Kyle Speirs's AS Media Blog: break down of cast, props, setting, location for magazine pictures.

For all three of the photo's I used a female teenager. This was because she fitted in nicely with my target audience. I decided on a girl because I thought you can get away with more shots of a female than you can with a male; basically some shots that a female poses for, a male would look unconvincing posing like it.

For the front cover image, I made sure, from the angle I took the shot, that there was enough room to the right of the person to fit the text on the cover nicely and make it look coincidal. I took the photo whilst the girl was standing infront of a plain white wall, this was to make it easy for the image to stand out, also for when the text went onto the white wall for the front cover, that it would be easily readable. Also this make it easier to make certain parts stand out. I decided to take all three photo's in the same hallway, in the same college. This is because my target audience are most likely to be students, so would be familiar to this environment and could then familiarise themselves. I did not tell her to wear anything specific as I knew her fashion style was exactly that of my target audience, so I just let her chose. For the contents page image I just got a bit of a background of classrooms and hallways, so, once again, the reader can relate to it. With the actual image of the female I just asked her to look straight at the camera and smile, as I did not think the contents page particuarly needed anything out of the ordinary, I thought a nice inviting photo would look good there. I had her sitting on the floor because i wanted to get some different angles and heights to stop the photo's looking too familiar. However for the double-page spread image, I made sure she wasn't fully in the shot. This was because she could have then took up the majority of a page so people knew who it was. I asked her to look down and smile, this is because this is a regular reaction if someone laughs at something, and I wanted it to look as if I had asked her one of the questions in the article and that was her reaction. Also, the character she was being comes across in the media as quite a happy person. So this shot was perfect and fitted well. Also, leaving a plain white wall to the left of the female made it easy to write the article and make the points i needed to stand out, such as my pull-quote, easy.