Introduction
For this unit 6 project we are being asked to create and produce a six page magazine with a specific theme and subject. to go with the magazine there should be photographs and articles that link together. for the project we will be working in groups to produce the magazine.
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Task 1
Primary and secondary research about the project looking at magazines and articles. Looking at various photographers.
Task 2
Come up with different ideas. Test shots, test magazine and a few test articles.
Task 3
Planning and organising. create a time plan, a blog about what you have done and plan to do.
Task 4
Producing the magazine, producing photographs and writing articles specific to the theme of the magazine as well as linking it back to the research and testing. show evidence of editing and creating.
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Task 5
Final Evaluation and reflection including peer feedback and evaluation on group members.
Magazine Elements
Front cover
Title - ok!, issue no, date, price, barcode
whole cover is a photo - glimpse into magazine, main interview about them celebrities
quote boxes that link with the interviews and photographs
headings in boxes
contents page
Back cover of the front page is a advert for specsavers
title/logo and main heading
subheadings
text boxes under sub headings with writer/editor information-page outlines
captions
photos of interviews with page numbers on for relevant page
Magazines
back cover page
The back cover is a full page of an advert for boots beauty and hair products showing deals they have on at the time of release of the magazine.
Inside pages
Quote used as subheading
heading about the pages
photos of the event
intro to interview
text
captions on photos - who people are
Fashion Magazines
Fashion magazines such as Vogue, Elle, Vanity Fair and Harpers Bazar would come under the category of fashion and would involve genres inside of clothes, shoes, accessories, jewellery, beauty, style. you can also get teen fashion magazines such as Teen Vogue and Seventeen targeted at Teens or young adults of the female market whereas I think the target audience for fashion magazines would be females and women who love fashion, interest i fashion, style, beauty and clothes or enjoy reading about fashion who are older much older young adults upwards.
Celebrity Magazines
Celebrity magazines such as OK and Hello are written about various celebrities each week, with the main interview on the front cover, writing about all the latest news.
I think the target audience for these types of magazines are a varied audience with both men and women interested but leaning more towards the female market but i also think the ages would vary as well from from late teenagers all the way to middle aged people due to the subject and context that has a varied interest of ages.
Sport Magazines
Sport magazines can come in many categories and genres of different sports for example horse riding, golf, cycling, football, boxing and many more.
I think the target audience would vary depending on the sport for example cycling would be aimed at more males of a varied age whose hobby and interest is cycling. whereas horse riding is target as amore female sport so the target audience would therefore be females of varied ages of people who do it as a hobby and own horses.
Children Magazines
Children magazines can come under many different subjects or topics related to the younger readers such as cbeebies and other tv shows or themes like the Jacqueline wilson which has a theme of books and reading as she is an author.
I think the target audience is definitely children of a variety of ages depending on the magazine type and reading level. the magazines can also come in universal meaning they would appeal to both genders as well as magazines more preferred by girls and those that are more preferred by boys.
Music Magazines
Music magazines like the Rollingstone magazine and Q magazine, hold general information on music and feature interviews/articles and photos on specific music artists in each issue.
I think the target audience is people who have an interest in the music industry and that can mean it could be people of either gender male or female and possibly people of ages teen and upwards.
Develop, Motorist, Home, Insist, Ash
Initial Ideas
Our words we have are develop, motorist, home, insist and ash. Here is our initial ideas. we have mind mapped various ideas surrounding each word we have to include in our six page magazine. some ideas we have linked together with the other words and some we have not and stand as an individual idea on its own.
Here are some magazines that are similar to our words that we have been given. Motor Trend magazine links to our word Motorist. Ideal Home and Country Living magazine link with our word of Home. lastly The Great Outdoors magazine links to our word of Ash. with the words Develop and Insist there aren't any magazines that would link or work as a theme of a magazine.
