Senior Project #20

Time spent: 6 (or 24) hours

Total time: 35 (or 53) hours

The final part of our project was finally completed yesterday at Relay for Life. Despite the cold weather, the event ran really smoothly, and everybody there had a lot of fun. Our group stayed at the team tent to sell our t-shirts - we sold about 30, which isn't too bad. We'll be continuing to sell at school so that we can pay Brendan back. I wasn't able to help out much with sales, since I was running around doing my own thing for the Luminaria Ceremony that I was going to run later in the day, but I tried to help and check how the group was doing as much as possible. Either way, participating at Relay this year was a little stressful, but definitely worth the hard work, because 100% of it paid off. The whole event ended up raising about $35,000.

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That's the end of the volunteering portion of my Senior Project, and I'm happy to say that I learned a lot more than I thought I would. Building our project from the ground up made me realize how creative the group and I were, and how hard-working and diligent all of us were to make a final product that we're all extremely proud of. Our mentoring obviously gave us some great insight on photography, editing, and technological skills, but the best part of this Senior Project for me was interviewing all of the survivors. Their journeys are all really inspiring and taught me a lot about how to just live my life. I especially enjoyed interviewing all of my teachers (Mrs. Yee, Mr. Arias, Mr. Jordan) because we got to know the personal sides of them, and it really made me appreciate their hard work and their contributions to the school and the community that much more. Not only did we learn some life lessons, but all of us expanded our interpersonal skills through the interviews, and Clarissa and I got to work on our writing from the biographies as well. All-in-all, it was just a good experience, and I have no regrets putting ourselves through all the hard work and stress.

Senior Project #19

Time spent: 1 hour

Total time: 29 hours

We had our final interview today with one of the biology teachers at El Camino, David Jordan. One of the things I found most touching about talking to him was when he told us that he had never told any other students that he had cancer. The rest of his interview went really well, too. One of the things he emphasized most was that he just wanted to do things that he loves and have fun throughout his life, and that is a lot of why he's a teacher. One of the downsides for him, though, was that whenever he would feel a pain in his leg, or his neck or anywhere else, he would automatically feel paranoid that it might be cancer; he still has trouble letting go of the fear, but overall he's positive about his cancer journey because it made him appreciate life a lot more.

The photoshoot went smoothly as well. We had a little trouble finding a good spot to shoot him inside his classroom, but he all liked the science-y feel of his aquariums and tanks. We got to use a lot of different angles, and overall the photos came out nicely.

Mr. Jordan's interview was a good way to end off our work on the website. He shared a lot off his positive vibe and just gave some good all-around advice, so we all left feeling happy. The only thing we have left to do now is pick up our t-shirts to sell at Relay, and then participate at the event on Saturday.

Senior Project #18

Time spent: 0 hours

Total time: 28 hours

Today, I met with Mrs. Oh, my classmate Esther Oh's mom. We were supposed to interview her right after school, but Clarissa had all of her lighting equipment, Nick had detention, and Emily and I aren't ready with cameras. It was just a miscommunication amongst the group, so we have to make sure it doesn't happen again. I felt bad because she came to school for us, but we weren't able to accomodate her. Instead of totally skipping out on the interview, Emily and I met her in her car and apologized. She said it was okay and that she was busy all next week, so we just invited her to come to Relay, and maybe we would be able to photograph and interview her there. I think I handled the situation professionally, but it was still unforgiveable. Next time, we have to make sure that everyone is able to fulfill their tasks.

Senior Project #17

Time spent: 2 hours
Total time: 30 hours

Clarissa, Brendan, Nick and I met at my house to finish our "About" photoshoot on the website. The setup was normal; Clarissa's lights with a white sheet as a background. The shoot was pretty easy. There was adequate lighting, so all we had to do was point and shoot, then edit. Overall, the results are pretty nice.

