CD front cover



This is my CD front cover for the band named 'Nature's Heroes'. To do this I first had to create a new photoshop file with the right dimensions which was 120 x 120, resolution - 300dpi and colour mode 16bt (RGB colour). I then went onto a website called www.brusheezy.com and downloaded a few brushes that I wanted to use for photoshop CS4. I then had to extract the brushes and load them onto photoshop. I downloaded two brushes named 'cottage brushes' and 'cats'. I used the cottage brushes for my background in a dark green colour, and used the cat brushes as a little trademark type image that could be associated with the band 'Nature's Heroes'. I also did various changes to the writing such as embossing and shadow effect to make it look like how it does.

Shutter Speeds

Shutter speeds are very important in the process of taking photographs. They alter how your picture will look, how much light you let in and how fast your picture is taken. A fast shutter speed would be used to freeze frame a fast moving object, whereas a slow shutter speed would be used to create motion blur, draw something into the image or to take a picture of something in the dark. Torches can be used alongside cameras to create effects in the photograph. If used in a very dark (almost pitch black) room, a torch can be used to 'paint' someone into the picture. They can also be used to draw shapes, words and images in a photograph when the camera is set onto a slow shutter speed. 1/160 is the slowest setting you can set a camera to take a picture without motion blur, and if you're going to take a picture of something at a shutter speed slower than 1/60, it is advised to use a tripod.

This picture would have been taken using a fast shutter speed of around about  1/500.  The quality of this image is fairly good, except for the slight motion blur at the arms. To solve this problem, when taking pictures next time I will make sure it's set on a higher shutter speed. One thing about this photograph is that it's a little far away. Next time, I will get a little closer to my subject, or just zoom in on the camera.

This picture would have been taken using a slow shutter speed of around 05" to ensure the light was captured. Unfortunately, the room wasn't quite dark enough to get the best contrast between the light and the dark, so next time I will ensure that the room is pitch black before attempting this technique.

This picture was taken specifically to capture a motion blur of her running. To achieve this, I set the camera to 1/15., however it seems to be a little too blurred, so when taking photos next time, I will check to make sure it is set at the correct shutter speed, and is not slightly off.  

This picture went fairly well, however by setting it at 1/250, it wasn't quite as fast as I could have had it to create the full effect of her jumping in mid-air.

Altogether, I think I did fairly well with taking these photos in the different shutter speeds, however some I took were underexposed, so to correct this next time I would make sure that the camera was set at a slower shutter speed or in better lighting conditions. To make everything better overall, I will make sure to record shutter speeds and times a lot better so that I know for sure what setting it should be on for what type of picture, and possibly take more photos so there's more of a chance of some of them coming out a bit better.

Unsharp mask, desaturation and vignetting



For this picture I used auto colour. I achieved this very simply by uploading the picture I wanted onto photoshop and selecting auto colour. It instantly (although very subtly) changed the look of the picture.



For this picture I desaturated it and changed the brightness and contrast so that the black was darker and the white was whiter. To do this, I first had to select desaturate. I then chose brightness and contrast and altered it until it looked the way I wanted it to.





In this picture, I used a special range uf tools named vingetting and unsharp mask. I started this process by selecting filter, sharpen, and then unsharp mask. When this was done, I then had to start vingetting the image. I started this by selecting the eillptical marquee tool, and drawing an oval shape around the centre of the image, I then had to 'feather' the image to around 120 px, and then I inverted what I had selected so that it no longer highlighted the middle, but highlighted the outside of the oval around the picture. I then clicked on brightness and contrast, made it a little darker and then selected 'cntrl + D' which deselected it and the photo was done. After this I played around a little with the dodge and burn tools, which select a small area of the image and either, lighten or darken them. I lightened (dodge) the eyes a little to make them brighter.





Original





Overall, I think my images came out quite well after altering them on photoshop. My favourite would definitely be the vingetting and unsharp mask as it was the most challenging, yet the most fun as I could change all sorts of different things on the image. The first was the easiest as i didn’t really do anything but click a button, and for the second it was a little more demanding since there was more to do, however still very simple.

Composition experiments

This was probably my favourite picture. The shadow creates a lined composition due to the backlighting. She's slightly off centre and tilted down a little. I took this photograph in this way to seem a lot like Willy Ronis' famous capture.

