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.