The personal project subject I have chosen to work with is Anxiety. I chose to work with Anxiety as my topic because, I have a lot of knowledge around this subject and It is something I care deeply about. I personally have had an experience with Anxiety and I figured it would be something I could talk about in depth and would like to raise awareness about. I know how severe this mental illness can be and how it can effect peoples everyday lives. I also thought it would be good to find out more information about Anxiety that I didn't already know, always good to learn something new as you go along. With my personal experience of having to deal with Anxiety for 2 years without knowing myself was something that I don't want others to also experience. As Anxiety is a mental health that cannot go unnoticed due to how serious it could affect a person. I also want the audience that I am aiming my topic about to be more aware about the symptoms and how easily unnoticed they can be. Choosing this topic, I think was a very easy topic for me to work with and a topic I enjoyed attempting to raise awareness with.
My idea's with choosing my topic were that I could create a poster helping to address Anxiety to an audience who are unaware of something that revolves around the subject. I think it is important to educate others on mental illnesses as they are a serious part of some peoples lives and easily slip without being recognised. I personally had not alot of idea about what Anxiety was or how It could make a person feel or what they experienced. Until I had experienced both the mental and physical symptoms myself but even then, I still didn't know it was Anxiety. I went off, of what people had told me about it rather than reading into any detail and finding out more. I think that displaying information on a poster including photography and a little digital design would be an easier way for me to illustrate my topic personally. My idea in general was for my poster to explain what flight or fight is. As when I surveyed my friends and family, the majority of them had no idea of what it was. So this made sense that I should attempt to raise awareness of this. I want to express what flight or fight is by using the shoulder angel and shoulder devil scenario. I think it will be a good idea to show flight and fight in this way because I could create 2 different characters just like the devil and angel but they would of course be resembling flight and fight. I also think it is good to illustrate it by using this idea as with the devil and angel, they are both known to say different things about a situation to put ideas into someones mind, to try and persuade the individual to choose the path of which either one of them is trying to get into their head. This can be related to flight and fight as it can easily be seen as the devil and angel resembling flight and fight, both 2 different thoughts battling it out in a persons mind in order to persuade which choice the person is wanting to go with. The photography in which this comes into will be, an image I have captured of a person deeply thinking and also a person with there head in their hands which was used for the slideshow as an extra for more detail. I also had the idea of showing how different a person with anxiety feels compared to others around them. I had the idea of using eggs to display the people, and then draw the same facial expressions on each and every one of them expect for one, which would display the odd one out. I thought this would have been a good idea to show that even though everybody may look and seem the same, that an individual with Anxiety can feel the complete odd one out. I displayed that idea by including it onto my slideshow slide which was about Anxiety being a serious mental disorder.
The test shot's I wanted to produce went well for the idea of the eggs that I wanted to use for my project as I did exactly what I planned to do with them. However I would have wanted to improve by if I had the chance again, I would have taken the shots with a professional camera so that I could change the ISO to make it brighter and be able to write more in depth of the steps I took with the camera in order to capture the test shots. I would have changed the image slightly in further editing with Photoshop by messing around with the brightness and contrast to try and lighten the image up. I also would have taken the images with a white backdrop so that It would have made it easier to crop around in Photoshop but I didn't so it made it hard for me to do anything with the egg images so thats when I decided to just include the egg idea onto the presentation as an extra bit of design.
The test shots for the poster work Id say went well except for the fact I left taking the test shots till last minute due to not having anyone to take picture of. Luckily my friend said she would help me out and I was able to take images of her to use for my poster and edit them very quickly for me to include onto my blog. I took into mind what I couldn't do with the egg images with taking the test shots with a professional camera so I improved by using one for these test shots so that I could mess around with the camera settings and change the ISO if needed. For this shot I used a high ISO 400 as there was alot of bright natural lighting. I also improved again with the test shots for the poster as I got my friend to pose in front of a clear background so it made it easier for me to edit later on. I took into mind again with using the professional camera for the third test shots I needed to capture to include onto my presentation. I took those test shots again with an high ISO. For the effect of the image I captured later on In editing I duplicated the image to overlay the other and moved it slightly to give the effect of a slight blur just to make it look better. I also lowered the brightness and messed with the contrast.
