Activity 5.1: College Magazine (Photos & Edit)

Here are all my pictures that I have taken for this magazine. In this shoot, I decided that I will use the school/college location, as because it gives an impression of a friendly and welcoming environment therefore makes the audience feel involved. Moreover I also used a variety of shots, for example medium close- up, medium long shot. I have done this because I want to try out which shot would suitable for the front magazine cover.

For the first image, I decided to use medium shot which would allows me to see the emotion on the model's face and his body language. Props in this image are suitable to be a college magazine because a book is symbolic of education, which this highlights the fact that he is studying in the college. However I find that this image is lacking interest because of its background as it is white and plain, this could makes the magazine looks dull.

I personally like the third image because it shows the relationship between students, they look happy and excited, which can also present how students feels toward their college life/student life. On the other hand, this is a medium long shot which can take up space for cover lines; therefore this image is not the best image for the magazine. To improve this image, I could ask models to stand closer to each other which this can save up the space beside the models and also to highlight that they are friendly to each other.

In my second and forth photo, the model is standing in a wrong position, they are standing on one side which this makes it look unbalanced. Furthermore, talking about the lighting, as you can see the on the forth picture, there is not enough light which makes the picture looks dark, therefore it might not be suitable to the theme of the magazine.

I also like the composition, the model posture and the camera angle in picture number 8. However there is still something that went wrong in this picture. The model's face expression doesn't look happy and positive, which this can give a drawback to the college representation because it gives a bad impression of college.

Image number 6 is quite nice to be on contents page as because the space beside is just the right size to fit in all of the contents. However the lighting is dropping above the model's head, this will create a shadow on her face, which will makes the model's face darker than usual so I might have to brighten up the image.

As a final decision, I decided to use image number 5 for the front cover and number 6 for contents page because there are fewer mistakes on the image and can be easily edited out.

Editing Photos

 For the front cover of the magazine, I decided to brighten up one side of the image because on the right hand side of the image, it is too dark. This makes a big contrast which will make the magazine look unprofessional. I also blur out the background of the picture, this makes the model stand out from the background as well as the text e.g. cover lines. From looking at the edited picture, you will think that it’s ‘over the top’, however if I put in masthead and cover lines, hopefully it will balance out the brightness.

The picture for contents page:
 I decided to over exaggerate the brightness and contrast because it bring out the feelings of aggressiveness of the model, which this will compatible to the way she is posed. Also this can emphasise the contrast between front cover and contents page.

Activity 4: Flat Plan

This is my flat plan for the college magazine. On this college magazine I will use a medium close-up shot for the main image because it shows a full length view of my model, which this technique can clearly show the facial expression and body language.
Furthermore, the masthead will be bold to make my magazine more appealing to the audience. I also think that I would name this college magazine as 'Paradox' , this is because I think that this would be interesting as the word paradox means a statement that may nonetheless be true, therefore this word could highlight that this magazine would make students think though out the magazine.


Additionally, I would like to put a barcode on the corner of the magazine so that it doesn't distract all the main components e.g. the main image or the main cover lines. I also wanted include the college name below the main image to make the college magazine more specific.
Furthermore I decided that the price of this college magazine will be 90p, because I was looking back at my questionnaire research and I have noticed that the majority of students willing to pay 0-90p which I think this amount of money is reasonable because it is a college magazine for students and students usually have low budgets due to costs at university or college, therefore I will have to keep the lowest price as possible so that all students are able to pay and keep in touch with college news. 

For the contents page, I decided that I will be using one picture on the side of the page. By doing this, I think it will look more professional than using many pictures on one page. I also will use a medium close up shot for this page, again this to make the audience pay their attention to the model's face and also the contents beside.

Personally, I want my cover and contents page to be in different style because it gives a different feeling and makes it more eye-catching. Since the target audience of this magazine are teenagers, meaning (judgementally) that they will lose their concentration easily, thus I have separated my text and image.