Possible Pictures of the Content Page

Dear blogger,

Well, I came back a little earlier than expected. That actually gives me time to work on my school work before school starts back up again next year. Before I get to that work though, there is something I need to share.

During my trip, my parents took us to The Grand Canyon in Arizona. The Canyons were amazing, but the real point I want to make is that there were also many MANY people who decided to bring their dogs to hike with them. This gave me an opportunity to get some work done for this project.

While I was hiking some of the trails, if I came across an owner with their dog, I would ask if I could take a picture of their furry friend. Yes, I got permission from all of the owners first before taking any pictures. All of them let me take photos of their pet, most even got their dog to sit for me which was really nice. 

Now, these pictures won't be for the featured article. This would be a smaller picture on the cover or on the table of contents. Why did I take so many then? For three reasons. One was because they were just so cute! The second was so that I could have a variety of pictures to choose from if I wanted to switch out a picture in favor of another one. The third reason was that I wondered if Bailey wanted to use some of them. Her magazine issue is very dog oriented where mine is general pet and animal oriented. Plus, now you get to see a bunch of cute dog pictures!

So here are some of the highlights of the pictures that I took over the trip (with some added commentary).

I know I'm most likely not going to use this one, but I just thought that it was so silly how he came out. Maybe if I have a little section for like a picture contest in the content page, then I might use it. But for now, this is probably my personal favorite out of the batch and will probably be nothing more than that. 

I did manage to snag a nice shot of this dog eventually. I'm not sure if I'm going to use this picture specifically, but it is here incase I want to use it.

Now I'm putting the commentary for these two pictures together because they are so similar. I feel like I would rather use the bottom one over the top one because of the owner in the back. On the top one, the owner is close to the dog which would mean I would need to crop some of the background out. The bottom one however has the owner far away where I can just use a simple crop tool to take him out while still retaining most of the background. I still really like both shots though. I do think that This dog will make it in because of how cool he looks and the bandana (I mean come on! It's so cute and suits the dog and location!).

This one is super cute! I kind of like having a Dalmatian in the magazine because they are such cool dogs. I will need to find a way to take out the leash though because it sticks out like a sore thumb in this picture.

This one was just super excited and I love her so much! For the picture itself, I do like the position the dog is in. I feel like I could crop out the background and make it look like the dog is peeping into one of the pages. I think that would be pretty cool.

I find this shot to be also really nice. Definitely need to crop out the owner in the back, but I could make this one work.

So I know this isn't a shot I'm going to use in the magazine, but I just wanted to add this one into the blog because I find that it's memories to look back on... I guess. While I was trying to get a picture of this dog, he thought I was coming up to pet him and smacked the phone as he licked my hand. He didn't get hurt, my phone was fine, and eventually his owners got him to calm down. We laughed for a bit, and then I got some pictures in of his friend because no mater how much this dog calmed down, he was still too jumpy for the camera. I still love you though.

As much as I love this dog to death, I don't think I'm going to use any of his pictures. His poses aren't bad, it's the leashes and accessories the owners had. They kept getting in the shot and were just distracting. Sure, I could crop out the background, but the leash accessory is right on top of the dog. I would need to cut out some of the dog if I wanted to use this picture. If I left them in, they would be very distracting and look unprofessional.

This one over here is one I just can't use. Sure the dog looks adorable, but the two leashes are overlapping him and I don't think I can edit that out without making the picture look bad. Sorry friend of doggo who smacked my phone, I love you, but your pictures are just not usable for this project.

I know this isn't a dog, but this raven... crow..., I'll need to do some more research to tell what type of species this bird is, was giving me some excellent pictures. It followed us a lot which gave me some awesome photo opportunities. I blame my brother for throwing a Bissli chip at it. Let it be known that I did not feed the animals, that was all my brother's doing. I just took advantage of the situation.

That being said, I did get some beautiful scenic shots of this bird on the canyon. Just look at that. This one is most likely going to be in the table of contents.

I did also manage to get some action shots, but I don't think I'm going to be able to use them because the tips of the bird's wings and the background came out blurry.

