Senior Project

The start

   Senior year is coming to a close and it was time to begin the last project of in e-Comm of my high school career. The assignment was to find something that we didn't know much about and to learn more about it and research it and then create a site about it or using it. We had the majority of fourth quarter to accomplish this project.

   I decided that I wanted to mix the two things that I loved to do most in my free time: photography and web design. At the start of this project my idea was to research different ways to showcase photos on a website. I knew had to do one or two already but knew that there must be more out there to showcase photos in a way that would make it pleasing to the eye and attract potential customers.

Process

   The first thing I did was I looked at a ton of different photography portfolios. I wanted to see how other photographers presented their photos and I wanted to see what worked and what didn't work. My next step was to figure out what web platform I was going to use. I am very experienced in WordPress, however, I wanted to see what other options were out there and if other options were better. I looked into Weebly, Blogger, Wix, and even starting from scratch using DreamWeaver or Visual Studios. However, I didn't want to start it from scratch because then I would be using the school servers and computers, and I wanted to use this site even after I graduated and that would be hard to do when I don't have access to the school servers and don't have a server of my own.

   After looking at all of these website builders I was between Wix and Weebly. After testing both out I decided that Wix was going to allow me the most room to make changes as I want. Then it was time for the content.

Content

   I already had a lot of pictures, however; I wanted more so that I had a lot to work with. So I asked my best friend to be my model. We went on a few different shoots and I took a TON of pictures. I have a total of over 2,000 pictures of her now. I also asked my other friend to pose with her so I had some pictures of more then just one person. I also have a shoot lined up right now with my family as well as a couple and their dog. I will edit these and add them in over time.

Editing

   As soon as I got home from each shoot I would load all of the images onto my computer and go through all of them. I deleted all the ones where I was testing the lighting, or anything that was too over exposed to fix or to dark to fix. I also put aside any photos where the models eyes were closed.

   What I was left with was still a lot of photos. I imported all of them into Adobe Lightroom and began the long process of editing all of them. It's a good thing that I enjoy this portion because it did take a really long time. After I was finished with that I saved them in a folder to be added to the site. Some of them I uploaded to VSCO in order to edit them further. I started to add them to the site when I realized that I realized that I needed to put watermarks on all of them. So I went back and I created a watermark in Illustrator and then opened the images in photoshop and added the watermark and turned down the opacity so that it was less noticeable but was still there. Then I added the photos back in.

The journey

   I learned that it is a long process to create a project this large. It took a lot longer to take the pictures and edit them and everything then I expected. It can also be difficult to find a time that works for taking photos of people and working around other peoples schedules as well as your own to find a time that works for everyone. In the end it was a really great experience. I didn't accomplish everything that I wanted to do but I will continue to work on it to try to accomplish those things.  

The End

   Take a look at my final product https://allysonbchitwood.wixsite.com/photosbyallyson

   My last project of my last year in high school is complete. It was a wonderful experience and I will miss getting to do projects like these. My time in e-Comm has been wonderful and I will forever cherish it and look back on it fondly.

Senior Show

What is it?

The senior show is where all of the seniors in e-Comm get to show off their best work and possibly get jobs or internships. Everyone from friends and family to administration to professionals come to this event to look at everything the seniors have done. 

This event is mainly senior run. Meaning the seniors run it, plan it, put it together, and are the main attraction. I was chosen to be put on the committee that planned it and put it together. My job was to represent the Web strand and to put together the website for the event.

The beginning

To start we met every second seminar on Thursdays. I started by getting all the information I needed to create the site. This included the logo, color scheme (which changed a few times), animations, graphics, and all of what they wanted to be in the site. Because the main focus of the event was the seniors, we wanted to main focus of the site to be the seniors. So I gathered all the names of the seniors and what strand they are in. 

Gathering it all

We then decided that we wanted to have each of the seniors contact information on the site. So I created a google form that asked for everyones: name, email, social media links. This was one of the most frustrating parts. The reason being that there was a large portion of people that just didn't turn anything in. I gave them a due date and over half of the seniors missed that date by a week and a half. There were a few that I or a teacher had to go to personally to make them turn it in.

This part was also the longest part. I had to go in and type up all the code for each person (see right for an example of one persons code). This took me forever because I had to go from the form and copy all the info in and even afterwards I had to keep going back and fixing parts of it because I either didn't put it in there correctly or the info given to me didn't work or needed to be changed a little to work as a link.

I also had to put in all the images for each person. We decided that it would be really cool if all the pictures at first look were just the normal, smiling, professional looking ones. And then when your mouse rolls-over the image then the image changes to the silly image that the person took. 

At first I had some troubles figuring out code that would work in WordPress. With the help of my dad and Mr. Olson we were able to figure out a little bit of JavaScript that worked. Then it was just a matter of sizing all of the images to the correct size (shout out to Annika and Katie who did a wonderful job doing this part) and inserting them in correctly. There were some kind of funny mistakes during this part because there were sometimes where I inserted the wrong image for the wrong person, but oh well it was an easy enough fix to go back and fix it.

Towards the very end of this project, meaning the week before the event, we decided that we wanted to have a quote from each senior. So I set up another google form asking each senior What brightens your life. I then took that information and put it into the site as well.

