1. Question 6:
What have you learnt about technologies
from the process of constructing this
product?
My skills in using a Digital SLR camera have improved significantly since the
ancillary project. The main image on the cover of my ancillary magazine was
out of focus and the natural lighting and ISO setting on the camera washed out
the image and made it look flat. I have improved these problems in my final
product by using a studio which has soft box lighting and by altering the ISO
settings on my camera in manual mode so that they were best suited to the
type of lighting in the studio. This gave my images more clarity and depth.
My ancillary project cover (left) and final cover (right)
Before I began my ancillary project I had not used Photoshop
before so I found it difficult to navigate. I used basic fonts and
shapes and hardly edited my photographs for my ancillary project
because of this. When I started to produce my final products,
however, I had become used to the software and therefore found
it much easier to edit my photographs and import font styles from
websites such as dafont.com. I felt more confident using tools
such as the polygonal lasso tool to remove the background from
my images and then edit them using the hue and saturation and
brightness and contrast tools to create a brighter, warmer feel. By
overcoming the difficulties of first using Photoshop I was able to
create better quality photographs and pages of a higher standard.

2. I had never created a blog or used the site Blogger before I began the course so uploading
my work onto the site was new and challenging for me. At first, I found getting around the
site and determining when to switch between compose and HTML when uploading
documents difficult. However, with practise, I soon became comfortable with using the
site and uploading my work. Through the use of the site, I have discovered that, due to
technological convergence, I can compose pieces of work and present them in a
chronological order from the same site. This is useful because it allows me to keep all of
my work in one place and edit it if I need to without having to navigate between several
sites.
I felt that Slideshare was one of the easiest
sites to familiarise myself with. From it I
have learned how to quickly turn a Word
or PowerPoint document into a short
presentation which I can transfer onto my
blog through an embedded code. The use
of the site Slideshare enabled me to
appropriately present my work on my blog
quickly and to a deadline without having
to use several sites. This is possible
because of technological convergence.