If I'm going to crop the background for any of the bird shots, I'm going to use this shot. The background isn't mixing with the bird to much making it easier on me to crop him out. Also the position is fabulous.

Ok, so this was the only owner who asked me what the pictures were for and the only one to have both him and his dog in the shot. I love this picture except for one thing... the dude standing in the back. I mean come on man! The dog is actually looking in my direction for once and the dude in the back just killed any chance of a background shot. I could still crop the upper background out, but dang would that have been a cool shot if it wasn't for him in the background.

I did get some pictures without the guy in the background, but the dog just wouldn't look in my direction for some reason. This was the best shot out of the bunch without the guy in the back.

I really like this shot. However, I think it will be hard to crop out the people in the back. I also think it will be very hard to take out the background if I wanted to because of the dog's fluffy fur, especially on the top of it's head. This one is on my maybe list.

Same commentary as the picture above, but the dog is looking in a different direction which is nice. I also think the people may be easier to crop out in this one because the shoes of the closes one is somewhat farther from the dog.

This adorable thing with fluff was the tiniest dog on the entire canyon. So cute! This one would definitely need to have the background cropped because her owners are standing right behind her. This one is also on my maybe list.

The most well behaved dog I've seen on the entire trip. But I know I can't use this one unless I want to crop out the background and the owner. The owner is just too close to the dog in a very distracting neon jacket. I do like how the dog's wrap almost matches the owner's pants. I just wanted to point that out.

Now these aren't all the pictures I took, these are just some highlights. A lot of pictures do have reoccurring problems. The main one is stuff in the background. While some it doesn't really matter sometimes, a lot of the times it can be very distracting and look nonprofessional. 

I haven't decided which pictures I'm going to use, but I'm glad that I have an arsenal of them so that if one doesn't work out, I have two more runner ups. Another factor is that I still have one more pet I want to get a picture of for the content page. That pet is my own beta fish, Orion. I don't have Orion right now as I am writing this blog. We gave him to a family friend before we left on our trip so that he was taken care of. Once I get him back, I'm sure to take plenty of pictures to show you guys.

My plan right now is to work on the article, get the interviews completed, and take some pictures for the cover and featured article. I won't get all of that done before school starts, so I'm just going to be working on the article for now. So see you guys then and have a Happy New Year (SEE YA 2020!).

Scheduling Problems and Picture Ideas

Dear Blogger,

So I have two main things I want to talk about. One is scheduling problems and the other is drawing ideas for pictures. I'm going to start with my drawing ideas just because it's a lot shorter than the next topic. 

Remember in the last blog post I said that my friend Bailey may take one or two pictures for my magazine? Well, I had to draw some ideas of the shots I want. I ended up with drawing five different shots. Three of them are with the owner and their cat in the same shot and two of them are just the cat (just in case the owner doesn't want to have their picture taken). Here are the pictures I drew. Please don't judge my drawing abilities. 

Now that that's out of the way, lets talk about some issues I have with scheduling. I stated that getting pictures and interviews would be very hard because the people who I want to interview and get pictures of their pets are covidiots (Covidiot: refers to a person who goes into public places and mingle with people without any precautions despite the entire world still being in a corona virus pandemic). For me, the initial problem was that my parents would be very hesitant with letting me go near those people in fear of contracting the virus. I said that my solution would be to keep my distance as much as possible and take outdoor shots where I am at a distance away. Welp... let's just say that this may be out the window until next year.

As I was going to ask my mother yesterday if I could possibly get an interview and a few pictures with these people, I overheard a conversation that somehow the elderly couple pissed her off. I already knew it was going to take some convincing, but now there was no way of convincing her to let me interview and take pictures. What about the other group? The family with a cat. Well... I didn't know this until today, but my mother is also annoyed with them. I'm not going to go into the details on this one, but let's just leave it at they have their own little circle of friends. 

You may be asking, why don't I ask my father to take me? The main reason is that he's very busy with work most of the time. When he isn't busy working, he's either watching fútbol (soccer to my fellow Americans), eating, or doing more work on the side. When he is not busy, it is much too late or dark to do anything because it gets dark around 6:30 pm where I am. I'm sure he would be happy to take me to where I need to go, but I don't think it will work with the owners and their pets. They too have busy lives.

