Photoshoot

I think a photoshoot was essential for the use of our digipak and album covers because like all artists, they need to establish an image which is something their fans can connect to. Since our track and album is R&B/Pop crossover it's important to get over the particular conventions that fans will connect to and be able to recognize so that we can capture that initial attention that fans show in artists before being fully loyal - if our artist was to show signs of what our audience likes then they might feel more comfortable with giving the album a try and listening to it - this is especially important to artists that aren't already established in the music industry since their target audience won't already know a lot about them.

The majority of pictures that we took we were able to use for digipaks and adverts although I think that the digipak pictures would've been better with close-ups as their smaller and they allow the audience to get a more personal look at the artist, connoting the emotion that's probably been put into their songs and work. However for adverts, it's probably best that a long shot is used to help pull together the overall image of a star and carry those elements in the whole advertisement, since the main purpose of an advert is to promote and almost sell the star. 

Three pictures we decided not to use 

While this close-up could have possibly made a good front cover for our digipak with the right editing and with the correct text and colour scheme conventions, we decided that the image we went with had more potential since this image only shows a snippet of the artists face. Even though it looks artistic and could be intriguing  it's best for rising and less establish artists to always show their face as it helps their audience connect further with the artist and get to know their image - encouraging them to buy them into their material. However, we could use this image for the inside of digipak where there will be photos alongside this one where you get to see more of the artist and get to know her better.


This shot taken is high angled so that the audience are looking down onto the star which is pretty unconventional for an album cover or an advertisement photo. After studying a lot of photographs on R&B and Pop digipaks, I found that they mostly picture the artist face on or from a low angle. Plus, in this photograph our artist is in a knitted cardigan which isn't generic of R&B or Pop who usually wear much more "in fashion" and urban street styled clothes. Although it sometimes pays to go against conventions, I think that it's important to abide by some conventions as the audience needs to recognize certain features of a new artist and connect them to their favourite genres so that they have appeal.



While this close-up is much more conventional with the artist looking glamorous and made-up as well as looking straight down the camera lens, I feel as though the background of the shot is too busy for a magazine advert so possibly with the right Photoshop editing, the main image of the artist could be used on an album cover or within the digipak.









Before and After 1 

This is an example of how I've used photoshop to make the photos on my photoshoot look more appealing, generic and conventional of the R&B/Pop genre. During editing I've used a black and white filter for the actual face in the image followed by 'Brightness and Contrast' which has made the face much lighter than the hair and a cutting tool which allowed me to move the face in my photo onto a different canvas where I wanted it. The other image I moved from one canvas to another was the swirls which resembled a vine from the copyright free website 'Brusheezy'.

Other techniques that were used in the finishing touches of the photo was an "Outer Glow" on the image of the face which took away from the jaggedly edges and helped the main attraction stand out from the monochrome background. Also, I used a variation of opacity which abled me to make the text running over the top of my image more transparent which allowed the text to have a fusionend effect but prevent it from taking away from the overall image.

As well as learning about the basic tools on photoshop for editing photos, I think I learned about the process of making a photograph a lot more conventional and suited to its purpose, even though originally the photograph may be seemed as unusable. This makes me think about photographers and artists are flexible and work together to make basic material they have attractive to the artists fans in attempt to make their digipaks and other photographic material seem more appealing that similar artists on their platform.

Before and After 2 


Following my point about manipulating a basic image to make it more conventional and attractive to the target audience, this is the same photograph as used in "Before and After 1" but manipulated to have a more 'Street' and 'Edgy' feel to it without using drastically different editing features. All I used was a basic filter, text insertion, an opacity change and a zoom to make the close up an extreme close up. So that our photos were conventional of the R&B and Pop genre we decided to vary the use of text from "Before and After 1" which was more swirly giving a fun, girly kind of feel like the Pop, this text resembles graffiti in a way, appealing to the R&B side of the artists overall sound.

All in all, I think if I had more time than the amount set for this task I would've experimented with a variety of shots such as long shots and mid-shots in a basic, raw formation to see if manipulating them would have the same effect - giving me an overall control of the feelings and themes that I translate to the audience in the final piece.