ouryushanzhou-blog

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Wildlife photographer of the year 2016

Our course started with a exhibition day in London. I went to the NHM Wildlife Photographer of the Year, which is host by Natural History Museum.

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Filming Production in the Wollaton Park

I always feel more comfortable with still image rather than recording the movement. This week, we get a project to make a three-minute filming of Wollaton Park in Nottingham, which is a deer park and home of Wollaton Hall. So many things such as  an initial story , idea , or commission, through screenwriting , casting , shooting, sound recording and reproduction , editing , and screening the finished product need to be done in one week. It a different task for me as a beginner of filming making. In some way, the more a project scares you, the more that probably means it’s worth doing.” That works for me in this week. So all that stuff does dictate a certain amount of anxiety, a certain amount of pain.But I also think there's something to be said for the sheer joy of making a filming. Being in the Wollaton Park and trying to catch the beauty of it,  you just need to make something without any real worry about what anyone's going to think of it, outside of yourself. It can be simple experience but a constant struggle.

There are some photo taken in the Wollaton Park for the inspiration of filming.

( A winter day in Wollaton Park, Dec 2016)

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How to make a butterfly specimen？

Making a butterfly collection is one of the best methods to learning about them.Current specimens collections of the oldest butterfly species in the museums are from the 1700s, and also cover the extinct species. Until now, you still can enjoy a various of butterfly specimens collection in museums.To put it succinctly, natural history collections – whether seen by the public or not – are invaluable. Natural history collections form the basis for studies of taxonomy and systematics, and the data from those collection is available to more people through organisations such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility for scientific research and others.

( Butterfly specimens collection from Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Nov 2016 )

For my research poster, I described a simple process of making a real butterfly specimen.  Since butterflies are delicate, the mounting process must be done carefully and with patience. The requirement of field collection can be easily accessed and it only involve some basic process such as relaxing, pinning and drying. It is simple and easy to do, so why not have your own collection?

(Do drying process when making a butterfly specimen in the studio, Nov 2016 )

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How much chocolate is in your biscuit bar?

This week we continued with image analysis, digital image processing is becoming a tremendous tool for analyzing image data in all areas of natural science and investigates complex scientific problems. To have a well understanding of it, we had a fascinating project that use ImageJ and Adobe Photoshop to process and identify digital image. We were free to choose a subject that we are interested in. So, our team decided to investigate the cover chocolate content in the biscuit bar from two different brands: KitKat and Choc Attack.

(Methodology of Image analysis Project, Nov 2016)

We had three cross-section images taken from each subject. Extra parts caused by different shooting angle were clipped in Photoshop. ImageJ was used to adjust threshold to define and calculated the whole area and chocolate area properly. After that, we had our result as below:

 The result indicate there is no significant difference between chocolate content in Choc Attack and Kit Kat. We also compared with their claim, chocolate bars from the two companies bots claim to be more than 65% chocolate. But from our results, the percentages of chocolate were around 50%. Is the companies lie to us or is our measure not accurate enough? That’s a question.

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Hyde Park, London

This week we started with a project that aims to investigate the impact on the environment. Each year, it is estimated that well over half the UK population  visit the urban green spaces like city parks for more than 2.5 billion times. We know that people come to city park for relaxing, but what dose it mean to the environment. So I choose Hyde Park, which is one of the largest parks in London and one of its Royal Parks, to investigate the positive and negative impacts. Thanks to this project, I spend a lovely weekends for enjoying view of the park.

(View from Hyde Park, Nov 2016) 

By taking a walking in Hyde Park, I found that there is a terrific variety of wildlife, the most visible of which is the birdlife. They also have a collection of waterfowl from around the world.

With more reference I searched, I found city park many important environmental benefits to urban areas. For instance it can help to redress this imbalance caused by  ‘heat island effect’, and it also can cooling of air and the absorption of atmospheric pollutants. But there are still a number of negative issues such as potential harm to the local ecosystem caused by feeding birds. Anyway, there is no doubt that city park has a important meaning in instructing the benign development of urban environment.

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Behind the Museum

Our school offer us a a trip to Oxford University Museum of Natural History this week. We always enjoy the incredible collections of a museum without realizing how difficult the museum's archives and records management service is.

(Bone specimens collection from Oxford University Museum, Nov 2016  )

(Miniature Lives Magnified, Oxford University Museum )

After we went in their studio behind the museum. We found that they are using  the digital microscope to shows the enlarged image on a computer screen.In the bright Museum spotlights, visitors could make out the amazing range of their colours. Beside that, data gained from those images can be used for further scientific research such as investigation of effects of environmental change.

The mass digitisation of those insects collection has given museum scientists the opportunity to study these specimens in new ways.In addition to research carried out in the Museum, digitisation also allows anyone around the world to see the specimens via the Data Portal . It was a meaningful thing to do and need to be continued.  

