Interview time:

Questions:

Where did you first discover the play?

What drew you to the play?

Were there any worries about taking on a play about such a dark topic?

Were there any difficulties with any of the props and costumes in a show with so much blood?

Were there any new talent this year?

What was your favorite moment backstage?

How did the cast work together?

How does the audience influence a show?

Were there any standout stars this year?


Write Up:

Set in the world of the Iraq war, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo tells the story of Kev and Tom, both dealing with the outcomes of war. Tom, who’s hand was chewed off by a tiger, is trying to recover a golden toilet seat in order to sell it to create a better life for himself. Meanwhile Kev is hallucinating after shooting the tiger who attacked Tom’s hand. Both funny and touching, the show quickly drew the audience, with much of  credit due to the amazing cast and crew. 

The cast of seventeen did a superb job creating a fantastic show, even with only six weeks (compared to the usual eight) between casting and showtime. The crew had their work cut out for themselves as well. The show, being set in war, was filled with blood and gore. The crew took on the challenge of creating these moments.

With an superb story, amazing cast, and fantastic crew Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was a score.

Another Photo Assignment:

Overall I believe the photos demonstrate the criteria well. I tried to shoot from interesting angles to avoid the same usual shots. I used both long and short depths of field. My goal to get photos of people, both alone, in small groups, and in big groups, along with things in the school. I also attempted to not only get photos of people posing, but also people acting natural. All in all, I think the photos display a wide range of angles and distances, but all reflect the school.

Photography video notes
ISO- IOS is the light sensitivity and how much light required. Lower numbers produce bolder colors and less noise, while higher numbers produce duller colors and more noise. The IOS should be at 400 or less to work well. In digital cameras, it produces a artificial boost of signal. 

Shutter speed- The shutter speed is the length of time light hits recording media. Faster shutter speed means more light and capture faster objects. Use 1/60 or higher for people to avoid blurriness, 1/500 for moving objects, and bulb to keep the shutter open as long as you want.

Aperture- Aperture is the size of the lens opening. The wider it is the more light is let in and the less time is required to take the picture. The depth of focus runs parallel to the sensor. The thickness depends on the aperture size, the wider the thinner depth of focus. It is measured in f-stops. The lower the f number the higher the opening.

exposure- Exposure is the amount of light that falls on the media (camera). This is determined by the shutter speed and aperture.

Photos Round One:

The First Assignment:

When I was registering for classes, yearbook was not the first one that came to mind. But then I realized what a great opportunity it would be. The yearbook is something I look forward to every year, but have never worked on before. The yearbook at my last school was really hard to be a part of and I was not able to participate even though I wanted to. I hope to be able to bring some new ideas to the book. I really enjoy taking pictures and design and think I can contribute to that section. I hope to be able to take pictures for the group and design the pages. I also hope to learn more about layout and graphic design. I think that the key aspects to something like this is the photos and layout but also the quality. The photos can be great but if they are put on a boring or distracting background they lose that quality. Disagreements and people who do not live up to their responsibilities can also stand in the way of a good product. In the end the success of the group will be determined by the product that is put out. If everyone looks at it and feels good about it then it was done well. Personally, I will measure how I did based on how the yearbook looks at the end and how well I feel I contributed. As long as I do the best I can I will consider it a success. I want to learn more about publication and design from this class. I think that these are things I will learn just from being in class and doing the book. Both of the things I want to learn about are more experienced based so I think just working on my assignments will help me accomplish that. I hope to develop my abilities in taking better composed photos and understand graphic design better. 

The article author argues that the creative process is handled the same way a scientific experiment is. It says that originality is actually just combinations of things the that the person has seen and experienced. Those who are more creative have more flexibility of mind and trust their own intuition better than those who are less creative. Overall I agree with these statements. Those who are creative see things differently and create things from the things they have seen and re-imagined. Creative people usually also trust themselves more. It is not so much a point of confidence but the ability to see how they could benefit from anything, even if things go wrong. 

One example I have is a project I had to do last year. I had to make a visual representation of an ethnic group in an area. I first did research about the topic. I then listed all the important things I found. At first it was hard to decide what to do to represent all the ideas. But after multiple drafts I figured out a way to depict what I found and eventually created something I thought looked really good. 

Video explanations:

Portraits Page Creation

• upload photos to the image library first
• proofread to see that all names are correct, nobody is missing (name, grade)
• click "Go To" if you need to fix a name or grade, or other information; remember to click "Apply Changes"
• To choose a template for the portraits sections: (1) Select the starting page of the portrait section, for example, Faculty. (2) Click the "Designs" tab. (3) Drag and drop the template to the page and repeat the process.
• You CAN customize your portraits pages - ASIJ did this last year
• To Automatically insert all portraits from a section (ie) Grade 9, do the following: (1) Select the "Flow" tab. (2) Choose the grade or portrait section. (3) Choose how names should appear. (4) Click the "Flow" button. *You may have a box appear that tells you to click "Yes" to continue the flow to the next page. (5) Edit and customize. 
• Use the "Need Help" button if necessary.

Page Designer

• Create menu -> Page Designer
• Predesigned designs or you can customize
• You can easily change the design
• To add photos, click the images tab, can crop and resize your images
• add backgrounds -> clip art section; drag and drop
• toolbar -> advanced text -> highlight texts to change font, size and color
• Undo button, Spell check

Image Library

• Albums and subalbums
• can rotate and tag photos
• red exclamation point - missing information - tag people in photo
• once the image is used in the yearbook, a green checkmark will appear
• can keep track of how many times people appear in the yearbook (coverage report)

Image Effects

• Format to format photos 
• Formatting for basic effects(outline image, shadow, transparency and tint, rotate image, crop and image shape)
• For other effects, format -> effects (red eye removal, cut out background, selective color, color tones like black and white and sepia, shadows, glow)
• Cut out background to have just part of the photo (like a person) in the shot
• Selective color to make most of the picture black and white, except a certain part or color

Page Designer Text (Training Video)

This video describes:

Special effects with text like wrap text, headers, captions etc.

When creating a caption:

If you use the template the caption box is already there for you, because it is part of the template, but it isn't that hard to make a new text box if there isn't one already.

Using the format tab can give you options with the caption boxes, color, font, size, spacing etc

When using text wrap:

Using text wrap can create flare and add a unique visual effect to the yearbook. When using text wrap, select text box, then format tab, then text wrap. Basically you select a picture to match the text, but keep in mind that the picture you select should have no background in order for the text to wrap around the image.

Other options:

Some other options are arc text, circle, or drop shadow text to make headlines more dynamic. You can use the effects menu to play with changes of the drop shadow like size or angle of shadow.