Final Idea and plan
Our Final Idea is to produce a nature magazine. The Theme of the magazine will therefore be nature. all the words we were given link in some way with the word ash associated with ash trees and other trees and plants to do with nature. the second word is home which is a home to many wildlife such as birds, insects and other small mammals. the third word is motorist which links in our magazine as many people are motorists who drive cars to get to a place of nature as well as walk round the park or woodland. the next word is insist which will be on park safety by photographing relevant signs. the last word is develop which will represent by showing a small park made out of wood so it has been developed into something. we choose to do this idea as each of the words link to a common theme we noticed and that is nature in some way or another as well as having access to produce this idea, unlike our other initial ideas.
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We plan to photograph at mote park, maidstone. where we will photograph a few landscapes that are likely to be used for the front page. we are also planning to photograph the car park and the cars entering or leaving, the ash trees and various other trees, the park in woods, safety signs around the park such as around the lake, animals homes like nests, mole hills, tree tops and the lake itself. The shoot itself will therefore be outdoors and on location at mote park we chose this place in particular as its easily accessible for both me and zoe as well as having all the qualities we desire in a location. we will use natural lighting in the process of photographing our images to make them look realistic and represent mote park to its true potential not not to disinform readers, we will use a range of compositions to make the photos interesting to readers such as different angles, perspectives and viewpoints and to try and incorporate the theme and style of nature in every one.
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Link to our Plan Presentation: https://sway.com/D092Yr8y8IXpONim?ref=Link
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Nature Magazines
Nature Magazine - On Nature Magazine
Target audience is nature and outdoor people, wildlife spotters and lovers, interested in nature, nature photographer, environmentalist, male and female different ages of the above.
The front cover is a whole photograph, colour scheme is white yellow and blue, action photo of a bird in its natural habitat in the water, a small caption close to the bird under its wings in white small text in capitals, the heading is large is a mixture of colours with on being yellow and white being nature, theres a subheading below the heading in large yellow capital lettering, theres 3 sections above the heading in white small text each section being separated by a line, underneath the heading to the right is a small logo and a caption or saying in the same size text as the sections in colour white.
Nature Magazine Online Version - Countryfile Magazine
front cover
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whole photo of a landscape as the background
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bbc logo in the top lft hand corner
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slogan at top of the page
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title of magazine called countryfile
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title in a light blue colour
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a caption below in a lighter light blue underneath title
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heading in a dark blue
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footer at the bottom
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colour scheme is blues and yeelows
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colours link with the photo
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barcode
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sub image with a white border in the middle of footer
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footer has big blue heading text underneath is a caption of text smaller in colour black
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caption in dark blue below heading
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font is in different size - pending on how imprtant
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shape with text inside - yellow circle, bigger blue text and smaller black text
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half the text is in captital letters and half not slghtly curly text
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four sections of text on the cover with yellow sub headings and white text underneath apart from the fourth where the colours are reversed
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photo itself i clear, detailed, precise, reflection in photo, colours, natural
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text links to whats inside the magazine - hints
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consistant theme shown
Eagle page spread
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white background of the magazine.
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different size photos - good quality, clear, focused, precise, relate to context of the article
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sub hadings have different colour text in orange
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quote in larger text than article
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text is black
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heading is also in orange
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caption underneath photos - explaining them
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page numbers
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bold text with article as an introduction and important inforation such as locations
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credits - photographer
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grey background/text box
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quite small text
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ordinary style text for articles while titles are more interesting
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facts of informtion within article as well as opinion
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colour scheme is black, white, grey and orange
Top 10 places
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white bakcground
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red, white, blac colour scheme
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different size images towards the outside of the page
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in the middle is the information
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big bold heading at the top of the page
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short heading in black and numbers next to it
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long sub heading in grey
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photos are numbered in white lettering
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map next to heading
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credits - photographer
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page numbers
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10 small paragraphs
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numbered with 9 - 18 with a ame place in red lettering sub headings
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underneath is information about the plce and and the photo that represent it
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text style is ordinry for information, heading and subheading apart from red subheadings its al in capital letters
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top10 caption in the top left hand corner
After looking at the Countryfile magazine i have decided to take inspiration and ideas of them for when it comes to putting together our own magazine. i think the theme will run throughout the whole of the magazine not just one section so it will be consistent to readers and our theme is nature. the style will also be consistent as i would want all the pages to match yet still portray what they need to but not wanting it to look odd and messy and all over the place as this isn't the way i would want people to view our magazine for the first time as then that first impression wold stick with them. in regards to the colour scheme, text style, text size and photo size this would be determined at the time of magazine testing and editing stages.
