The document compares the learner's progress from an initial school magazine project to a subsequent music magazine project. For the school magazine, the learner had minimal photography, editing, and design skills. The music magazine showed significant improvement due to learning Adobe Photoshop, using better cameras, and planning photo shoots with professional models and equipment. Overall, the learner felt their knowledge, skills, and ability to plan and organize improved greatly between the two projects, resulting in a higher quality final product that better followed industry conventions.

1. 7. Looking back at your preliminary
task, what do you feel you have
learnt in the progression from it to
the full product?

2. • I feel as though my magazines have improved massively. Looking back now, my school
magazine was just awful; it looked nothing like a magazine but instead like an awful poster.
• When I look at my music magazine, I am extremely proud because I can see a real magazine
in front of my eyes.
• Previously, my knowledge and skill set on Adobe Photoshop was minimal and I had never
used it before so my school magazine was awful.
• Also, the camera I took my photos with was the one on my iPhone 5 so the pictures were
dark and not as focused as I would have liked them to be.
• The pictures from my music magazine are taken on a professional Canon camera and we also
had a lesson teaching us how to take the best, most-focused photos.
• This helped massively as previously I would have paid no attention as to how to take a
specific photo focusing on an individual’s face with a less focused background on purpose.
This is made evident in my contents page from my school magazine in comparison to my
double page spread from my music magazine.

3. Difference in editing techniques:
• Previously, with my school magazine I also edited the photos on an app on my phone.
This is a screenshot from the app I used to
create the photo.
Whereas, for my music magazine I used
Photoshop for all of the editing.
However, I did edit my pictures that much.
The main change I made to them was using the
spot healing tool in order to get rid of some
blemishes on my models face.
However, I never used any saturation or hues
on my final pictures because I wanted to go for
the slightly darker, more natural tone as I felt
as though that fit with the genre of my
magazine the best.

4. Comparison of my first and last
front covers:

5. Ways in which I have
continued to follow
convention but also
purposefully ignored it.
• I feel as though this magazine is a
drastic improvement to my original
school magazine as it actually
looks like a real music magazine.
• Some of the ways it follows
convention are by actually having
the masthead in the typical place,
by having a button with text in it
as opposed to a price, also my
barcode is significantly smaller and
in the right place.
• However, despite most aspects of
my magazine following
convention, I do also break
convention by having a lot of
colours in my color scheme as
opposed to just 3 or 4.
• This is because I wanted to have
different shades of blue for my
cover lines.

6. Ways it the school magazine
follows convention:
• There is a colour
scheme of red and
yellow.
• There is also a barcode
which is typical in a lot
of magazines.
• However, my school
magazine tends to
ignore convention as
my masthead is in the
bottom right hand
corner as opposed to
being at the top in the
center of the page.

7. Planning time:

8. School magazine:
• On my school magazine, I did plan where I was going to take the photos by
creating a document and filling out where, when, how and who I was going to take
my photos of.
• These can be found on my blog under the ‘preliminary tasks’ section:
This is what I used
to plan the image I
would take for my
front cover.

9. Music magazine planning:
• Like my school magazine, I also planned when and where I was going to take the photos.
• Although planning is vital, it is also important to have knowledge and understanding.
• This is supported by the fact that I planned the creation of both magazines but obviously the
music one ended up nice than the school one because with the school magazine I had
minimal knowledge about codes and conventions.
• My photo shoot plan for the front cover of my music magazine is on the next slide:

10. This is the sheet I used to plan my front cover photo shoot.
Agency Name TITLE MAGAZINE
Model Phoebe Cowley
Camera height/angle/distance Camera shot used is a medium close-up
Location Outside: The photos were taken against a white brick wall.
Lighting Natural lighting: We took the photos outside so the sun provided us with a lot
of natural light.
Mise-en-scene (incl. props,
costume)
We used minimal props in our photos. The main prop we used was a black
guitar which was used to emphasise the fact the magazine genre was
indie/alternative
Attempted connotation I wanted to portray Phoebe as a stylish, new artist. I wanted her to wear all
black clothing as it looked smart and fashionable and against the white brick
wall it made her stand out.
Planned denotation Girl in black clothes, holding guitar standing against white brick wall.
Contingency (in case of model
absence/weather)
In case Phoebe is absent to take the photo I will find another model to fill in for
her.
Also, if the weather is bad I will wait to take the photos on a day where the
weather is nice because I want my main photo for my front cover to be taken
outdoors.
Alternate angle Some of my alternate camera angles will be close-ups or long shots.
Thinking points: I want to make sure my photo is taken on a minimal background so
that Phoebe stands out even more.
Comments:

11. • Overall, it is clear to say I have improved in every way.
• Mainly, my knowledge has increased which has allowed me to
create nicer products but overall, I believe planning and
organisation has a lot to do with it too.
• You can see I planned frequently throughout my blog but especially
when it came to both of my front covers (refer back to slides 5 – 10)