Phones and computers have turned everybody into a photographer, a radio presenter and a film-maker. But a blurry, dark photo or a shaky video with loud wind noise tells nobody anything. Today you will learn to take a good photo, edit it, make it small enough to send, record and trim a voice note, and make a 30-second video about your community with your team.
Good jollof needs three stages. First you buy good ingredients: fresh tomatoes, not rotten ones. Then you prepare: wash, cut away the bad parts, cook. Finally you serve the right portion on the right plate. Nobody serves a whole pot to one person!
Media works the same way. You capture good raw material (a sharp, bright photo or clear sound). You edit it: crop, trim and cut away the bad parts. Then you export it at the right size for where it is going: small for WhatsApp, bigger for printing. And before you serve anybody's face to the world, you ask first.
Light should fall on your subject, not come from behind it. Stand with the window or the sun behind you. A person standing in front of a bright window becomes a dark shadow.
Hold the phone with two hands, elbows tucked in, or lean on a wall. Tap the screen where you want it sharp. Wipe the lens with a soft cloth first.
Imagine two lines across and two lines down. Put your subject on a line or where lines cross, not always in the dead centre. Most cameras can show these grid lines (look for "Grid" in the camera settings).
Before you photograph a person, ask: "May I take your photo? It is for my Tech Club project." If they say no, that is the end of it. For your projects, photograph places, objects and hands instead of faces.
| Format | Best for | Good to know |
|---|---|---|
| .JPG (JPEG) | Photos of real things: people, places, food. | Small files. Every time it is saved it loses a tiny bit of quality. |
| .PNG | Screenshots, logos, posters with text, pictures with see-through parts. | Very sharp, but photos saved as PNG are much bigger. |
| .HEIC | Photos from iPhones and some new phones. | Small and good quality, but some older computers can't open it. Save a JPG copy to share. |
Your turn: Naa took a screenshot of her Canva poster to send to the class group. Which format is best, and why?
| Word | What it does | Market example |
|---|---|---|
| Crop | Cuts away the edges you don't want. The picture shows less. | Cutting the stranger's elbow out of your photo of the stall. |
| Rotate | Turns the picture so it stands up straight. | Fixing a photo that came out sideways. |
| Resize | Makes the whole picture fewer pixels wide and high. It shows the same thing, just smaller. | Shrinking a big phone photo so it fits a web page. |
| Compress | Squeezes the file so it takes fewer megabytes, by throwing away detail your eyes hardly notice. | Making 20 photos small enough to send on a small data bundle. |
In Session 6 you learned that 1 MB is about 1,000 KB. Yaw wants to send 25 photos of the clean-up day to the club WhatsApp group. Each photo is 4 MB.
(a) How many MB will he send?
(b) If he compresses each photo to 300 KB first, about how many MB is that?
On a Windows 11 computer, open Sound Recorder from the Start menu (on a phone, use the voice recorder app). Plug in a headset with a microphone if you have one. Find a quiet corner, hold the microphone a hand's width from your mouth, press the red Record button, speak, and press Stop. Recordings are usually saved in Documents → Sound recordings.
Trimming means cutting off the silent or messy bits at the start and end ("Erm… is it on?"). Many phone recorders have a Trim or Edit button. Windows Sound Recorder cannot trim, so on the computer drag the recording into Clipchamp and cut it there.
A storyboard is a comic-strip plan of your video: one box per shot, with a quick sketch, what is said and how many seconds it lasts. Film-makers in Kumasi's Kumawood plan this way, and so will you. Six shots of 5 seconds each make 30 seconds.
Popular songs (Afrobeats hits, gospel, highlife) are protected by copyright, just like the pictures in Session 27. Use the free music inside your video editor's library, or tracks marked free to use. Videos with someone else's song may be muted or taken down.
Open the Media Studio 3D lab on your session page. On the editing desk, crop and resize a photo, trim a voice note and cut a short video, and watch how the file size changes each time.
TechClub_MyCommunityVideo_Team3. Check it is 30 seconds or less.| Photo | Size in pixels (W × H) | File size (KB or MB) |
|---|---|---|
| Original | ||
| Cropped copy | ||
| Resized copy |
Team storyboard (sketch in the box, then write what we see or hear):
| Scenario | Good idea | Bad idea |
|---|---|---|
| Esi photographs her friend standing in front of a bright window. | ||
| Kofi crops a photo, then clicks "Save as copy" to keep the original. | ||
| Fatima compresses her photos before sending them on a small data bundle. | ||
| Yaw films classmates in their school uniforms and posts the video on TikTok. | ||
| Akosua uses a famous Afrobeats song in her video without permission. |
Question 1: What is the difference between cropping and resizing a photo?
Question 2: Why should you make a storyboard before you start filming?
Tick the column that reflects your confidence at the end of Session 28:
| Media Competency | With Help | Almost Alone | All By Myself! |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. I can take a clear, well-lit photo using the rule of thirds. | |||
| 2. I can crop, rotate, resize and compress a photo and check its file size. | |||
| 3. I can record and trim a voice note. | |||
| 4. I can plan and edit a short video with titles and allowed music, respecting consent. |
BIH JHS Tech Club · a Bozoma Innovation Hub programme · Your answers are saved only on this computer.