Practical and Technical Skills

After studying Media for 4 years, I have learnt to use a number of equipment and software successfully.
I can successfully use an SLR camera in manual mode, and continue to improve this skill at home with my own SLR camera that I bought in the summer holidays. I am learning how to take good pictures of different subjects from practising this at home, my favourite subjects at the moment are insects and flowers. I am also trying to improve my editing techniques on Photoshop Elements 8, where I am learning to change the levels to improve the tonal pallette, to sharpen the image effectively, to use the contrast and brightening features, etc to make my image the best it can possibly be. I can also print off contact sheets to show the amount of shots I have taken and to demonstrate the different types of photography I am experimenting with.
I have also learnt how to take pictures with pin-hole and 35mm film cameras, and then enlarge and print the image using the dark room. I can check the images are in focus, and I understand the burn and dodge features that photographers use to improve their images. I also tend to print test sheets before printing properly, so I know whether to add any magenta and how long to expose the image for.
I can use a mixing board to host my own radio show, as I demonstrated earlier in the year with my team, Kirstin and Arti. We had to plan, script and perfom our own 30 minute radio show, trying to make it flow as much as possible and making it sound exciting and professional. We created our own feature for this radio show and faded music in and out of each other successfully. We also used two pieces of software, called SoundBooth and Logic Pro, the latter being on which we recorded our own 15 minute demos of popular radio stations so that we understood the differences between them.
I can successfully use a digital camcorder, remembering to stripe the tape beforehand. I can use a range of camera shots and angles to make the film look interesting and to keep the audience hooked. I can then import the film into Final Cut Pro to edit it together and make it look professional.
I also used a piece of software called GarageBand to create our own pieces of music for our Music Video Project, where we had to film a music video to a piece of music we had created ourselves. I successfully managed to cut the beats to the music and keep it in a 4/4 beat.