7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression

from it to the full product?

• I feel as though my magazines have improved massively. Looking back now, my school magazine was just awful; it looked nothing like a magazine but instead like an awful poster.

• When I look at my music magazine, I am extremely proud because I can see a real magazine in front of my eyes.

• Previously, my knowledge and skill set on Adobe Photoshop was minimal and I had never used it before so my school magazine was awful.

• Also, the camera I took my photos with was the one on my iPhone 5 so the pictures were dark and not as focused as I would have liked them to be.

• The pictures from my music magazine are taken on a professional Canon camera and we also had a lesson teaching us how to take the best, most-focused photos.

• This helped massively as previously I would have paid no attention as to how to take a specific photo focusing on an individual’s face with a less focused background on purpose. This is made evident in my contents page from my school magazine in comparison to my double page spread from my music magazine.

Difference in editing techniques:• Previously, with my school magazine I also edited the photos on an app on my phone.

This is a screenshot from the app I used to create the photo.

Whereas, for my music magazine I used Photoshop for all of the editing. However, I did edit my pictures that much. The main change I made to them was using the spot healing tool in order to get rid of some blemishes on my models face. However, I never used any saturation or hues on my final pictures because I wanted to go for the slightly darker, more natural tone as I felt as though that fit with the genre of my magazine the best.

Comparison of my first and last front covers:

Ways in which I have continued to follow convention but also purposefully ignored it.• I feel as though this magazine is a

drastic improvement to my original school magazine as it actually looks like a real music magazine.

• Some of the ways it follows convention are by actually having the masthead in the typical place, by having a button with text in it as opposed to a price, also my barcode is significantly smaller and in the right place.

• However, despite most aspects of my magazine following convention, I do also break convention by having a lot of colours in my color scheme as opposed to just 3 or 4.

• This is because I wanted to have different shades of blue for my cover lines.

Ways it the school magazine follows convention:

• There is a colour scheme of red and yellow.

• There is also a barcode which is typical in a lot of magazines.

• However, my school magazine tends to ignore convention as my masthead is in the bottom right hand corner as opposed to being at the top in the center of the page.

Planning time:

School magazine:• On my school magazine, I did plan where I was going to take the photos by

creating a document and filling out where, when, how and who I was going to take my photos of.

• These can be found on my blog under the ‘preliminary tasks’ section:

This is what I used to plan the image I would take for my front cover.

Music magazine planning:• Like my school magazine, I also planned when and where I was going to take the photos.

• Although planning is vital, it is also important to have knowledge and understanding.

• This is supported by the fact that I planned the creation of both magazines but obviously the music one ended up nice than the school one because with the school magazine I had minimal knowledge about codes and conventions.

• My photo shoot plan for the front cover of my music magazine is on the next slide:

This is the sheet I used to plan my front cover photo shoot.

Agency Name TITLE MAGAZINE

Model Phoebe Cowley

Camera height/angle/distance Camera shot used is a medium close-up

Location Outside: The photos were taken against a white brick wall.

Lighting Natural lighting: We took the photos outside so the sun provided us with a lot of natural light.

Mise-en-scene (incl. props, costume)

We used minimal props in our photos. The main prop we used was a black guitar which was used to emphasise the fact the magazine genre was indie/alternative

Attempted connotation I wanted to portray Phoebe as a stylish, new artist. I wanted her to wear all black clothing as it looked smart and fashionable and against the white brick wall it made her stand out.

Planned denotation Girl in black clothes, holding guitar standing against white brick wall.

Contingency (in case of model absence/weather)

In case Phoebe is absent to take the photo I will find another model to fill in for her.Also, if the weather is bad I will wait to take the photos on a day where the weather is nice because I want my main photo for my front cover to be taken outdoors.

Alternate angle Some of my alternate camera angles will be close-ups or long shots.

Thinking points: I want to make sure my photo is taken on a minimal background so that Phoebe stands out even more.Comments:

• Overall, it is clear to say I have improved in every way.

• Mainly, my knowledge has increased which has allowed me to create nicer products but overall, I believe planning and organisation has a lot to do with it too.

• You can see I planned frequently throughout my blog but especially when it came to both of my front covers (refer back to slides 5 – 10)