Nick and Brendan are making good progress with the website. I gave Nick some pointers on some basic design things, since I have some experience and read a few books on design. Overall, it looks nice and clean. The link to the website is right here. Meanwhile, I finished writing the biographies of the survivors for the page. They can also be found in the "Survivors" tab of the website. I had a hard time writing Mrs. Werner's bio, since she didn't say much, but it came out fine.

Clarissa set up an interview tomorrow with Mr. Jordan. I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say. Senior Project should be over pretty soon, but there's still a lot we have to do. Clarissa and I are planning to rent lights for Relay for Life. We want to shoot all of the survivors and have people donate money to have their pictures taken, then send prints to their homes. After that, we should be done with the volunteering portion of our project. After this, all I have to do is finalize my research paper draft and finish all the paperwork. When everything is totally done, I'll make a post summarizing my whole experience with Senior Project.

Senior Project #16

Time spent: 1 hour
Total time: 28 hours

Today, Nick and I visited T-Shirt Fever in Colma to have our t-shirts made. We were hoping to possibly get a donation or a discount on the shirts, since El Camino is a repeating customer. We had a donation letter too. Sadly, he refused - and we also have to pay a rush fee. Nick pointed out that we forgot to mention that the donation would be tax-deductible. That was both our fault. Our total came out to about $749, and we paid about $400 as a down payment. The money came from Brendan, who we plan to pay back using the money we make from shirt sales.

On the way back, Nick and I were contemplating whether we wanted to keep the original order of 100 or to lower it down to 50. Emily, Clarissa, and Brendan wanted to keep it at 100, so that's what we're doing. I'm a little scared that we might not make enough sales to break even, let alone pay Brendan back, so we really have to push this as our biggest fundraiser. If making money doesn't work out, I don't mind working some of the money off in the summer to pay Brendan back. We're all responsible for this project.

It's unfortunate that we had to pay so much for these shirts, but this is our senior project, and it's for a good cause. We're trying to do all we can in what little time we have to accomplish all of our goals. I wish we knew earlier whether Relay for Life was going to get pushed back or not. We eased up a little, thinking it might be postponed to July due to lack of participation, but the committee decided to keep it the same date. That means we have roughly three weeks to pull all of this off. I'm sure we can do it.

Senior Project #15

Time spent: 2 hours

Total time: 27 hours

I finally got around to editing the photos that I took at our first session with Andy. I tried to use a variety of techniques, including high contrast, skin softening, dual tone, and more. There was a lot I could do, but overall I didn't want to do any editing that was too heavy. I know Photoshop and Lightroom pretty well, but re-learning the basics is probably the best way to do this. I usually use Photoshop for design, so it's different for photography. Here are the photos:

Senior Project #14

Time spent: 2 hours
Total time: 25 hours


Clarissa and I drove down to Stanford University again to meet up with our mentor, Andy. He was with Jiaomin again, but she was only observing. We met up in the conference room again to go over some editing techniques. Most of the things that he showed us were on Lightroom. As he was navigating through it, I realized that I'm really under-utilizing the cataloging function of Lightroom; I only use it for the editing portion. I think that's fine, though. I organize my files pretty well.

Good thing Jason Lee went over the basics of Lightroom before we met with Andy. He went into a lot of detail on the technical aspects of Lightroom, which is a good thing. If you really get the hang of Lightroom, it helps to know the "algorithms," but of course, Clarissa and I aren't there yet. Either way, Andy showed us a lot of before-and-after pictures of photos he edited on Photoshop and Lightroom, and I realized how versatile the tools are. He transforms his photos into really intriguing things. I think that hardest thing for me so far is to come up with a vision of how I want a photo to look like, both when I'm shooting and when I'm editing. I have decent experience with both photography and photo editing programs, so I just need to know how to execute the techniques.


Clarissa got an overview on how layers work in Photoshop, and I learned more about a few tools that I don't use often. Overall, it was a good learning experience.


Andy also reminded me to send him fully edited pictures from the shoot we did the last time we met. I'll email them to him and post them here whenever I finish.