The (not so) Glamorous Side Of a Photo Shoot

Today I learned that photo shoots aren't all that glamorous (for the photographers at least).

I had set the time for the shoot for 4 p.m., but because of some little bumps in the road, we ended up starting the shoot at 7:00 p.m. That in itself was a little bit of a game changer because natural light was no longer an option...neither was shooting outside (or shooting another day because I was way behind schedule to begin with). Therefore, I had to try my hand at three-point lighting on a six foot long white wall. However, of that six foot long wall, I could only have Tiffany stand on about three feet of that because if not the light switch on the wall was noticeable and I couldn't shoot her full frame because then the crown molding, outlet, and tile floor were noticeable. Additionally, I could only position myself in a tiny area because my living room t.v. stand was in the way and it was too heavy to move out of the way. So, you could say it was a little bit of an experience. 😓

When picking out her clothes I went through her closet and picked any tops or dresses that had a bold color or a spring-like print and packed them to figure it out as we went during the shoot, since I'm making the April edition (it's Spring!) of my magazine. I didn't worry too much about the "feminine" factor of the clothing because the clothes are feminine, but in a different, unexpected way. For example, instead of showing femininity with pink and frilly fabric, this is shown through the cut and brightness of the clothes. (I will show this more specifically when I post some photographs.) In total there were four outfits: an orange top with jeans, a floral dress, a light green top with jeans, and a floral top with jeans. The clothes themselves were also relatively simple (ex: she wore jeans) because my magazine, as are most Feminist magazines, are trying to appeal to a middle class audience, as well as the fact that editorial-type clothing (like I had been planning before. Yikes) and poses would obscure the importance of the Feminist message. Therefore, I found a middle ground with the clothing: appealing, but simple.

I had her do a variety of things in each outfit, mostly just telling her to move around and not try to specifically pose, so the shots would look more natural. This was part of the reason that I decided to use my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S4) to take pictures with; I needed a camera that could capture a succession of photos more quickly. I think I took some really great pictures, but I haven't been able to look through them all yet. Tomorrow I'll work on my cover and table of contents, so I'll post them some pictures then.



-Jenn

Table of Contents and More Decision-Making

I was designing my table of contents and this is what I have so far:

I used the same color for the background as the color from the logo on the front page, but for some reason, Canva is making the color seem much more pink on this page. Therefore, I'm considering inverting the colors because maybe it's too much red/pink? I'll think it through a little more...I was thinking of having the numbers on the right be titles for stories (which I have yet to come up with) and the center, between the numbers on the left and what are going to be the title on the right, I will possibly have a picture in the middle, with the text being shaped around it. I say possibly because I've been using Canva for my designing and, so far, I have yet to discover a feature that lets you cut around text. I may have to start figuring out Joomag and, if not, change my plan for the table of contents ☹

Below was an inspiration for my table of contents design. It is from an edition of Vogue magazine from a while back, but I feel that it is a valid source to draw inspiration from because although Vogue is mostly a women's fashion magazine, it sometimes writes its articles from a feminist standpoint.

Also, as of now I am leaning more towards an opinion piece (based on research) for my article, but I'm going to ask my teacher to make sure that's something that I'm allowed to do.

-Jenn

Felsenthal, Julia. "What About Women Reminds Us About Feminism." Vogue, 19 Nov. 2015, www.vogue.com/ 

     article/francoise-gilot-lisa-alther-about-women-feminism. 

Behind Schedule, But Back On Track

So I'm a little behind schedule, but I'm just going to power through it at this point. I have good news though: I have started designing my cover:

**Note: This is a pretty rough outline, mostly to get myself back into the project, so I will probably change some things around.

I was able to create the red/pink mixture I had thought of before and I think it fits really well. I'm going to bring the two texts from the bottom to the sides, so it fits more with the genre conventions of a general interest Feminist magazine. Also, I'm changing the quote because I just put it there as a placeholder since I don't know if I'm doing and interview or an opinion piece yet. Additionally, I'm going to add more cover lines and add a date. I decided that L'Fém would be a monthly magazine because
    a. Most Feminist magazines are either monthly or seasonally
    b. I decided not to make my magazine seasonal because since it will be dealing with pop culture, by the time that each issue of my magazine is published, the topics/events that it contains will already have been discussed to death and past, making my magazine less influential and having less of an impact.