I also tried looking at and finding other nature or environment articles and stories that could be of use to our magazine but i couldn't find any unfortunatley as they were either not relevant or not published to view them. maybe zoe has possibly looked at some we can refer to instead or we can write them our own way making our magazine unique.
Plan Layout
Here is a proposed plan layout for each page of the six page magazine, so we know roughly what we wish to include on each page. the front page to consist of the most eye catching and attention grabbing image so if it were to be on shelves you would want more people the better to notice it. the first page will be focused on the word motorist. the next page will be the word ash. the next page is centred around the word develop. page 4 will be about the word insist. page 5 the word home. lastly the back page. below is how we will incorporate each word within the page as well including photographs and text.
Page Layout
Here below is a proposed page layout for each page of the six page magazine. this is just a proposed plan and an idea as i would need to discuss the layout with zoe and see what she thinks and therefore this plan could change for the final magazine. the page layout shows what each of the pages would look like in terms of what will be placed where and how its set out for readers to see.
Mark Hamblin
mark hamblins photographs are very different in regards to comaprison of his images with another one. they all range with various compositions, framing, colouring. with the two tree photos they are both similar in the context but are shown differently with the bottom photo been taken at a different angle possibly with a wide angle lens so more could fit into the frame so the trees look taller and taken at a different time of the day which you can tell by the sun low down near the horizon. whilst the image on the right is full with trees in both the foreground an the background meaning it was taken zoomed in at the trees, the colouring is also very different as it as taken during day most likely in the autumnal season. the photo of the squirrel would have to be taken with a fast shutter speed to capture the movement if the squirrel running and jumping this photo is also different from the rest by having a low aperture setting on the camera a shallow depth of field, i like this photo a its a mid air action making it different for viewers t see. the last photo is of a bird swimming in the water in the photo you can see all the ripples of the water coming from the movement of the bird giving the image leading lines, this photo looks as though it has been edited as the colouring of the water is yellow not blue as most water is but it look as though its a boring composition as not much is going on.
Mark Hamblin has worked as a freelance photographer, with having over 100 published articles, as well as this he's been published in numerous magazines, books and calenders. his speciality is wildlife and landscape photography. he has won a few photographic competitions including BBC wildlife photographer of the year.
I think mark hamblins work has many aspects that i could take when it comes to photographing my own images on the shoot. I like the use of natural lighting and how he uses it to his advantage when shooting by looking at the times of the day and deciding how and what the light will do to his photographs like shooting in the evening and shooting in the middle of the at you get two very different results as you can see above. i also like how he has experimented when shooting as all he photos come out very differently to one another and so i think some worked better than others as some didn't and i think its because of the boring composition or style that was used or edited afterwards.
David Taylor
David Taylor is a British award winning photographer specialised as a landscape and travel photographer. he started photography at the age of fourteen. his photographs of the north of England have been used in publicity shots for local business, the council and tourism. his photography has been featured in many magazines as well as contributing to more than 40 books about photography and the technique behind it. David taylor has also had his works exhibited throughout the year and offer workshops for those who wish to learn more.
I think David Taylors work has many positives with the way he shows the shadows and highlights in the images which can be especially seen in the photo above with the tree leaves casting a shadow on the tree trunk. i quite like this aspect so i would like to keep this technique in mind when it come to shooting my images.
