Prepared by: Marina Breitbach, 2856536 April 17, 2014
COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT WORKBOOK 1 Introduction/ Proposal 3 COMPANY 3 TARGET AUDIENCE 4 EVIDENCE OF RESEARCH 4 Design decisions 7 COLORS 7 PHOTOS 8 BAD PICTURES 11 PHOTOSHOOT 13 Extras 14 WHAT WOULD I DO BETTER NEXT TIME? 14 WHAT HAVE I LEARNED DURING THE PROJECT? 14 REFERENCES 15 COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY INTRODUCTION/ PROPOSAL
Our task was it to create a practical photography what is completely set on our own. We could choose between 3 different templates, fashion lifestyle, instruction and service. I decided to take the instruction template because it was the only one where I had an idea in the rst second. My idea was it to create an nail instruction page for a women's magazine. I got the idea while going through Pinterest and Tumblr, two modern social networks on the internet. On these websites you can nd loads of instruction pictures for everything you want. So I decided to create one of those instruction pictures for a womens magazine.
Company
InStyle is a monthly womens fashion magazine published in the United States by Time Inc. Along with advertising, the magazine offers articles about beauty, fashion, home, entertaining, charitable endeavors and celebrity lifestyles. Its editor is Ariel Foxman, and its publisher is Connie Anne Phillips. After originating in the United States, InStyle has expanded its brand and is currently being distributed as international editions in 17 other countries including: Australia, United Kingdom, Poland, Germany, Brazil, Greece, Hungary, South Korea, Spain, Russia, Turkey, Romania and South America. InStyle aims to appeal to any woman no matter what her fashion price point may be, as they showcase trends at all price ranges. Since its rst issue in 1994, in which Barbra Streisand was pictured on the cover, it has quickly come to be one of the most highly supported magazines under its category. (Wikipedia, 2014)
I took this womens magazine because it reects everything I want to say with my instruction document. I want to say with my project that no woman should be scared to use color and also wear them. As you can see this month InStyle is all about color. Another reason why this magazine ts perfectly to my instruction is that they already have a how-to section in their magazine. COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY Target Audience
My target audience will mainly be women. There wont be a specic age group because the range of the age of the females who are reading the InStyle magazine is big. The women who read the magazine dont have to be rich to buy the articles illustrated in the magazine because this magazine appeals to any woman whatever her price point may be. InStyle illustrates products from every price range. This point was important for me because you dont really need expensive products to become a good result.
Evidence of research
As I said before I got the idea to create a nail instruction for a magazine while scrolling through Pinterest and Tumblr. On these websites you can nd loads of pictures from every area you want, whereas Pinterest is more serious than Tumblr. On Tumblr you often nd pictures that are going below the belt, honestly you will nd a lot of porn pictures. Here are some pictures I found on these two websites:
Pinterest:
This picture gave me the idea of my nal picture. I wanted to show a product I used and how the nails look when they are nished. What I dont like about this picture is, that you cant see the thumb and the whole nail polish. A good thing about this picture is that the nails and ngers look healthy which gives me a good feeling and I dont have the feeling of skipping this picture. COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
This picture gave me the whole idea to do a how-to instruction. You can easily understand the instruction even without any words written down. The picots look a bit cold, but it doesnt matter because it shows how to get a good glitter fade and not how to get the brightest nails. I decided to take more colors in my instruction because I dont want to have that cold feeling of this picture, I wanted to have a warm feeling. COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY Tumblr:
Here you can see a nail polish put forward. It should illustrate the product, but what I dont like about the picture is that it makes a reection on the table and that the basket in the background is more dominant that the nail polish itself. But all in all it gives me a feeling of being home because I can see a lot of things i have at home and it could be a space somewhere in my own home. This gave me the idea to show all the products I used to make the nails.