More good news: I have finally found my model. I decided not to go with any of the shots that I had sketched out before in a previous blog post because my idea for the article changed completely. Since I'm going to be writing about a different image of feminism (see selling line, The New Face of Feminism), I'm going to have my friend Tiffany (who is serving as my model) be in more candid-like pictures. I'm just going to have her move around, try out different poses...nothing too specific and I'll go from there.

I'm going to take the pictures on Friday and hopefully have them edited, as well as have the article done, by the weekend. Fingers crossed...

-Jenn

Critiques and Fighting the Urge to Start All Over

Today in Media Studies class we met in the library to give and receive critiques for our Foundation Portfolio projects. The people in my assigned critique group said that they liked the idea of doing a Feminist magazine, but they didn't understand the direction I was going in for my article or my pictures because I myself sounded unsure when I explained my project. Truthfully, I really was unsure about my whole magazine and had thought about completely changing to a cooking magazine. Luckily, I managed to talk myself out of it by reasoning:
     a. I would have to do three weeks worth of work in one weekend
     b. I still have no idea how I would do my own fresh take on a cooking magazine
     c. I can't cook anyway, so making a cooking magazine would not be any easier

I think a major part of the problem was that in planning these editorial-type photos and making a bold unconventional title, I was losing the essence of the importance of Feminism. I had felt like I was stuck doing a Feminist magazine,until I thought about one of the ideas given during the critique. When I was explaining that I wanted my magazine to be a departure from what some people negatively perceive feminism to be, someone suggested that somewhere in my magazine I address this issue. That's how I decided on my new article idea. The same aspect that I wanted my magazine to embody, of breaking the stereotype of the negative image of feminism, is more direct to the genre of my magazine and more relevant to what's going on in the present. My target audience would still stay the same though, because I'm going to try to incorporate my new article idea with pop culture (just no directly focus on fashion...) I'm still deciding whether I'm going to do an opinion piece or an interview, but my article is essentially going to answer why women are hesitant to identify as feminists and what can be done (or should anything be done) to change this image.

-Jenn

Designing

Okay so I finally started sketching. Please excuse the quality of the photos.

Having established that I was going to be tackling the the current debate about women's fashion, I decided that my cover line would use a play on words to reflect this. "The Fashion Issue" refers to both the theme of this magazine edition and the current problem with fashion. Since I want my composition to be clean and simple, as of now, I am going to try to use only three colors on my cover: red/pink, white, and black. However, the composition can't be too empty, or else it wouldn't fit into the feminist genre, so I decided to add a side border that would be only on the left and at the top. I got the idea for the font after playing around with fonts on Canva and I think it fits well with the concept of fashion, but at the same time it seems like an undone version of cursive writing, which would convey the concept of breaking out of the mold. (**Note: I still haven't decided what the picture on the cover will be so I drew ideas separately from the cover sketch.)There are some things that I still need to touch up, but this is the general idea for my cover:

**Note: the picture says pink, but I'm going
to try to create a pink/red mixture instead

 Below is the image that I'm currently leaning towards the most for the cover. Since this edition of L'Fém will be about how society has trapped women in a fashion debate, I thought it would be interesting to shoot my model with her hands out, holding on to bars that I would edit into the photo, but not completely caged in. This would represent how women are being trapped by society on the issue, but at the same time are trying to break free. Since this idea would incorporate the extra element of bars, I I end up going with this idea I think that I would eliminate the side border on the cover, or the composition would be too busy. Originally, I had shaded the girls face in because I don't have a model yet, but I'm starting to think that it would be interesting to somehow cast the girls face completely in shadow because she is supposed to represent all women and all women don't have the same face. How good of an idea is this? I think I should give myself time to think it over.

Girl would be wearing some sort of dress
(although I'm still thinking about the outfit...).
If this ends up on the cover, then it would be
shot in black and white.

This is another idea that I had thought of for the cover image. Basically, it's a girl wearing some sort of dress (could maybe change to a different outfit), with her hair in her face (which would cover the same concept behind obscuring the face in the image before), and her arms swinging freely (as in, she's "free"?). This would definitely be a more understated image than the one above, but I kind of like it. If I don't end up using it for the cover, I'll try to find a way to incorporate it into the two-page spread.

Depending on where this image
will be placed, I will decide what colors
she will be wearing or if it should be shot
in black and white.

This last picture is very editorial looking...and I'm not sure if that is a good thing. I like the idea of the hair splayed out behind her, making her seem a little unpolished, but other than that I don't see how this picture would add any meaning to my magazine issue.

