My Model For Front Page and Feature

Here you can see some of the photos I took of my model Zoe. I chose her as she looks very naturally pretty and folky, she fits well with my genre and will keep the magazine feminine whilst attracting male readers; thus keeping my magazine gender neutral. For my front cover I will use one of the midshots of her looking 'moody' but for the feature I will use ones of her playing the instruments and maybe some of the more natural, outdoor ones. With it being dark it was hard to capture a natural feel but I like the creepy effect these photos have. Some of these photos were taking just messing about but I like how natural they are, you can see the hint of a smile sometimes and it makes her look a lot more confident and less stiff and posed.

Edited Photo 2

Here is another image that Owain and I took with inspiration from a Blood Red Shoes photoshoot. It was taken with a canon camera, tripod and self timer against a blue background and we used fake blood to create the 'nosebleed'. The editing techniques I used were similar to the other one, I used the pen tool to cut us out and then feathered the edges to make it more realistic. I also changed the levels of exposure, contrast and brightness so we blended in with the background. I also used dropshadow to add a subtle shadow behind us.
I like this image but I don't think I'll use it in my final piece as it looks less realistic than the other one.

Edited Photo 1

Using inspiration from a Blood Red Shoes photoshoot Owain and I copied their poses and took this photo using a canon camera, tripod and selftimer. The left image is the original and as you can see it is very different, we are sat against a bright red wall and you can see things in the background. Using photoshop CS4 I firstly cut us out using the eraser to remove some of the background and then the pen tool to cut around our shape. I then feathered the edges to make sure we blended with the background and our edges weren't too sharp. I then took the colour from the original photograph and used it as the background for ours, however I made it more white near to the centre so it looked natural.
I then used dropshadow so it looked like we were against the wall and edited the contrast and brightness of us so we looked more like the original photograph and also blended in well with the wall - it looks like we are really against it rather than cut out and pasted on. The entire process took about 2 hours but it was worth it as the final product is really effective and I might use it as either the image on my contents page or double page spread.

Photo Inspiration

When researching music magazines and photoshoots I came across this one of Blood Red Shoes that I found particularly interesting. I like the way that the band members are seemingly oblivious to each other and emotionless; yet their nudity makes the photos much more personal. There is a lot of contrast in emotion and colour in these photographs which makes them appealing to the eye but also enigmatic as we question what the story is behind them. The style is very artistic and symbolic; for my magazine I hope to take photos in a similar style to these (without the nudity!) as they are very visually interesting and pleasing. I also looked at a lot of photos that were taken outside and had a summery, naturalistic feel to them; if the weather isn't too cold and wet I plan to take idea into account as well. I will experiment with different styles of photos and research further into photo shoots and methods.