Evaluation

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!