The face in still picture is also
obscured, but, once again, that's
still to be decided.

Maybe I'll play around with a few more ideas... particularly something with the hair from the last picture because I really like that idea. More updates coming soon!

-Jenn

Color Psychology

Before I begin sketching, I want to know what colors I should be working with, according to what fits with the genre conventions and, also, their meanings. Color is one of the most important aspects of this project because it basically sets the tone for my magazine. Since Feminism is so broad and there are so many different types of Feminist magazines, ranging from fiery and controversial to feminine and subtle, the colors I choose would have to make it clear on what part of the Feminism spectrum L'Fém would fall on.


First, researching the genre conventions I looked for the general interest Feminist magazine genre that I had decided on. Below are the three most prominent examples that I found. Ms. and Bust both have bold colors, but Make/Shift takes a more neutral approach. Therefore, my own magazine can go with many ranges of colors.

I mean, my magazine is called L'Fém, a play on the French word for Feminine, so, of course, the first color I thought of was pink. But is pink too feminine? According to Color Psychology, the meaning of the color pink can vary greatly depending on the culture and context. However, since L'Fém would be produced in the United States, the cultural implications are that pink means feminine. I also found this helpful chart on the https://www.colorpsychology.org/:

I like all the positive implications of the color pink, but the physical weakness and emasculation? Those are the stereotypes that I want to break with my magazine. But in using the color pink would that be seen as purely feminine, with no other meaning behind the color?



Unsure of pink, I decided to look into the meaning of the color red. According to Color Psychology, the color red attracts the most attention out of any of the colors. That's good aesthetically because it would add a pop of color that I could use to draw attention to the title and/or cover line(s). This is another helpful chart that I found on https://www.colorpsychology.org/:

Like with the color pink, I like the positive implications of the color and this time I even like one of the negative meanings behind it: defiance, because that's what I'm trying to portray with my issue on women's fashion. However, anger and aggression are definitely not what I'm looking to convey in my magazine, so that's unfortunate.

Since I like aspects of both pink and red I'm going to try to blend the two colors to create a new color when creating my magazine. More updates soon!

-Jenn

"Make/Shift ISSUE 19, SUMMER/FALL 2016." Make/Shift, makeshiftmag.com/. 

"Ms. Magazine." Feminist Majority Foundation, www.feminist.org/research/zines.html.

"Pink Color Psychology and Meaning." Color Psychology, www.colorpsychology.org/pink/. 

"Red Color Psychology and Meaning." Color Psychology, www.colorpsychology.org/red/.

Fine Tuning and Scheduling

I had somewhat of an epiphany yesterday. I really liked the concept of Bust magazine that I had researched, where it is a general interest Feminist magazine, meaning that it is laid out like a women's lifestyle magazine (with some spreads looking higher end), while tackling current day women's issues in pop culture. Therefore, I decided that I want my magazine to have the same layout as Bust, which also matches other typical Feminist magazines clean composition and, of course, an article with a Feminist mindset.

I was having trouble coming up with an article idea because Feminism is so broad. I myself had had the image of Feminism being only about fiery issues, so I was trying to think of an article that was more on the serious side,but also not on a topic that's too stuffy and not me. Then I came across this quote by teenage feminist and founding editor-in-chief of Rookie Magazine :

“One thing that can be very alienating about a misconception of feminism is that girls then think that to be feminists they have to live up to being perfectly consistent in their beliefs, never being insecure, never having doubts, having all the answers...and this is not true, and actually recognizing all the contradictions I was feeling became easier once I realized that feminism was not a rulebook but a discussion, a conversation, a process.”

 So I realized that I can just have my two-page spread be about a topic that I find interesting and relate it women. I had actually just come across this article the other day, which kind of stuck with me. It's about women's dress codes, specifically 'how women should dress', which I found pretty offensive, but also great discussion topic as it is serious, controversial, and a topic that I find interesting. Therefore, I'm going to make my article about the controversy with women's fashion, making L'Fém fall under a general interest Feminist magazine.

According to the type of article I'm writing and the Feminist genre of my magazine, my target audience would be older, definitely straying from the younger teen range. Because my article is going to be more sophisticated, but also about a problem in popular culture, my target audience range would be 18-35. I set this range to begin at 18 because that is when women begin to experience first-hand the necessity of the Feminist movement (are being thrust into the real world, experiencing inequalities) and made it end at 35 because that is approximately the cut off for being most influenced and aware of pop culture, which is what my magazine would tackle.