At this point, I will need to wait until next year until I can possibly get pictures and interviews from those people. I don't really have other people that I can interview or get pictures of because they don't have pets.

But but but!!! I'm going to use this to my advantage. Now that I know that I won't be able to get interviews or pictures this year, I will use whatever time I have left to write the article. This way, I'm not wasting time or effort into something that is never going to happen. I can also get a picture of my fish for the table of contents. Too bad Orion (my fish) isn't going to get an article of his own. Eh... that's ok, at least he gets a picture somewhere in the magazine. This will throw a wrench in my schedule next year; but for now, I'm going to worry about my article's contents and start creating the document for my magazine.

Creating a Schedule

So, I've tried to make most of my blog posts similar to diary entries, but I don't think they give off that effect. It mainly because I had a set of things I needed to cover in those blog posts for a grade. This is not the case anymore. From this blog on, it's going to be full blown diary entries. Get ready for some ranting. So without further ado...

Dear Blogger,

This class just became very independent. We are now making our own schedules and putting our projects together. Bailey and I already have our concepts for our magazines. There is one more thing that we need to talk about together, but I'll talk about that later in this blog. So now, I need to create a schedule for my magazine project.

This schedule is going to need to include picture/interview dates, editing, article writing time, and other things for the magazine. So far, I think the hardest thing will be to get a date for the pictures and interviews. I already have people, with pets, that I want to get the pictures and interviews from. There is one problem though... they are covidiots. 

What do I mean by covidiots? They go out and mingle with other people multiple times a week without any precautions. It's kind of like they forget there is a global pandemic going on. One of them is a family of four with a pet cat. They always have someone new at their house just hanging out. I know this because I'm neighbors with them and see a new car in their driveway almost everyday. The other is an elderly couple with three adorable doggos (dogs). They are very nice, but they keep on going out and hanging with their friends in crowded public areas without a care in the world. Now, I'm ok with meeting these people, while wearing my mask and staying at a distance from them; It's my parents that won't let me near them. 

I get the concern. I know that my family is at high risk. My mother and brother both have moderate to sever asthma and my father has already been through two heart attacks and extensive surgery. Because of this, I am the most cautious out of all my friends when it comes to this stupid virus. This has honestly taken a toll on me. I can't really hang out with anyone during school and it sucks to have to decline invitations from my friends. I think what gets me ticked off the most is when it interferes with my school work. My school has had it's fair share of quarantines and I was unfortunately one of the first. I didn't have COVID, but I still had to do classes from home for two weeks. I have no idea how students do it every single day, but it was grueling. I couldn't learn anything! You better believe I was upset at the person who had COVID and was sitting close enough to get me quarantined. 

Well... I went off on a tangent. I think that part of my frustration comes from the decisions of other people affecting my life. 

Anyway, I know I can get the interview from a phone call, but getting pictures are going to be dicey. I can try to convince my parents to let me have one day to take pictures of them, but it's a toss up to whether they will let me go or not. I need pictures regardless, so perhaps most of the shots will be outside and from a distance with the lens on max zoom.

Another thing I discussed was that maybe Bailey could take a picture or two for me. This would create a fail safe for me incase I couldn't get pictures of a few of the people. Of course I would credit her for her work and she won't be taking all of the pictures in my magazine. This means that I need to draw the baseline for the pictures. So I'll do a rough sketch of a few idea shots, with specific directions underneath (like the type of shot and angle). I'll put that in a different blog when I do it. 

There is one last thing that I need to think of when I'm creating this schedule, I won't be able to work on any school work during the holiday break. It's just not feasible with the plans my parents made. So everything I work on has to be before or after the break. That leaves me with about four weeks to get everything done.

