Front cover image inspiration

Photography in magazines is the most important aspects to consider, as a front cover is essentially what sells it to the consumer. The success of sales that issue depend on several factors - the text layout, the font etc. but the photograph remains the most significant element of the magazine. It is what the consumer sees first. Cosmopolitan may have Keira Knightley on the front, Vogue may have Michelle Obama, Mojo may have Mick Jagger. The image reflects the contents of the magazine, and if this is done successfully then consumers are more willing to buy it. Western society today is quite voyeuristic, so having an impressive image of someone taps into people's desire to gaze upon people. This is particularly prominent with women who desire male celebirities. A modern example is of the Twilight actors, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner. However, Male Fetishism is also quite prominent. Nuts and Zoo magazine delve into the increasingly acceptable amounts of flesh shown in magazines. Each genre of magazine clearly house their own style to attract their audience. Music magazines however are unique in that they are one of the most difficult ways to portray what their talking about through visual representation. A fashion magazine is all about seeing "beauty". Music is aural. How does someone photograph sound?
The answer obviously is that they can't. They instead use the acts that play music instead. Magazines use images of bands, singers etc. to make the audience become visually appealed to the artist. A girl may be visually attracted to, say, Usher, but his voice becomes irrelevant when voyeurism takes hold.

When concerning my magazine, I wanted to get a striking image of someone that would dominate the front cover and catch people's eye. I looked at famous photographers, Annie Leibovitz, John Rankin etc. and found that Rankin the most interesting style. His high contrast, close up images make the subject stand out incredibly. Below is an image of Emma Watson that he took (from emmawatsonweb.com).

There is a very high contrast used in the image, and there is also alot of desaturation used too. I think that if this image was used on the front cover of Cosmopolitan it would be very successful that month.
I was inspired by Rankin incredibly, his portfolio ranges with some of the most famous celebrities to date, as well as politicians. When looking at my photo, the inspiration is clear.


Obviously I didnt want to completely mimic the style used, but I was keen to use the ideas of high contrast images. I wanted to retain more of the colour in the image to give the face more life. The image is not as animated as the emma watson shot, so desaturating it any more would make the image lose all vibrancy, something that i wanted to retain, even if it was a hint.

Also, I thought the framing of the image was appropriate to the magazine as I was able to use the text to surround the image and make the actual design of it work better as a result.

Researching this has really developed my conceptual eye for photography and I think has benefited my coursework as a result.