Week 8

This lesson, me and the rest of my group spent half of the day finishing our final flyer design. I think our flyer was quite good, it had pictures of the cafe, pictures of the food made by some of the cafe's chefs, basic information on the cafe, a nice title and colours, the address and phone number of the cafe etc. Once we had completed the flyer, I had a look at my research report and thought about what i could add to it and decided that I would do some more work on it at home. Then I looked through my folder once again and analysed each page in my folder and annotated them to make clear what each page represented. After that, me and the rest of my group worked on our presentation for the orange tree cafe project using power point.

Week 7

This lesson, I started off by checking through my folder and looking at anything that needed to be put in or didn't belong there, then the teacher also called for me to have a look at my folder with me. I noted down what I needed to put in and what I needed to edit, things such as annotating my work, finishing unfinished work etc. Then I went back to my group and we talked to each other about what we had left to do, which was: Finish the leaflet, sort out our folders, get more pictures of the cafe etc.

I worked on the leaflet whilst the other to members of my group went to the cafe to take pictures, I told them to also take pictures of the outside shops next to the cafe, the front of the cafe and any of the chefs or customers of the cafe if possible.I thought about what I should write in the leaflet and which pictures to put in, when the rest of the group came back we uploaded the pictures of the cafe that they had taken and chose which ones were the best. Then we all worked on the leaflet together and did as much as we could, we decided using less writing would be better, because whenever we have received a leaflet we find that we usually just skip most of the writing and look at the pictures and headlines, do we knew our leaflet needed to be eye catching if it were to be good.

Week 6

This lesson, we looked at some pictures of food and put them into categories for which ones were good and which ones were bad. I based my decisions on the lighting on the pictures of food, once we Had finished sorting out the categories we discussed as a class what made the photos good and what made them bad.

(Food pictures, photo shop, took pictures of an orange (lighting kinda failed), took pictures of food, went to the cafe and took pictures, did more work on leaflet.)

I then had a look at our design for our draft and started on the real thing. I wanted to use the real title from the front of the actual cafe, so I looked for a picture of the actual cafe then I uploaded it onto photo shop to cut out the title using the magnetic lasso tool.Then I saved the cut out title and put it onto a word document so that I could make a flyer underneath the title.

We then tried to take pictures of an orange for our leaflet, we used light from the classroom window to help make it look  more naturual, however the lighting looked too bright on th, so that our pictures would have a better background and not be so bright, fourtunetly it worked better than the white card. After we had a few good pictures, we then used the same method ofe camera so we tried using blank cardboard to reflect some of the light away from the orange. But then I realised our leaflet was ment to be black so I suggested that we use black card instead of white photography that we used on the orange but this time took pictures of food made by the chefs from 'The orange tree cafe', food such as stir fried chicken, rice, bacon and salad wrap, vegetables etc. 

I went back to working on the leaflet after we had taken pictures of the food, I started uploading the pictures that we had taken onto my computer, then as a group we judged which ones we should use to put into our leaflet. Next week I am going to try and do more work on my folder and leaflet, making sure that most of my folder and group work is complete in time for our last lesson.

Hi Josh

Good blogging, you could develop some of your comments with even more detail now. Please try to keep up to date.

Week 4

This lesson, we discovered that one of the members of our group had decided to quit CRAM as a subject, which unfortunately meant we had one less pupil in our group and in our class so we realized that we would have to work much harder if we wish to keep up with our work. We started off by creating a draft for our 'Orange Tree Cafe' Flyer design, so as a group we discussed ideas for flyer design, I suggested that we each create our own individual draft design and then compared each others to decide on a final design. I tried to make mine quite  chic to go with the same style as the cafe and colorful enough to catch a pedestrians attention. We decided we should try and take the best traits of each flyer and put them all in a new flyer that we would design together. We made it quite simple with a lot of information and pictures of the cafe, and we used a lot of orange colors as well.