David Taylors photography are very British in the sense of how people describe the country and i think these photos represent that with these countryside shots. the photos themselves show landscapes in a variety of forms of the placing of the horizon line as below there are three examples this with the first on the left the horizon is really low down with the ground in the foreground with the sky making up the rest of the composition. in the middle photo there is less the horizon line higher up so there is more context/view of the countryside hills and the plants and nature. the last photo on the right has a horizon line in the middle of the frame so there is even sky and even countryside. the photos were shot outside and use natural light within them and it looks as though they were shot on similar weather days as the clouds are grey and dark and this transforms in the distance of the photo. you can see it more clearly in the photo below as you can see the contrast clearer with the silhouette darkness of the trees in the front.
John Shaw
John Shaw is a professional nature photographer. he has been working as a photographer since the 1970s as of this his photography has ben featured in many publications and books on nature photography and Photoshop with the books including national geographic and outdoor photographer. he was also the first winner of the outstanding photographer award by the north american nature photography association.
john shaws photographs are bold and show a range of colours which bring out the vibrance within the photographs making each one look better in there composition along with the natural lighting used in the photography process. i think these photographs show a good representation of the theme of nature and wildlife which is good. the context of the photos fill up the whole frame nicely where you can see all the detailing clear and precisely like the tips of the grass, feathers on the duck, pattern on the stones and the different section of the coloured trees and leaves.
with this photo on the left i like how it shows the texture of the stones and i think it would be good to refer to when i take my photos as i would like to show the texture of the trees, animal homes and the wood park as in my final idea.
Research for Magazine
mote park - over 180 hectares mix of grassland, heathland, woodland. variety of natural features and activities i.e. orienteering/tree spotting. people of all ages, family, children. at least 28 different mammal species been spotted in mote park. ovr 148 species of birds been recorded over past 40 years due to variety of habitats, each bird species prefer different habitat. over 100 different trees can be found in mote park native and nonnative around the park.
ash trees - native tree, live to a old age of 400 years old or older, third most common tree in britain. scientific name is fraxinus excelsior but commn name is ash,common ash or europen ash. key features are black buds and clusters of seeds, 35m tall, grow together forming canopy, add diagram how to spot an ash tree.
animal habitats- home to animals where they live either for a short period of time or a long period of time, they use it as a base to feel and keep safe from predators, have tere young, feed them, grow up it can vary from animal to animal like bird nests are up high in trees only used for a short time or mole hills where used a lot of time, identify ifferent homes/habitats in many wyas.
motorist - families and drivers driving to and from mote park, mode of transport. lots of cars more people sould ake care of enironment especially if visit the park to see environment and wildlife, set an example, not contribute to problems like pollution, preserve and help nature to continue for generatios to come.
insist - take notice of park safey signs arund specific areas of the park as they are there to keep you and everyone else safe and out of danger. more signs around the lake due to it being deep water without any railing for young children read sign out loud or tell them what it means rules and safety of park. car park is also another place where signs should be took note.
develop - cafe at mote park that was some ruines of a building that used to sit there we know this due to the back of the cafe being the same building material as it was back them they just remodelled, developed it and resurrected it making it into something new that can be used while keeping the original features
Magazine Questionnaire
Above is the link to our market research magazine questionnaire. below is the data results we got from the responses. according to our results we found that more females than males answered our questionnaire about magazines and the age range is mostly teenage and due to the lack of range of answers and so our results could be argued as bias due to not having a wide range of results and only receiving 9 responses. with the information we have i have alos found that there is about an even resonse about those who buy magazines with no response highest which leads onto to whether they read magazines ad what subject with only 3 people for the topic and theme of nature. i think overall our target audience is specialised with those people who have an interest in nature either wildlife, photography, outdoors, hiking/rambler, environmentalist or nature spotter or even families looking for a good picnic/outing.
Risk Assessment
Here is the Risk Assessment attached below for our shoot at mote park .
Peer Feedback
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angles
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composition
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framing
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lighting
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temperature
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camera settings
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success
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do people like them? why?