Lastly, I also came up with a schedule for this week to keep myself on task with my magazine (fingers crossed this actually happens):

Monday, March 13th	Tuesday, March 14th	Wednesday, March 15th	Thursday, March 16th	Friday, March 17th	Saturday, March 18th	Sunday, March 19th
X	*Research target audience	*Personal day	*Research color psychology *Decide upon color scheme for magazine	*Brainstorm sketches for cover	*Start sketching cover	*Plan out next week’s schedule *Start writing article *Sketch layout for two-page spread *Figure out model

-Jenn

"Feminist Majority Foundation." Feminist Majority Foundation, www.feminist.org/research/zines.html.

Fortin, Jacey. "Dress Like a Woman? What Does That Mean?" The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2017/ 

     02/03/style/trump-women-dress-code-white-house.html?_r=0. 

"Selecting an Idea and Target Audience for Magazine Writing." The Latino Author.com, 

     thelatinoauthor.com/magazines/targeting/. 

"4 Steps for Defining a Target Audience." Print, 24 Nov. 2015, www.printmag.com/design-education/ 
     4-steps-for-defining-a-target-audience/. 

Yandoli, Krystie. "There’s No Such Thing As a ‘Typical Feminist’." The Huffington Post, 

     www.huffingtonpost.com/krystie-yandoli/theres-no-such-thing-as-a_2_b_4269310.html. 

Defining a Feminist

According to dictionary.com , feminism is defined as "the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men." Almost all definitions of feminism that I found were about the same, but the ways in which women's advocacy is conveyed are very different. Some magazines follow the 'out-of-the-box' approach to feminism, by being as controversial as possible in terms of images and stories, while others see the word feminist as synonymous with 'badass', focusing on popular images and women of today. I found examples ranging from uncomfortable and different to modern and surprising.

These are two examples I found of directions I don't want to go towards:

Ms.  is probably the most well-known Feminist magazine. However, I listed it here as an example of the direction I don't want to go towards because of its cover. I want to use an actual model for my pictures, not drawings and comics. When conducting my research I came across Male Feminist and decided to include it in this list because it offended me. When I first saw this picture I found it admirable that a magazine existed that advocated Feminism by males. However, upon further research, I found that the picture above is actually a fake picture. That's right: this magazine does not actually exist, but was created by someone to mock typical headlines featured in general interest Feminist magazines. This just further proves my point about people's ignorance to what Feminism actually is/it's importance/its tainted image.

These are the two examples I found that most captured my attention:

The magazine's slogan is:
"For women with something to get off
their chest."
See source here

“Guns and Rosie is a magazine for women in the military

 to read and relate to, because no matter what our theories

 about the military, the women on the ground need a place of 

sisterhood to deal with this taxing occupation. This magazine 

has a focus on theory surrounding the struggle real women are

 going through." -Grace Montesano, editor

See source here

I found Guns & Rosie interesting because it used a well-known image (Rosie the Riveter) to convey its message. Although I found it interesting that it was aimed towards military women, the subjects that it tackles are stronger than what I was looking to cover. Bust magazine caught my attention because on the surface, it seems like a typical women's lifestyle magazine, but the articles that appear on their website are unexpected, as they criticize what are made to be cultural phenomenons. Case in point. Bust would therefore be a general interest Feminist magazine.

According to what I have researched, I want my magazine to follow the general interest Feminist magazine genre, therefore following Bust's layout, its fresh colors and composition and, for my two page spread, feature a story tackling something about pop culture.  

-Jenn

Harper's Bazaar,17 Nov. 2016, www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a18859/feminist-magazines/.

"Male Feminist: a (spoof) magazine for men who really care." The Telegraph, 6 Oct. 2014, 

     www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/11142857/ 

     Male-Feminist-a-spoof-magazine-for-men-who-really-care.html.

"Ms. Magazine Review." The Feminist eZine, www.feministezine.com/feminist/modern/ 

     Ms-Magazine-Review.html. 

Sanci, Elissa. "Amal Clooney Gave A Powerful Speech At The UN, So Why Are The Headlines About Her

   Baby Bump?" Bust, 10 Mar. 2017, bust.com/feminism/19309-amal-clooney-un-headlines.html.