The End

After it was all said and done I was happy with the result and never wanted to see that site again haha. The event went very well as well. The decorations turned out really great and all of our hard work paid off.

This was a very good experience in the end. I learned how to work with others on a committee to plan and put together an event that will make everyone happy. I also learned that it takes a lot of patience to be working with so many people with different opinions and personalities. In the end I am happy with how it turned out and it was a great learning experience.

Update time

I haven't been able to work on my senior project in a few week because I have been working on the senior show website (which you will hear all about in another post)

Content

I finally got back to it a few days ago and was able to finish all of what I have so far. I still need to take more pictures for more content, but I will just have to do that later on. I would like to take some family pictures as well as couples and some guys portraits.

I finished editing all of the pictures that I have taken so far. I also added a watermark to every picture, which took forever. I first created a png of my water mark so that when I applied it to my images you would only see the text. I then opened all of the pictures up in photoshop (15 images at a time in order to not overwhelm photoshop). I chose place embedded and chose the png and resized it to look correct on the photo. Then for most of them I turned down the opacity of the watermark so it was not as visible. After doing that to every single picture I put them into my library on Wix and added them where I needed them.

Editing Wix

When I first started with Wix i was having a lot of problems getting the photos to fit correctly. When I put them into the grid at first it would cut off the top of a lot of the pictures. I then found that if I use Wix Pro Gallery (which is actually free) then it will change the boxes in order to fit the images correctly.

Senior project update

 This week:

   I started off with my site on Wix, however I soon found out that this was not the best option for what I needed. The reason being that if I wanted to code the way that I wanted I would have to pay for the premium version. Otherwise I could not do any coding at all. So I decided to go with a different option. After looking at other options I decided that unfortunately WordPress was the best option. My dad, who owns his own database, is allowing me to set up my website on his database so it's free to me.

  While all of that was happening I created a watermark for all of my images and also did a couple more shoots to get more content. 

Senior Project

The start:

   It took me a long time to try and figure out what I wanted to do for my senior project. Then I decided to just do something I love and add something new to it that I am not as familiar with. So I decided on doing a site of my photography. As an added I will be trying new and different ways to display and transition the images in the site. I will do this using JavaScript, css and html.

Getting started:

   I started off by setting up a whole bunch of photoshoots with different people in different locations in order to get the content for my site. Then today I created my Wix site. I am now starting to edit the template so that it works the way I need it to.

G.E.R.A

    We were given some random items. The items that I got was, Graphite, Eagle, RA, and 500. We then were asked to create a company or business using those things that we got.

   After I ton of thought and some just bad ideas I finally came up with the business name: Graphite Eagle Rescue and Advancement Center. I decided that it was going to be a company that rescued and helped the rare "Graphite Eagle", an organization that helps over 500 eagles a year. The next part of this was to create a logo. I found this part very difficult because I am always wanting to make things very detailed. however when it comes to a logo you can't make it really detailed because all that detail will be lost in resizing and the logo will end up looking squished and to crowded.The first few logos that I designed I made that mistake. 

   I first started with the idea of having just the circle with GERA in the middle. But then I thought about how it would be really cool to have wings in the logo. Then I thought about the purpose of GERA, which was to rescue the eagles then release them into a protected environment when they are better. So I decided to do two wings around the circle. One being all broken up and hurt looking and the other wing being healed and beautiful, to represent how we save them and help them get better. So I started to create some wings. I did really like the wings that I made, but soon realized they were to detailed.

  I then started to mess around with trying to make the logo more simple. As well as play around with that circle again. I then found that if I merged the circle and the wings then I could put an outer glow

on it and it looked pretty cool. I thought it kind of looked like a stencil was used and then spray painted on top and I really liked the look of it. Also the benefit of this was that I could make the GERA bigger than I could with he others. I then played around with different colors as the outer glow.
   I had pretty much had my mind set with this design (to the right) but then I went to create the business card and realized that the glow just did not good when it was shrunken so I went back and played with just the circle logo.
 

   I found that these three were the ones that I really liked the most. I decided on the circle with the grey background because the black seemed like too much and the white background seemed a little difficult to read.
   Now that I had decided on the logo that I wanted it was time to create the business card, stationary, envelope, app icon, and a sign on a building. This was actually pretty easy. I just used the logo and brought it into each item. I ended up really liking how they turned out. If I had more time however I would have tried to make the sign on the building look better.

Finished products:

"Steal like an artist"

"Steal like an artist" by Austin Kleon is a helpful little book giving advice about being an artist and being creative. It starts off by talking about how there are no new "original" ideas in the world. Therefore it is okay to take something from the past an breathe new life into it. Now as some read this they may think it is wrong, and dishonest. While yes if you take someone else's work and then put your name on it changing nothing about it, that is dishonest. However that is not what Austin is talking about. He is talking about taking a piece of art or an idea and using it as inspiration, putting your own spin on it, combining it with another piece of work. Another good piece of advice that Austin gave in this book was to always have some sort of piece of paper with you. You never know what might inspire you as you go through your day or walking around or shopping for toilet paper. And when you see it you don't want to forget how it inspired you or what ideas you start to get because of it. So it is always a good idea to have something with you so that you can just sketch those ideas down and save them for later to work on more. This book is filled with many great pieces of advice that will open the eyes to many about how to be creative.