the leaves then I duplicated
the beach and flipped the branch 180 degrees and put it a little more to the
right. I also added a little bird that I had to draw and colour in. What I did
was I copied the tree on to Photoshop and then I filled in the tree truck and
the bird and leaves with the bucket tool which came in handy although I did
have a bit of a problem with finding a colour to match my background header for
my website and you'd think I could just simply use the magic wand to get rid of
the white background and I thought that would work too but it turns out that
when u actually pasted the image into the website it looked like the picture
had a white background so what I did was I went on to the wix website and
selected the information on the colour of the header that I selected and pasted
this serial type number into the colour bar on Photoshop and pasted that into
there but when I then pasted my image onto the website it was a complete
different colour which was extremely frustrating so I ended up snipping part of
the background of the header and stretching it to fit the size of the
background of my image and then pasted that into my website and even that still
only just looked similar to it. If you go to my website and have a close look
you'll be able to see that there's a slight colour difference from the
background of my emblem to the header of the website even though it's the exact
texture of the website that it has been snipped from and here is the final
piece.
The different parts of the website which
you can see via the screen shots provided on screen include: "what’s
deforestation?" which is basically telling you what deforestation is, then
there's "How fast? How can we stop it?" which tells you how fast
deforestation is happening and how we can stop it, the next one is called
"Trees" which tells you all about why trees are important for if
you've been living under a rock your whole life and can't see why trees are
important to us, we also have a section that's titled "how can you
help?" where it tells you how you can help by giving you information and
links to sites which you can donate too and the last page is my bio telling you
all about myself and why I've created the website. My website is here for you to view:
http://reeceward20.wix.com/personalproject
This all took a while to create but not as
long as expected because my research was very good so I already had a lot of
the information that I needed apart from things that have happened as of
recent, like Leonardo DiCaprio's speech as he was picking up his very first
Oscar.
The links for the "how YOU scan help"
part consists of a company called "Greenpeace" and also another
company called "Stand for Trees". These two companies take donations
from people all around the world and help to put it to better use by doing
campaigns and helping earth stay green. You can see the screen shots on screen
below.
There was also an Oscar’s speech from
Leonardo DiCaprio as he's a long-time supporter of clearing up the environment
and ensuring the survival of humankind. You can find the speech just about
anywhere but lucky enough for you I've got the web address right here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R-LtZMkTvzA
As for settings of the camera I thought it
was going to be a bright day so I set the camera to a low ISO but when I
actually got out there it was quite a bit darker than what I first anticipated
it would be so I set the ISO a little higher to around 200. As we were walking
while taking pictures and I had to quickly take them my pictures were coming
out blurry so I set the stabilizer on my camera to on and I set the shutter
speed to 1/30 seconds and then the aperture had to be around f/5.6. These
settings let me get the best pictures that I could possibly get.
My peer feedback was quite good and very constructive, I had a
comment from Sam stating "Do a spellcheck on the word Deforestation and
amazon needs a capital letter" etc and Simeon said that I needed to change
the colour of the navigation bar and make it more appealing with the text so that’s
what I did, Jake also said "your website is full of useful information and
graphics that show the work you have put in with working links and a visual
representation of your skills that you have picked up. Very sharp and
professional. Very good". Here is the screenshots for you to see.
Overall I would say that my final and
finished project for this went really, really well apart from parts of the
website that would go wrong on my computer and wouldn't let me type, meaning I
could only work on my website in college times which was quite frustrating but
apart from that all went good. My time management and following my schedule I
would say was good. I wouldn't say that it was amazing as I've left parts of
the assignment until quite late to do but I would say I stuck to my schedule
and if I didn't I would catch up quickly at home.
I've actually learnt a lot from this
project as I've learnt that the final, major project will be a lot of self-motivation
and one of the things that I hate about myself most is that when I'm at home
I'm a massive procrastinator and I get distracted a lot so I think I'd think
I'd have to set alarm on my phone to actually make me get going. As for the
educational side I've learnt a lot of stuff about deforestation and the harm
that it's doing to our planet and not just us but other animals too. We're
destroying homes and not even caring where the animals are left. They end up
becoming road kill or just becoming extinct.
If I had the chance to do this all again I
would definitely of told my dad in advance about wanting to take pictures of
his workplace and gotten that done!