And the Winner Is...

...not the cooking magazine!

I have actually decided upon a completely different idea than the ones from my list: Feminism. It's funny because that's one of the topics I swore I wouldn't do. Then how come I ended up at this point?

As seen in my previous post, I had tried to settle on a magazine genre by coming up with an image. However, I was having trouble coming up with original images for my magazine, possibly because my heart wasn't completely set on doing a cooking, travel, or culture magazine. Therefore, I decided to think up another essential element first: the title. Unconventional, I know, but I stepped up to the challenge after finding this little gem:

Robert Munsch is an acclaimed
children's author 

My title would therefore have to be original and appealing, but since I didn't know my target audience yet (because I didn't even know my genre yet), I began my brainstorming by thinking up things that I like. Having just finished watching Midnight In Paris, I was thinking all things French, since I find the country, culture, and language so fascinating. Playing around with different French conjugations, "L'Fém" popped in to my head. The title in general is in French, with "L' " being the French version of "the" and "Fém" being a shortened version of "Féminene", meaning "feminine". Then I began to think: Why would I have a title in French? What does French and France mean to me and what could I use it to convey? France is revolutionary, modern, chic...all words that I also associate with women (i.e., Feminism).

And the idea just kept on growing from there. I realized that I wanted to advocate for women (i.e. feminism), but portray what I saw feminism to be, not the stuffy, radical women that make some people cringe when they think of the word. A feminist can be an advocate for women, but also be into pop culture, be fashionable, be "chic". In other words: millennial Feminists.

That is how I officially decided that I was going to be creating a Feminist magazine, but with the twist of focusing on the new faces of the movement (perfect selling line?: The New Face of Feminism) With my idea clear, I can finally begin my genre research tomorrow.

-Jenn

What Will It Be?

Welcome to my (soon to be officially titled) blog!

Here you will be able to follow me as I create my final portfolio project. Disclaimer: I am perpetually indecisive, so bear with me as I possibly change my mind several times.


Although I am a self-proclaimed movie junkie, I decided to go with the magazine instead of the film opening in order to stress myself out further challenge myself.  I believe that the hardest part of a film opening is coming up with an idea for it. However, for a magazine, every aspect involves some sort of compromise between ideas in order to create a final product that is both cohesive and stands out. Although my magazine must follow the chosen genre conventions, every element can exist as my own, with the addition of my own little twists to the genre conventions. This would push me to exercise my creative critical thinking side, a side I haven't been able to use too often throughout high school. Also, when else in my life will I have the opportunity to design my own magazine? However, never say never...

Since deciding on a magazine, I have been scrambling to come up with a unique  idea. This is the list I compiled, including pros and cons:

Topic	Pros	Cons
Cooking	-Could do a cooking magazine for every stage of life -Food is delicious	-I feel like this genre of magazine is overdone, therefore, my concept would have to be really fresh -I’m not sure how well my idea would play out -I can't cook ☹
Traveling	-Cute title idea: Bon voyAge (pronounced ‘age’, as in growing old) -Gives me an excuse to go to Wynwood or the beach	-Some people may not understand the title -Its sad that the only travel-worthy spots relatively near-by are Wynwood and the beach
Culture	Could be based around my own Latin Culture, specifically Colombia	Since all the pictures in the project have to be my own, I’d have to go out and find a gathering of Colombians doing something typically Colombian...pretty rare in Florida

I'm more of a visual person, so I decided to look up innovative magazine covers to see if I got inspired, working to create the concept for the magazine around an image.

While at the library, I found some interesting ideas to base a cooking magazine off of, similar to the cooking magazine idea I had thought of:

About how food united two
friends and helped
them get through several
stages of their lives

About how family
dinner growing up
affects the outcome
of a person

Here are travel magazine compositions that caught my attention:

The angle at which the subject
is photographed makes it seem
three dimensional on the page

The colors are gorgeous,
the subject is simple, but
by placing it on the third of the
page it gives it a more pleasing
composition.

Finding ideas for a culture magazine orientated towards what I was thinking was more difficult:

I love the simplicity of of the layout,
the black and white juxtaposed with
the blue title, and the angle and carefree
nature of the photograph. However,
this specific magazine leans more towards
a women's lifestyle magazine, which I'm
not too sure that I want to do. 

As of now, I am leaning towards doing the cooking magazine, but I want to give myself one more day to brainstorm before I officially decide.

-Jenn