Week 8: March 22-26

This week I was away for MONDAY & TUESDAY because I was away an extra day for March Break (Monday) and then on Tuesday I was away because I had to burn 200 DVDs for The Sault Symphony Orchestra's Sound of Music. I have a business with my mom called "Applause Entertainment". We do a lot of things: Birthday Parties (With themes), Video Editing and filming (For Dance Recitals, Weddings, Plays, Audition Videos, Good-bye photo montages, etc.), Dance and other entertainment-based apparel (Such as dance costumes, mascots, cheerleading outfits, figure skating costumes, costumes for plays, etc.), Accessories (Jewellery, Hair Elastics, etc.), Face Painting (for events and parties), etc.

This week we worked on our spreads. Mostly, I worked on properly alphebetising the grad yearbook write-ups, and made sure I had all of them that I was given. This FRIDAY we had an "Earth Hour" assignment where we had to take pictures of the school on the hour when we shut off all the lights in the school to commemerate EARTH DAY and EARTH HOUR.

We also did an assignment with feathering on photoshop. I have attached this photo, as well as a couple of my favourite Earth Day Photos.

More Later!

Week 7: March 15-19 MARCH BREAK!

March Break! March Break! March Break!

This week was an awesome week!

It began of course, with me packing my room up, to finally get the walls in my room dry-walled. FINALLY. When I get back, we should be able to paint my room... Can't wait for it! My room should look great.. but I can't wait for the rest of the house to be DONE. Construction is TOUGH!!!!

So, the beginning of the week consisted of me packing my room up totally, and then packing my bags to leave for Ottawa U and Toronto! My mom, My brother, My mom's boyfriend and I left for Ottawa on Wednesday after they finished work. After dropping our cocker spaniel (Rusty) off at Garcons Kennel, we were off! We attempted to stop for a Hotel 10:30 at night in Sudbury, only to find out that there was a HOCKEY Tournament, ad there were NO available hotels or motels in the entire city with rooms. So we kept driving, checking every little town until we were approx. an hour away from Ottawa where we found a VACANT motel. After going to bed at 3:00am, we woke up at 8 and left for Ottawa at around 10:30am, after a breakfast. Attached are some pictures of visiting the Parliament buildings.

After ourday of looking around, we went to our Ottawa hotel, and retired for bed. In the morning, we spent an entire day at the Ottawa University spring open house, and when that was all over (at around 5pm) we started the drive to Toronto where we get to spend time with our grandparents. Awesome!

Week 6: March 8-12

This week in photoshop we worked with the selection tool, and playing around with hues, saturations, converting to black and white, and spot colouring. Spot colouring is when one (or more) items of the photo in question are left as colour and the rest is converted to black and white. We also converted a photo to black and white. This is done in photoshop by going Enhance>Adjust Colour>Convert to Black and White. We also learned to apply a blur or other effect to a background to make the background plainer, and the subject more prominent. All of these can be done with the selection tool, and then (sometimes after inverting the selection) in Enhance, changing whatever was needed to, or going to Filter and applying a fun effect. Lucky for me, I learned how to do this a few years ago in Comm Tech, so it came to me easily.

This Thursday we had a representative from Friesens to give us a presentation on a proper yearbook layout. She did have some interesting things to say-- and some things that contradicted what we learned in class. I found that in a lot of what she was saying, she was generalizing and stereotyping; for example she assumed all of us were unable of taking a good picture, and assumed that we had no concept of design or layout. Its unfair of her to say that about EVERYONE, she could have said that "some people aren't able take professional photos" instead of "students aren't capable of taking good photos for yearbooks". But this is me, venting. I also found that she liked white space and plain backgrounds waaaaaaaay too much. White space is good for some things, but as she said we could get into a debate about it. I also disagree with her on a few other things. She seemed to think that students like white space, and that students like large body copies- like newspapers. The reality of that is that students do NOT like body-copies at all. Photos-yes. Informative captions-yes. Titles-yes. Body copies-no.

The unfortunate truth is that students these days are getting lazier, and would prefer to have a yearbook as more of a photo-album than a magasine. At the beginning of this year, when the 2008-2009 yearbooks were released, I went around asking many students what they liked or didn't like about the yearbook, and what we could change. Another thing that I found when asking students what they wanted out of a yearbook (besides the above- relating to body copies), was that they found last year there were WAY too many sports pages, and not enough pages for individual clubs. They are smaller clubs because they don't have publicity from things such as yearbooks along with other things. Some people were upset because their club didn't have a group picture-- so we should do our best to get those photos taken.

This week we also had a photo-tip of the week. Our tip this week was "Use a Plain Background". Please see the post labelled "Photography Tips!" for more information relating to that.

March break is just around the corner, and tomorrow there is no class. Can't wait to go to Ottawa to check out the University of Ottawa, and to see my grandparents in Toronto. I leave Wednesday!!!


Spot Colour--Bonus Marks!! I already did this one!

Spot Colour

Spot Colour AND Blurred Background

Blurred Background

Convert to Black and White

Blurred Background

Week 5: March 1-5

This week we did some work in photoshop AND in InDesign!


One of our many projects included using the selection tool in Photoshop Elements 7. We selected a banner for NOSSA, and deleted the background. From there, we imported the picture into InDesign and used the clipping tool (detct edges), to get rid of the white background on the photo. We then placed the photo on a coloured background with a gradient. This photo is attached to my post this week.


We also worked on our spreads. My Seussical spread was ALMOST packaged this week.. When I went to preflight for this spread, I found that one photo was in RGB (Photos used for yearbook spreads must be CMYK-Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black- used for printing; as opposed to RGB- red, green, blue- used for viewing on a screen. *DID YOU KNOW: Red Green and Blue are also the three main colours used in lighting a stage, Using these colours you can create virtually any lighting colour- including WHITE!*) After searching and searching I found that the photo in question was the FOLIO at the bottom of the spread! (Not my fault!) Haha



This week we also learned the 7 deadly sins of photography, as welll as the ten kodak photography tips. The tip of the week is "Get down to their level".







This week, (not for Yearbook Class), I also made an awesome poster for Korah's Spring Concert coming in this May! This poster was made entirely in Photoshop Elements 7, with NO outside images-- everything is copyright free! Yay!





More later!