My Student Magazine Photography

As part of our course we had to create a student magazine using only our own original imagery that we had taken ourselves. I used a portion of one of my coursework lessons to take some pictures of my boyfriend on my digital camera and taken the rest myself in my own time. Using previous photography knowledge on angles, lines and how we can make the photo attractive, I tried to capture some artistic looking shots. Here are some examples of my work:

The Contents Page:

Here is my boyfriend posing for me to photograph for my student magazine. This is I have edited just using the photo gallery on my laptop at home and then I edited it further on an apple Mac using Adobe Photoshop CS6. I tried a high angle shot and the use of lines in the backdrop from what I learnt in the class photography lesson. I think the lines in the background have worked quite well and I am pleased how the photograph came out.
This was one of the first photographs I took and is my favourite out of the ones I took on the day.
It didn't require a lot of editing and only took about 5/7 minutes to do in total. It was really fast and simple and Photoshop was easy to work with.

Here is my photoshopped version of the above photograph. I airbrushed his skin slightly to remove the redness and dark circles using the patch tool and then adjusted things such as the exposure, contrast, hue etc. (general things) to make the colours and how the overall look of the photograph stand out and really come to life. I though it looked more creative and really captured the feel of my student magazine, with the essence of the type of reader shown here.















The Main Cover (and Contents Page):

For my main cover image I also wanted to have an 'on the cover' section using a different photograph but the same model for this and play around with the editing so it had the feel of my model in it? I was really lucky as I hadn't asked Bee what I wanted her to wear as her style is something that made me want to use her for my magazine and I thought leaving it to her would be more creatively interesting for me, to edit my magazine around the colour schemes she chose to wear. However, I did start the main bulk of the work before I took her photograph and used black, white and red as my colour scheme. I was going to use dark blues, blacks and greens to keep in with modern fashion but after looking to the style of 'NOTION' magazine I changed my mind at the last minute. Fortunately for me on the day I arranged to take Bee's photograph she wore a red shirt and a black leather jacket. which was PERFECT to fit my cover and my chosen colour scheme.

Here is the first photo I took of my cover star. I asked my friend Bee to pose for me as she is also studying AS Media Studies. Although she was really nervous I managed to get the shots I wanted. They looked really natural and full of personality which is why I chose her to be my cover star.
I used my boyfriend's laptop to edit the photographs I took on my fujifilm digital camera, which meant I could edit them to look completely different but only using very basic effect changes such us highlighting, shadowing, contrast, brightness, saturation, tint and colouring.
I used her edgy style to stimulate the editing, to make it look modern, funky almost like the instagram app popular with my age demographic for my student magazine. I wanted the style of photography to suit the readers and connect with them as something they would find visually stimulating.
I really liked this side profile of hers however this one her eyes are slightly squinting so I took some others and see if I got a better shot.

This was the second photograph I took and I wanted to play around with the editing and try or different looks. I like how changing the saturation so it's almost black and white gave it a totally different effect. I'm not sure the background works as well, even though I originally wanted plain white, having seen how just editing the colours etc could make the background more interesting - I don't know about this one just because of how I edited it. I do like the pose however because it's similar to the profile from before just on the other side.
I just made the saturation too low so her face doesn't have enough contrast with the background. I think the outfit looks really good as it really shows off her style.

 

This third image I took was more close up than my previous photographs, which made me tied between this one and the one below. I liked the way her hair and outfit looked, and it really showed off her amazing  skin and teeth. I liked that it was more noticeable that she was wearing a backpack as it gave her more of a 'student look' as it showed she was likely to be carrying revision books.
I didn't edit this one too much, just the contrast for the background, the saturation for the boldness of the colour and the exposure/highlighting to make each strand of her stand out better.










Learning from previous mistakes, I realised I needed room for my masthead and cover lines  and although I may have liked the above pictures, logically there wouldn't be enough room to fit all the other bits of text in. So for this photograph I really tried to make room for everything I wanted to fit on my student magazine. Knowing I wanted columns I knew I had to provide for those. I really liked this funky, fresh and happy pose that showed Bee having fun. It had a slightly quirkyness about it that stayed true to her spirit I wanted to capture but still fitted my magazine look. Having her hair to one side really showed off how beautiful her hair is and the fact she's wearing a backpack, which promotes an educational side, as well as looking stylish. Her smiling sends out a positive message to readers, whilst showing off her amazing teeth. I chose this image because as soon as I took it I knew I was going to use it, so it seemed right, natural and the perfect choice. I'm glad I chose this image as when it came to creating my magazine it fitted really well and I didn't have any adjustment problems. I edit this one in the same way as the one before, but I wanted the red to really stand out so I did less to this photograph to make it seem as natural as possible.

The above photograph I took straight after as I wanted to try and find the perfect one for my contents page. I was really inspired by COMPANY magazine's pages where they show who's worked on the issues as it has a real young, cool and new vibe about it. So when taking this I really thought about how I could play around with the tint, saturation, exposure, highlighting, constrast and a few other techniques to give it that same edge. I liked the previous pose, but wanted it to look more caught off chance, and as Bee was really nervous I thought using the same pose on a different side would give her a comfortable way of doing it. I really liked the way this was edited so I used this for the Editor's Note because I felt having her almost repeat the pose came across as if I'd found a star who had their own natural habits that everyone else has, making her seem more realistic to for my magazine and not someone who has randomly posed for me.

This photograph was trying to recapture the feel of the first photograph, by having a profile shot, however Bee moved when I took the picture and this is how it came out. I actually prefer this version as it shows her in action but at the same time has a beautiful stillness about it? The main reason I wanted to re-shoot this picture was because in the first one her eyes were slightly squinted, and I wanted her to look as beautiful as possible, so I had to retake this to make her eyes wider. This was achieved by having her not smile, so her eyes didn't crease. I used the same editing techniques I have been using throughout my photographs by just playing with all the different elements until I found somehting I thought had a nice quality, worked, looked good for the photo or I liked! I really like how the necklace falls in this photograph and her hair (the main reason I chose her and the height of her) looks captivating here. It's natural and looks down-to-earth, which was exactly what I wanted for my student magazine.

All together I'm really impressed with my photographs and my editing I think worked really well for my chosen style of magazine. I didn't have to take as many pictures as I did, as the first couple would have worked fine, but being a perfectionist I wanted to take more, enjoy the photographing experience and get the best shot I could.