Overall the feedback i received on my photographs was mainly positive with the rest being negative and constructive criticism. i think i agree with what was said however i don't agree with saying that image 2 is overexposed as i don't think it is there was the sun directly behind the building but i think it came out alright and like it this way and instead think that image 3 is slightly exposed in the background but none of these photos are yet to be edited which needs to be done if they are to be used within the magazine. i will use the feedback by thinking more about the sunlight when out shooting in future.
The Feedback i received on my photos
"nice bright and vivid colours which i like, good composition - set out nicely"
"nice vivid colours, angles mixture of high and low to give different perspectives"
"over exposed on image 2, all in good focus, like the style photos, well lit images"
"very well lit, colours are bright, images are clear, varying angles to show the trees"
"i really like the angle and framing you used, it captured the nice parts, most of the photos the lighting/settings are perfect, the 2nd photo is slightly exposed, another i like your style of photographs"
"love the framing, very clear images, some have a shallow depth of field some have a long depths - good variety"
"well framed follows the rule of thirds"
"nice lighting but some photo subjects are unclear and basic"
"i really like image 2, the contrast of the natural colours, good patterned type in image 1"
"i like the colours, the house thing is a bit over exposed, good focus though"
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Test Shoot
I think the test shoot went quite well the only downside was that it was hard trying to find everything i needed to photograph such as the specific ash trees and the animal homes as there were much less than i thought there would be as mote park is very big place but there were limited of what i found. also when i looked back at my photos they were slightly desaturated which was probably due to the day i shot them with it being sunny outside and the time of year without all the colours on the trees which therefore couldn't be helped but if it happens again on the real shoot i could edit them in photoshop bringing out the vibrance in them making them look better. overall i'm quite pleased with the test shoot i did as i can now know where to go when i do the real shoot.
Contact sheet
Test Magazine
Here i have done a test magazine using the proposed planned magazine layout i placed on my wix earlier due to the new plan of me and zoe doing seperate pages between us and comprimising our ideas. this test magazine consists of two pages that i am doing which are motorist and ash. while i made the test magazine i referred to my plan/layout as well as the research i conducted with looking at magazines, specifically nature magazines, target audience and questionnaire. the test magazine is done to see if the plan works for the pages by placing everything in the specific places such as the headings, sub-headings, text, photos. all the photos used in the test pages are the images i will likely use and have not been edited yet. some of the features i picked up from my research was the use of a plain coloured background and the colour i chose was white as its neutral along with this colour the colour scheme i decided to go or is a dark green for a sort of border and text colour, a light green and black, i chose this as green is a colour that symbolises nature which is the theme of the magazine as well the colours tying in with the photos. the text type containing information is original and easy to read for readers with more fancier style text for headings etc. the subject of the photos is nature and according to our questionnaire results nature is the most popular topic for those who read magazines and therefore our theme. overall im pleased with the test magazine pages and will keep the layout for the motorist page however when it comes to creating the real magazine i may go with a different layout for the ash tree page as i'm not sure about it.
Motorist page
Ash Page
Heading text style
Sub-heading text style
Text style
Shoot
I think the actual shoot went really well as i was able to capture a lot of different shots specific to my plan of what i needed to get photographs of, including variety of different compositions, angles and perspectives. on the shoot everything went well as none of the risks occurred that were listed within the risk assessment i completed and however again it was hard to find everything i needed such as identifying which trees were ash trees so in the end i photographed a lot of different trees and identify them later on or show readers what not a ash tree looks like with the photos that i took. another issue was that i didn't know where something was that we were supposed to photograph and that is the wood park for the word develop due to only zoe knowing where it is and in the end i went photographing by myself due to her not having a camera at the time, so to improvise i took some photos of the cafe as i thought that, that had been developed into what it was into what it is know and you know this due to the building material used so instead this could be an option to use in our magazine. when i was photographing i tried to keep in mind the techniques and ideas of the three photographers i looked at as well as taking the photos with my own take and ideas. other than that everything went according to plan and i'm really pleased with the results of my photographs and hopefully they will look better with some editing to go into the magazine.
Contact Sheet
Nature Articles
Here is the nature articles i have written to go into the magazine on the pages motorist and ash.