I liked how, in this picture, the steps create almost a lined composition, and the light in shining down from above my model. The camera is tilting up at her so to make her seem more powerful.

I think the best feature of this picture is the way in which she's slightly nonchalant, as if the camera isn't there. I think it captures a sort of everyday life element in to, something that the core target audience could relate to. Her face is off centre and pointing almost as if she's looking at where the masthead would be.

I think in this picture, the background creates a nice contrast between light and dark as certain shadows are significant in the image, with just a hint of light peaking through. The railing helps create a lined composition, that leads the eye up to the main point; which is my model.

This picture highlights, specifically, a type of framing which surrounds my model almost twice, with the door frame just behind her and the fact that she appears inside but is actually outside. The steps give her a height advantage, giving her power and the railings also act as a lined composition, once again leading the eye up to the main point. 

Evaluation

In Media Communication and Production, I have acquired various new skills regarding Photoshop and photography.

In Photoshop, I learnt how to use shortcuts including 'Cntrl + T', which selects what I want to transform so I am able to freely move it where ever I need it to go, I also learnt how to avoid stretching an image while changing its size through the use of holding down the ‘shift’ key. I now know how to include shapes using the rectangular or elliptical marquee tool, and then fill it in with a colour, and how to paste images onto the background behind my text, by opening them up in photoshop, then copying and pasting. I thought it looked to be a very complicated thing to use, and that I'd never get the hang of it, but after a while, I think I got the hang of it. I learnt how to downloads fonts and use them on photoshop, by going on dafont.com, downloading them into a folder I named 'fonts', the, extracting the font (as it was in a zipped file), then moving it into the local disk in a file named 'WINDOWS'. But, after much deliberation, I decided not to use the font I'd originally chosen, as I preferred one of the more basic fonts that was already available to use. I used a basic colour scheme of red, black and white for my magazine font as the are accent colours and create visibility. The red has the shortest wavelength in the colour spectrum, so is the first colour the eye sees, creating a more eye-catching look.

While using the cameras and taking my own pictures, I have learnt how to focus the camera correctly, so not to create out of focus shots, where to place the eyeline in a head/shoulder shot, these should be placed a third of the way down, the correct ‘T’ stance that you should stand in while taking pictures, which helps create a sturdy way for you to stand so you can move around on the spot without falling over, and the difference between landscape/portrait. We also used manual focus so we were able to focus the pictures ourselves. While taking photos, I had to think about what background I wanted, and how I wanted my model to stand, what facial expression for her to show, and think about how I could present the whole thing. It was a little tricky with everything to think about, and to get my model to look exactly how I wanted her to, but eventually, I think, it all came together. When deciding lighting, I had to take 3 different typesof photos; back, side and front-lit. These created a different look for each of the photos, and for my final product I decided to go with a front-lit photo. I think while using people skills to explain how I wanted my model to pose, I lacked a little here as it was slightly awkward and I didn't completely know what to say or how to explain the vision I had in my mind for her to do, in the future, I will try to improve this further so my model doesn't feel awkward in any way, and knows exactly what I want her to do.

Some of the images I took either weren't in focus, the eyeline was completely wrong, were landscape rather than portrait, or that i simple decided not to use, such as these:

In this photo the eyeline was way off,
and too far away from the camera,
this helped me develop my skills as I went on,
because I learnt how to do it properly.



This picture was landscape rather than portrait.
I improved this later on by taking
more photos that were portrait.

I liked this picture, I think the eyeline was great and the fact that she's smiling gave a positive outlook,
however I chose not to use it as it wasn't the right look I wanted my magazine to have.

This is my finished front cover:

I think that one of the best aspects of my product is the colour scheme I chose, to enable the writing to stand out against the picture, and the colours also compliment each other in this way. Another strong point I have is the sell lines I have included on my magazine, I have used various techniques such as alliteration, assonance and exclamatives which draw the reader in and hopefully get them to buy the product.

One of the weaknesses I had while creating my product was probably getting the eyeline in the correct place. It took me quite a few tries but I believe I got there in the end. Another weakness I have is it took me a while to grasp the concept of landscape and portrait. While taking photos, I would end up taking quite a lot of them landscape, whereas I needed them portrait. To improve it, next time I would choose a model more suited to the type of magazine I would like to do, such as a male or somebody interested in the type of music that would be displayed in the magazine.