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Biological photo-identification

Biological photo-identification has been applied in field research and data collection for application to provide distribution information, social structure, movement pattern and population parameter for decades. This techniques base on different natural body feature such as color, patterns and shape. In our Identification project, we used dichotomous keys to identify a specimen.  This is a great fun and is a key skill for being a professional wildlife photography.

(Female Theopropus elegan, specimens collection from studio, Nov 2016 )

My work was trying to determined a mantis down yo species or generic levels. I measured its body size, and take photos of eyes and wings in a smaller scale. According to its special color :  colorful orange and green wings and green and white exoskeletons and pattern, I quickly came to the conclusion. After that, to check the reliability and accuracy of the identification result, I check some academic documents by determining its source place. 

(Measuring process in biological photo-identification, Nov 2016)

Howver, the photo-identification maybe the best way to achieve the correct answer in short time and is a first-step to solve any basic problems before development more specific research and conservation. Addition to that, Photogr- aohic database is a great potential area in biological research, and it should be applied more widely and have longevity beyond the career of the originator.

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Image Analysis with Boots!

During this week, we focus on some basic image analysis process. We went a branch of Boots,  which is a pharmacy chain in the United Kingdom, and learned from their Dermo-Analyser service.In their centre, the staff can use specialist technology, a machine scans and then analyses the skin on different areas of the face to help determine different skin type. The factors include sun exposure, hydration and more. It's quick and simple, and even can remove tester’s make-up.

（Photography taken in Boots, Nov 2016）

(Dermo-Analyser service in Boots, Nov 2016)

Sometime, people ignore the significant of image analysis and don’t realize that it is closely related to our daily life. You can have various kinds of information through your photography even a single one.In fact, digital data is everywhere, and images obviously are one of the most important category among the available data. And it will accelerate the ongoing research in digital humanities.

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Preparing for Design Project

The design project is our first project to go through in Applied Digital Imaging module. A magazines layout with 7 images was required to. Before the project starting, we had some training to page layout techniques and how to place images and text into an effective and pleasing design. During this week, as our course introduction InDesign to us, a front cover that can present the university life is required to be designed to improve our skills.Here is my work. 

(Front Cover, Oct 2016)

As we all know, a successfully designed book cover will convey the tone of your book, will whisper hints without giving it all away, and will excite readers into actually opening up the book and reading.  Apparently, my work fails to reflect a perspective of university life rather than to appear the life of a butterfly. It is important to decide on the message you want to send, before you get started on creating a brief for a cover design, or before starting to design one yourself. Another mistake for this front cover is that the sub title is not clear to recognize. As a successful design, the text must be legible.And not only that, it should be attractive and inviting.  White type on a dark background could be effective and attention-grabbing but not on a light background . And it can make smaller type (especially serif fonts) become more indecipherable.  In addition to that, black and white are always solid choices for subtitles or other smaller text, but a magazine cover’s bigger, bolder text elements are a great place to inject some serious color. However, designing a magazine cover is a pretty challenging task. And there are so many things need to be noticed.

Hope you can learn something from my mistaken and hope that we progress together ：）

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Editing Week

Since getting preliminary understanding of physically taking photographs, we are going to learn how to enhance and utilise them.  I used to  Photoshop to make all of my collages and graphics, since it's a lot harder on other programs. If it's a photo, I just mess around with the levels and the curves as well as the other basics. However, this course bring me a new experience of other adobe software such as Illustrator, Lightroom and Indesign. Especially, I found that Lightroom has some fantastical function.

(Original photography from course example)

(edited photography by Lightroom)

Our tutor gave us a landscape photography with a heavy fog, and a few easy steps is done to provides a great combination of visual impact with sharp detail. In addition to that, there is a little tip I found that may be helpful for you. In Lightroom , there's an import button for filters that makes editing super easy. You can just use Google “Lightroom presets” to give you quick and easy edited photos without too much effort. It's like downloading Photoshop fonts or stamps and everything is well set. As we know,  editing the lighting with the white balance, selective colouring, brightness and etc is quite different for beginner to control.  However, those features could pretty much be found anywhere. 

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Start from here

I am GuaGua, a student from the MSc course in the university of Nottingham. I studied Geograophy for my undergraduate course and now I come back as a new photographer. Every story has an end, but in life, every ending is just a new beginning. 

Before this course,  I took private lessons in painting from a young age and design some poster for living but hardly have the photography skill. Now, slowly I began to use cameras and then think about what it was that was going on. and I'm convinced that technology and art go together. 

During those two weeks, we went to Twycross Zoo to complete some magazine task. Having spent most of time to enjoy the nature and its’ creators, and it never let you down ! I look forward to seeing where this year takes me!

Oriental small-clawed otters from Twycross Zoo 

To end up with a book extract I appreciate: 

“I mean, photography is all right if you don’t mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralyzed cyclops—for a split second. But that's not what it’s like to live in the world, or to convey the experience of living in the world。”－David Hockney