I chose these photos as my my final pick as they best suit my theme and out of the shoots they looked to be the best composition wise and and best linked with the magazine pages.
Nature Final Picks
Editing
Here i have shown the editing process for three of the photos that are going in the magazine. i have also shown the before version and the after version so you are able to clearly see the differences between the two. i haven't done the editing process for all the photos used within the magazine due there being too many.
Before
After
This photo i edited which will be going onto the ash tree page. to edit this photo is started with adding a fresh new layer before i went on with the brightness and contrast levels i didn't add any changes to the brightness but i increased the contrast to 20 so the details could be seen more. next i changed the saturation to 8 and vibrance to 37 to get the luscious green spring coloured grass in the photo. lastly increased the exposure to 0.06 slightly to make sure it wasn't to dark compared to he other phots on the page. above is the before version and after version of the photo so you can see the differences between the two images and how the editing has helped.
This photo will be going on the motorist page. to edit this photo i started with adding a new layer followed by the brightness of 14 and contrast of 34 to allow more light to be added into the photo along with upping the colour contrast in the photo. the next step i did was vibrance changing it to 30 and saturation to 13 to make the colours stand out more and become more noticeable. lastly i changed the exposure with this i decreased it to -0.22 otherwise the photo would become too bright and overexposed for the readers and not match with the other photos within the same page. to the right is the before version and the after version of the same image so you can clearly see the differences.
Before
After
This photo will be the front cover of our magazine fronting and headlining our magazine as its one of the best photos we have. to edit this image i started with creating a new layer followed by adjusting the brightness and contrast which on this occasion i only touched the contrast changing it to 30. followed by editing the vibrance and saturation the vibrance to 30 and saturation to 17 i did this to bring out the colours more in the photo so they are not as dull and sunk in. next i changed the exposure or gamma correction to 1.24. the colour balance changing it to 6 and hue/saturation to 25 and 2 were done last to gain the autumnal or low sun style of the photo which i like adding as light hint of red to the sky. down below is the before and after version so you are able to see how the editing has improved the photo.
Before
After
overall the editing process has helped enhance my photographs as it improves there quality and image to the viewers eye with the editing of the photos they look better and as they are for the magazine they stand out and therefore will capture people attention if they are more noticeable and bolder if they were to be sold on shelves.
My Final Images
Magazine Pages
Evaluation
In conclusion i think the magazine fits the brief due to the fact that we were able to create and produce the magazine, from just five different words which were home, develop, insist, motorist and ash. to find a theme for our magazine from the 5 words was initially hard but once we established our idea and theme of nature it got easier. i think the magazine worked out quite well in the end as it looks better than i thought it would but still challenging with using the different software and writing the articles. when creating the magazine everything went according to plan but i made some changes when it came to layout as stated in the blog post march 26th and i think these changes worked out for the better as the page looks much better in the new layout rather than the original one i think as well as this me and zoe made the decision to split the front cover and back cover between us so each of us would produce three pages for the magazine which wasn't originally planed so i had to make that also. i think the magazine represents its theme well and would fit for its target audience. i found the project quite hard due to the fact of finding and coming up with initial ideas and the final idea as we didn't come up with any at first and ones that were practical to photograph. for the photographs i looked at three photographers Mark Hamblin, John Shaw and David Taylor that were related to the theme and idea so i was able to take techniques they used and use it to inspire my work, all the photographs on my magazine pages are my own except one which is a diagram as i researched earlier how to find and identify a ash tree as i couldn't photograph or draw that myself as that would be too hard and not detailed enough. the only problem that occurred was that me and zoe photographed separately and that the subject we were going to photograph for develop changed into something else still equally as relevant but this is the page that zoe is creating. overall im pleased with how it turned out and that it eventually came out successful with both of us produced three pages each of a six page magazine with good photographs that show off mote park in a positive way but if we did the project again we should be more organised d when it comes to doing tasks.
Self and Group Evaluation Form