For the egg image the only thing I took into account was the idea itself and just focused on getting the right image. Photography terms wise I guess I did look into trying to take the image with the shallow field of depth effect. I chose to use this effect to try and make it look good, to not have the background in focus as I wanted the image to be focused on the eggs itself. Location wise I didn't think about that either and I just took the image without even thinking. However if I was to take the image again I would have set the location of having a clear white background so it would have made it easier to edit and make the image transparent in further Photoshop editing. I would have also tried abit harder to get the effect I originally wanted with the photograph as you cannot see the shallow depth of field. With the lighting I took in mind that in general the image would need to be quite bright to focus on the egg's and have an high quality picture as the outcome. I didn't use any extra lighting methods other than natural light that was already there. If I was to have taken this image again and considered lighting I would have maybe added a fill light behind the camera to help with the focusing. With the poster image I took into consideration with the effect was just to take it manually. I then considered for location it was to be taken with a clear background so it would make it easier to edit, and also have nothing else to focus on but the person in front of the camera. I took into consideration that as well as using natural light, I also used a a fill light. I used a soft box to try and brighten up the photograph and also to pick up more human facial feature details whilst taking the image. For the last test shots that I would be using for my presentation slide I took into consideration with the location, that I would be taking these test shots outside as for these test shots I did want a background involved. For the lighting I only used natural lighting as the day I went out to take the images it was bright outside and didn't need no added lighting. The I did lower the brightness later on in Photoshop as it was too bright.
As I do not have Photoshop I chose to do editing on pic monkey which is an online website used to edit and create photo's. I also used a downloaded software named Coral paint shop which is similar to Photoshop but just a free version, which I used to make the poster image transparent. The processes I took with the editing for the photography was different for each one. With the egg image I created, the only thing I did was altered the brightness a little higher to lighten it up. I also cropped some of the background off it as there was alot of unneeded background. With the photography that was used to create my poster I had to crop out the person and get rid of the background as it's not what I need. I then made the background transparent so I could easily add my image straight onto the poster, position it right and upload it to the blog as quick as I could. I also played with the brightness, lowered it a little and also played with the contrast just to see how the final image would turn out. With the presentation image I lowered the brightness down as it was very bright and thats not the effect I wanted for this image. I then duplicated the image as another overlay and moved it slightly to the side to make a blur effect just because I thought it would look good.
If I was to do this whole personal project work again. I would manage my time keeping better than I did this time as I rushed alot of work near to the end and I really pushed on my ability to get all assignments done before the deadline. I would have stepped up my game with doing the work when I was meant to be doing it as I got distracted and started slacking with getting all work completed. I would have managed my time keeping also, give myself set tasks to complete daily so that work would have been completed faster and not leave me stressing out last minute trying to get everything done. With the research tasks I would have improved them by adding more detail, adding links, adding facts, statistics, more extra details even if not needed. Also with the research I would have surveyed more people to get a better result in answers to use for my personal project. For the presentation I would improve next time by trying to make it stand out more, include more images, include little facts on each page and I would have included that on the ending and starting slide that my topic was Anxiety as I only stated that my presentation was about a personal project. With the photography I made a mistake with the test shots of the egg images by not using a professional camera, not knowing what camera setting I was using, not being in charge of ISO, Aperture or shutter speed. I made the mistake of not controlling the lighting or even thinking about the location of where I was taking the test shots. However I then learnt from my mistakes and then acted upon them for the next 2 test shots that I needed to take for my poster and presentation. I improved with then taking the next 2 test shots and made them better than the first time round. I took into consideration about the lighting and location and planned out how I was taking the next 2 images to get them perfect. I learnt from this whole experience with this project that time keeping is very important and should not be avoided. I have learnt that instead of stressing out about trying to get work finished before the deadline, that to just get it done with as quick as possible so that it will be of my chest and I will feel alot better. I also did learn more than I already knew about my topic which I guess was a bonus to this work assignment.
In my opinion I dont think that my image is up to what the brief wants. I can hope it is, as I tried my hardest to get everything done by the deadline and stayed up several nights making sure I got set tasks done. I tried my best and thats all I could have given to this project. I didn't have any software that would have made this work more efficient or better than it could have turned out but I dealt with that problem and worked around it and used all software I could use instead. I personally think that my poster turned out how I had planned to do it in my proposal, better than I had planned if anything. I stuck to my idea about the shoulder devil and angel and created my poster based around that idea. In conclusion with my proposal, I do think that my finalised work does match up with it. I think that I used the majority of ideas that I had planned to use, most of the information I had gathered, and I used my inspiration images and recreated them successfully. The proposal I did for the presentation I think went the best out of it all. I followed each step I had planned to do and accurately made the whole presentation the exact same as I planned. The only thing that didn't go to plan with what I had wrote about in my proposal was the egg images. I originally planned to make a whole individual slide based around that image but I changed my mind when in development of making the slideshow and just decided to add the image onto a slide as an extra. I didn't just want to not include it as I had already made this image and wrote about it so thats the way I decided to add it into this project work.
In conclusion, I do hope that my personal project work meets the assignment brief, as I do feel like I did all of the work set that I knew about needed doing, maybe with a few little bits I have missed out but could easily be improved if I had a little more time. I do think I followed my proposal very well and included the majority of what I had planned. Overall I am proud of what I have accomplished and I think although time keeping was my biggest issue, I have learnt now to deal with that more efficiently and I did my best to get all of the work that was needed doing by the deadline.
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