Tuesday, 14 January 2014

Evaluation

As a part of this project, I was given the task to create an individual website. The aim of my individual website is based on Photography that I have captured on my own and edited using Adobe Photoshop. I named the website after myself; Kim Sy Photography, which is influenced with my own personal approach. I mainly focused on my photography which was based on night, city, nature and photo-manipulations, as they were my prime content for my website. My photos were captured using a Nikon D3100 DSLR and a Panasonic Lumix digital camera. All of them were carefully selected and edited at different levels and techniques. Other than my photography, my website included different pages of information about myself, techniques of my photography, tutorials and various forms of contact details. The structure is very simple to enable easy navigation and usage.

The purpose of this project was to help us gain some skills and knowledge about web-designing. During the project, I chose to work with Wordpress.org, as it was easy access and an online based website editing software, which kept my contents safe. After viewer tutorials on YouTube and Lynda.com, I was able to complete my website successfully. Within the course of this project, I was able to use different software’s such as Photoshop, Microsoft Expression Encoder Screen Capture and Windows Movie Maker. Since I chose a creative topic for my website, I was able to work a lot with Photoshop. Photoshop allowed me to enhance my photos, manipulate dull photos and alter image resolutions that were suitable for the web. The Microsoft Elements software along with Windows Movie Maker was useful in helping me film and edit my tutorials. I have never worked with Microsoft Expression before, so it was helpful to discover software where you can screen capture videos from the desktop. As a result, after working with these software’s, it has helped developed and improved my skills.

However, for further improvements, I could of made my website more interactive by adding sounds, colour and slideshow effects, to help attract audiences and make it more interesting for users to browse through. If I had more time, I would have developed a logo and watermark for my photos. Also I would have added more content such as tutorials and more information for my techniques and guides page. For the future, I will aim to look for more into widgets and plugins which will help develop my website further. Although wordpress.org was easy to use, I feel like I need to develop my skills further to ensure a professional looking website.  


Overall, I am satisfied with my first attempt of creating a website. I was able to include all my content and nothing got lost or went wrong, which I feared. The layout of the website is consistent and with the theme I chose, suited well with my photography. I divided my content into individual pages to help prevent having too much information on a page that would result to scrolling. The website has a simple and easy to navigate approach. This will help encourage users to browse through my website with ease and yet aim to encourage photography and inspire my audiences. 

Contacts Page

Email

For the contacts page, I wanted a click-able email link, embedded to a email client. This will allow users to email me with a simply click on the email; kimk1206626@gmail.com hyper-link that will direct them with several options of email clients such as outlook. 

To do this, I embedded a hyper-link to my email using the Mailto command on WordPress. 


Social Networking

I wanted to add social media icons to my contact page, to allow users to contact and follow me through various of networks. By adding a click-able embedded icon that will direct users to my twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube page. 

Here are all the embedded icons I have created on the Contacts page:




There are social networking icons at the footer of the website







Plug-ins

Portfolio Slideshow Plugins

This plugin enabled me to create a slideshow for every gallery on my website. The galleries were divided under individual categories within separate pages; Night Photography, City Photography, Nature Photography and Photo Manipulation. I wanted a version of a slideshow along with every gallery, to present a series of my still images all in presentation. 


Tuesday, 7 January 2014

Hyperlinks for Navigation

Links are very important to a structure of any website. It allows visitors to enter the site and read the content, but also giving users the option to click on a link to direct them to other parts of the site. Links are not only used to link in and around the site, it also allows users to divert onto other sites.

Here are a few links I have created for my website




Saturday, 4 January 2014

Tutorials

After gaining feedback from other students and lecturer's, they suggested that I should extend my website further by adding some video tutorials to show my Photoshop editing skills. I took this into consideration and decided to add additional pages to my website that showed a step by step visual guide of how I edited and manipulated my images. 

By watching several tutorials on YouTube, I was able to gain some inspiration as to how others filmed their tutorials and what type of software they used. I found that screen capture videos were the most popular and it showed clear views of how the person behind the screen were able to guide viewers by simply just showing them what they are doing on Photoshop. Most videos had voice overs to provide viewers with a more specific guide and additional information. 

Here is a YouTube video I have watched for inspiration.



Software used:
  • Microsoft Expression Encoder 4
  • Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 – Screen Capture
  • Windows Movie Maker
  • Adobe Photoshop CS5
  • YouTube
My Final Outcome

Wednesday, 1 January 2014

Enhancing Photos on Photoshop


To make my photos look better, I enhanced the look of photos using the Brightness/Contrast settings on Photoshop.
Original Image on Photoshop
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW LARGER)

Adjusting the brightness/contrast on Photoshop
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW LARGER)


Final Outcome
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW LARGER)