This picture is a bad example, the nail in the middle has yellow color of the nail from the left. I dont like that the light is coming from the left, it probably is normal day light which always appears to be a good thing. But in this case it looks cold and doesnt suit with the warm colors of the nail polish. Also the colors dont t together, there is no harmony between these colors. I decided to take matching colors in my pictures. COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY DESIGN DECISIONS
Colors
R = 142; G = 102; B = 42 C = 0; M = 64; Y = 65; K = 0
I used this orange for the main parts of the instruction document. It is taken from the nail polish from the last picture which is in the hand of the model. This color gives a warm feeling and is also often seen in the summer and autumn, during that time the weather is mostly warm. Orange is the color of social communication, which makes people wanting to talk about stuff.
R = 237; G = 179; B = 129 C = 4; M = 26; Y = 43; K = 0
This is the background orange, which is going from this color to white. I took this color from the thumb, it also is the base of the nail design. It harmonies good with the orange of the main parts of the instruction. Again, I wanted to use warm colors to give a warm feeling.
I didnt use the green which is used on the ring nger and the middle nger because it looked grey and cold when I tried to use it in the background. I decided to stick with the orange colors and use two different kind of orange. COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY Photos
As you can see I cropped the picture so you only see the main two colors and the device I used to paint the dots on the nail.
I decided to just show the nail and the brush because that should be the statement of the picture, showing how the nail gets painted. I also xed the nail with photoshop, I made the color on the skin go away and made the nail / nger look healthier. COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY Before Before After After
Here you can see that I just took the ngertip of the picture. The before picture had too much space where nothing was in the picture, which gives a feeling of emptiness. I made the nail and nger look healthier in xing the color on the skin.
In this picture I only took the middle nger and the ring nger to be the focus of the picture. Thats the rst time that you can see the cupcake on the nger, I didnt show how I did the cupcake because it would take too many steps and I only have ve steps. And also I want to show that you can paint anything you want on your nger, it doesnt have to be the cupcake. COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY Before After Before After
This is the nal picture of my instruction for the magazine. It shows the nished nails and one used nail polish. I also xed the skin and the nails with photoshop to make them look healthier. This picture gives the feeling to go to a sweet shop to buy some sweets. Again I wanted to give a warm feeling. COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY Before After Bad Pictures
I didnt use this picture because its not just blurry, the ngers look also very unhealthy. You can see old ripped off skin, the ngers are looking really hurt. A lot of people would feel kind of disgusted, which is not good for promoting a product. The ngers should look healthy. I would x the skin with Photoshop to make it look better. Another reason why I dont like the picture, is that not all ngers are on the picture.
This picture is a bad example because the thumb doesnt look normal, it looks to close to the other nger. You wouldnt normally paint your thumb like that. The brush also looks really blurry, the upper part of the picture is useless because you dont really see if its a hand or not. The thumb should be separated from the other ngers.
COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY The picture looks way to bright, the lightning is bad in this picture. The nger and nail are looking unhealthy again. You couldnt sell this picture to a costumer. I would turn the light down next time, this was a test picture to see if its working, but as you can see it wasnt. The picture is also very blurry.
On the rst look this picture doesnt look that bad, the lightning is okay and its nice that you see some jewelry on the hand. But if you look closer you can see that the front part of the picture is blurry and the bad isnt. It should be the other way around. The picture gives a warm feeling and the skin of the nails look healthy in this picture.
COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY Photoshoot
This is how I set up my Photoshoot.
COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY EXTRAS
What would I do better next time?
I would take my pictures with a ashlight and also I wouldnt take my pictures in the automatic mode. Most of my pictures look shaky and blurry so Im going to use a tripod next time. I would want to be more condent next time and I would try more things. In my opinion after you nished a project, youll always nd so many things you would change and do better next time. You will never be totally satised with your nished product. Even when you look back again after a certain time, maybe after a few months, you will probably nd so many things you would change. I could say so many things I would change on my project, but maybe I would change my opinion again and make it back to where it was.
What have I learned during the project?
I learned a lot during this project. Im now able to explain what I feel when I see a picture. I can now decide which picture is good and which is a bad picture and explain why I think so. Another thing I learned is to always have a tripod with you when I want to take pictures. I learned to not be scared to use the manual mode and the ashlight while taking pictures.