The camera never lies… Or does it?

By Meera Ali

The briefA local photographic company called Progress Media is holding a competition for students, to promote the local area. The competition is called ‘The Camera Never Lies (or Does It?)’. Entrants will need to source a range of images; these can be captured:•Using a digital camera•Using a scanner •By sourcing them from the internet•By sourcing them from other digital sources Entrants will need to manipulate images to produce a final product for submission. Progress Media will use the competition entries in a display so that the judges can select the winning entry. The winner will be judged on the creativity and quality of the final product which must be presented in a format which is suitable for A4 printing. 

Planning During the creation of my Photoshop image, I had to do some background research to help and inspire me to create a picture of a specific location that would appeal to the audience, my chosen theme was Hawaii. I then decided to collected some images related to my chosen theme and made a collage of what I wanted as a source of suggestions and ideas for my creation.Once I knew what I wanted, I applied most of these images onto my main A4 template on Photoshop and created an ideal cover photo that fitted the brief.

Here is the mood-board I created as a way of inspiration and collecting my ideas.

Planning aheadWhat I did…

• Research- A detail analysis of existing images that were Photoshop.

• Design ideas- Included a moodboard, draft templates and a sketch up on what my graphics would look like.

• Market research- Get to know and understand my target audience (17-23 Years old) and find out their interests- this allows me to apply what they like into my graphics to attract their attention. This included questionnaires, interviews and focus groups.

• Understand the law of copyright and legislation- know where my images are sourced from and how I can safely use my chosen images for my work without any illegal problems.

My finale graphics

Typical features of a magazine cover include cover price, barcode and title.

Background image includes bright and warm colours, unnatural yet beautiful to catch the eye and attract a lot of attention.

Traditional Hawaiian women gives the audience a feel of the location.Opacity glow is used around her to make the image stand out and capture the audience attention.

Pink, blue, purple and green; all tropical colours to give the audience a feel tropical, summer holiday.

Slogan used on the front cover will make the audience curious and interested in a place described as being wonderful and good to go to.

Overall choicesWith the finale graphics idea, I included mostly geographical images of Hawaii. I wanted the audience to gather a sort of therapeutically feeling of the place, the cover had to portray Hawaii into being the magically islands of paradise to draw in attention and make spark emotions within the audience. I think that my graphics was appropriate to the audience as most of them quite enjoyed my creation as it made them think of visiting that specific location. I decided my graphics to be positioned and styled in this way from the questionnaire I did on my target audience. From the three templates I made them choose, the most picked was used as my finale A4 template to place my creation on.