Once we had created our final flyer design, I chose to re-write my brief as a neater and longer copy to put into my folder, so i typed it up onto the computer and then checked through anything else that needed to be done this lesson, Then i thought that we should plan what we are going to do for the next lessons to make sure we keep up to date with our work. So I got the group together and asked for us to have a group planning discussion, so we wrote down all the things we had done including our flyer draft and re-writing our briefs, then we noted down everything we needed to accomplish and when we would do it.

Hi Josh

Your posting gets stronger as you go along as you start to describe your thinking and be more reflective about your work. Please try to keep up to date.

Week 3

This lesson, we started off by focusing on our blogs and research reports, to make sure we were keeping up to date with our home learning. We put all our completed work into our folders, then the teacher called us one by one to speak with us about how are research reports and blogs were going so far, and also checking and commenting on what we had in our folders.

We were then told about the Orange Tree Cafe, That our current project is based on. I wrote down a brief of what I should consider to take notes on or any useful information I should try to find out based on the cafe itself. Information such as: the menu, the address and phone number, the history, the employees, any special offers or meals of the day etc.

As a class we all went to visit the cafe, so that we could get a better look and understanding of the cafe with our own eyes. I examined the full style of the furniture and layout of the cafe and wrote down my opinions and first impressions of the inside of the cafe. Then I did the same for the menu and quickly wrote down all important facts that i would need for the future. Then we headed back to school, and in groups discussed how we were going to create an advert to promote the cafe and what sort of advert were we going to do. I suggested maybe a video for the website or to create a webpage ourselves, we continued to discuss and eventually just decided flyers would be the best option for  advertising the cafe.

Week 2

This lesson, we started off by getting into pairs and analyzing pictures of food on the internet and writing notes about what them such good pictures. Then we ventured off outside of the classroom, taking pictures of small objects where ever we could find them, using all sorts of angles and close ups, this was a great practical for taking pictures of objects, as we got to explore photography on objects all by ourselves which was fun.

Once we had practiced taking pictures of small objects in our pairs, we then took our own pictures of food that the teacher had provided for us. We used come white cardboard to help angle the light, making it more suitable for taking pictures of the food. We also tried to move the liquids about a bit to give a more ripple effect on the surface of the drinks, because it looked better than just stilled calm water, and we tried cutting some pieces of food slightly showing some of the insides of the food, which we believed also gave a greater effect to the photos.

After our practical work had been completed and posted onto google docs, we began to continue our work on our advertisement campaign research reports and working on our blogs. I think the days activities were very practical and fun for most of the class, it was a great way to explore food photography by ourselves instead of loads of listening to the teacher for once we were able to research the topic in pairs without any assistance.

Advertisement campaigns

This lesson, we rotated from media with Mr.Durran at Coleridge, to now doing photography with Mr.Hiend at Parkside. We began the lesson by looking at advertisements and  how they are presented to people. Adverts are usually shown on things that many people use daily such as: Television, the Internet, the radio, public buses, newspapers, posters etc. The purpose of advertisement is to raise awareness for something, mostly company's will use adverts. They use advertisements to try and sell their products to the public, things like food, sweets, movies, TV shows, toys, cars, perfume, shops etc. All have advertisements produced by the company's that manufacture those products.

After break, we looked at advertisement campaigns and began to study them. Using the Internet I looked for examples of advertisement campaign videos and found a quite a few, quite a lot were based upon global warming and healthy foods and top brands. I then made a table of three of the advertisement campaigns I had analysed, and wrote about them and their purpose.

In the afternoon, we got into groups of three, and using those groups we had to discuss how we would advertise a bag that Mr.Hiend had given us to advertise. I analysed the contents within the bag and the actual bag itself, noting down all the names of the items and compartments of the bag, to help give a more detailed description so that we could tell the buyer what they were actually buying. I then took a picture of all the items and compartments, then uploaded the photos. Using the notes i had made on the product, i labeled each photo to make sure people knew what they were looking at. Then i gave my notes to the other members of the group for them to price and use for the presentation.