With all these restrictions, I came up with this schedule:

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
	12/14 Writing this blog post!	12/15 Drawing the picture basis (Max 20 drawn pictures)	12/16 Create interview questions and start working on the article.	12/17 Try to get call interview/maybe pictures with the elderly couple and their dogs or the family and their cat.	12/18 I’m not sure because I’m going to be very busy helping my parents.	12/18 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!
12/19 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	12/20 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	12/21 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	12/22 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	12/23 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	12/24 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	12/25 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!
12/26 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	12/27 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	12/28 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	12/29 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	12/30 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	12/31 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	1/1 WHOOOOO!!!! SEE YA 2020!!!
1/2 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	1/3 HOLIDAY BREAK!!!	1/4   Back to school. Probably working on the article.	1/5 Probably still working on the article.	1/6 Finish article and at least have one interview by this point. Integrate the interview into the article.	1/7 Get the article into InDesign and get it to my liking.	1/8 Keep messing around with the program to get what I want.
1/9 Same as yesterday	1/10 Actually, get some pictures. (Even if it means being a prick to my parents about it)	1/11 Go again to get some pictures if yesterday doesn’t work.	1/12 If I have pictures, edit them in.	1/13 Keep editing	1/14 More editing	1/15 I guess just editing since everything else should be done by now.
1/16 Editing	1/17 Editing	1/18 Editing	1/19 Editing	1/20 Editing	1/21 Editing.	1/22 DUE DATE!!!!

Now, am I going to keep up with this schedule? Eh.... It really just depends. The important thing is that I have a schedule that I can go off of. So until the next blog I guess.

Storyboarding

Storyboarding isn't anything really new to me. In elementary school, I created very short stop motion animated Lego clips. In middle school, I created two animated music videos for a grade in my choir classes. Throughout high school I've had to plan and create giant posters for my MaST (Math and Science Technology) research. Heck, even for my Dungeons and Dragons campaign, that I dungeon master (aka the game master), I need to plan out the events that my players will interact with; or just completely ignore the entire plot with their stupidity.... The point is that I have had experience with storyboarding throughout my life.

Most of my storyboarding expertise comes from experimenting and playing around with ideas. After all, the best way to visualize your ideas is by drawing or writing them on a piece of paper. This way, you can see what needs to be changed or added to your overall concept. I'm not the only one who thinks this. According to James M. Higgins in his article, "Storyboard your way to success", he exclaims that, "Storyboarding is a structured exercise based on brainstorming. You can use it in all stages of the problem-solving process, but it's especially helpful for generating alternatives and choosing among them." By writing, drawing, or just planning out ideas, it can help elevate the creative process and work towards a better product. This is what I did when I first started to create my idea of the magazine layout. 

When we first started, we had to design our project. we had to plan out where all the pictures and text will go for each page. However, I did most of my planning on other papers before putting it down on the specific paper. Think of it as creating drafts for the draft. Things will change with each iteration of the project as I add or rewrite content. According to Higgins, "Storyboarding is flexible.... And it allows a group to generate a lot of ideas..."

After I created a few ideas, I talked with Bailey so that we could decide on an overall look to our magazines. We agreed with keeping things with circles in mind; because circles are the shape that makes things look friendly and kind, which is exactly what we want. Working with another person helped a lot. We were able to bounce ideas off of each other and come up with newer, and better, ones. 

I think the hardest part for both of us was deciding on the color scheme. Although I love to draw a lot, I am no artist. I suck when it comes to coloring and I don't know which colors go together. Unfortunately, Bailey is also not an artist. How did we work around this problem? Uh... We kind of just looked at other pet or animal related magazines and chose colors. We didn't copy the magazine's color scheme, we just got ideas from them. I think that will be our weakest point on our magazines though.

Other than that, Bailey and I made tons of progress in completing our concept. We now have an official name, "Claw Stars" and a basis for all the pages. We also have most of the fonts picked out and we even discussed where we were going to get our pictures and interviews for our magazines. It may not be completely finished, but the concept is very well put together. I think this is going to be great. 

Here is the storyboard for my four pages of my magazine:

 

Yeah... I know that it needs a lot more work, but I think this is a great first layout. I will put more details, such as what the pictures are going to be and article names, but that will be a bit later. For now, I need to work on getting pictures and interviews for the feature article.