OSC’s The Advocate – Photograph Submission

The Advocate is a school literary magazine that is created and edited by the students of “The Advocate” activity. I am not a part of this After School Activity, but they put up a contest for prose, poem and photography to help them with their “Monsoon Edition” magazine.

I am not really good with writing so hence I didn’t want to submit for Poem and Prose. A thing that struck me was the fact that this time they had photography also as a media to submit. I love taking photographs and editing them so I was kind of interested in submitting something this year. I have never really submitted any of my photography to any competition ever. So, I felt that this was a good chance for me to do something new.

The magazine is a “Monsoon Edition” and there was no specified theme for the submission. You could submit whatever you like. But I wanted my submission to relate to Monsoon since that might help the people at The Advocate.

I had taken a bunch of photos in Jaffna during last year’s Week Without Walls (an educational trip) which I was planning to submit. But I also took a bunch of photos of my surroundings which may relate to Monsoon. I had taken a picture of my desk where there was a book and a coffee mug which I really liked since during Monsoon Season people don’t really go outside and they stay inside home reading books and drinking some coffee or tea and that’s what I was trying to portray through that photo.

But then I didn’t really submit that right away because I had a month to make something better. So, whenever I’d go to school. It would rain a lot and I would use this time to take a lot of pictures of nature and everything which may relate to Monsoon. Finally, after going around and clicking a lot of photographs. I narrowed it down.

The first image that I decided to choose was a picture from my balcony of the landscape while it was raining like cats and dogs.

The image above as you can see is of bad quality and not as clear but I had ideas on how to take this image and improve on it. I put the picture into Adobe Photoshop and started to edit it right away. At first, I was just playing around with the adjustment settings and changing hues, brightness, etc. But then I had the idea that I could just eliminate the bottom part which seems almost completely dark and then duplicate the landscape part. Then, flip it around and rotate it and put it at the bottom to show sort of a reflection. Then I just used adjustment settings and played around with colors and this was the result I got.

I was very pleased with how the photo turned out to be and I decided to ask some of my friends for opinions. They also really loved the photo so hence I decided to send it to The Advocate.

But I also submitted another image of a chandelier which I took picture of during the Orientation Trip. I had edited it and I thought that maybe The Advocate can possibly use it as well in their magazine. So I decided to submit this photo as well.

Finally, I hope that my pictures can make it into the Magazine.

This post addresses the CAS outcomes:- LO1 Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth : Students are able to see themselves as individuals with various abilities and skills, of which some are
more developed than others, LO2 Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process : A new challenge may be an unfamiliar experience or an extension of an existing one. The newly acquired or developed skills may be shown through experiences that the student has not previously undertaken or through increased expertise in an established area and LO4 Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences : Students demonstrate regular involvement and active engagement in CAS.