Image and text
Illustrative photography
Illustrative can take many forms, it isn’t just simply take an image with a camera and be done with it, it also included taking the image and correcting it; editing the image thins may not be nothing more than just taking the existing image and changing the tone of it for example. There is however many things that could be changes on it; ”It may involve applying techniques that make a straight photo appear to have been illustrated by hand, or it may mean photographing a variety of objects/people, bringing them into the computer and working them into a collage.” (www.doolittlestudio.com) Illustrative photography is usually used for media texts i.e. a book cover and CD case. This image is meant to in a sense sum up what the book/CD is about; so it has to be unambiguous. If you are talking about a book it isn’t always the case that you know which one you are going to get, it is often the front cover of it that makes a person decide whether they are going to purchase it or not; the cover needs to make it stand out from all of the rest that are surrounding them. ”A picture is worth a thousand words is a perfect saying to sum this up.”
An illustrative photographer will usually receive a form from a business including basically everything that they want in the image that the photographer will take; including size, colour, background, characters in the image and what specific look they want them to have. This is then down to the photographer to find and produce all of this. If they fail to perform and reach the expected requirements then they can easily be replaced.
Daniel Lee
”Daniel Lee was born in Chunking, China and was raised in Taiwan. He received an MFA in Photography and Film from Philadelphia College of Art and worked as an Art Director in New York until the late seventies, at which point he switched careers to photography.” (http://www.daniellee.com/Bibliog.htm)
Iain Macmillan 
Iain Macmillan is a Scottish photographer born on 20th October 1938. Iain Macmillan took one of the most notorious and well known images in music history on 8th August 1969, on Abbey Road. ”Iain Macmillan was a freelance photographer and a friend to John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He used a Hasselblad camera with a 50mm wide-angle lens, aperture f22, at 1/500 seconds.” (www.beatlesbible.com)
Macmillan only took six shots whilst standin on a ladder 10feet in the air in the middle of Abbey Road. The Beetles walked across the famous crossing of Abbey Road:
” First Photo. John leads the group from left to right followed by Ringo, Paul and George. They kept this order throughout all the photos. There is a Mercedes pulling out of the studio behind them. John is looking away from the camera and Paul and George are in mid step. Paul is wearing sandals
Second Photo. They walk back in the same order. Good spacing but only John has a full step.
Third Photo. Left to right again, full steps this time but they are all too far left. There is now a traffic backup. There is a taxi, two vans and a double decker bus waiting to come forward. Paul is now barefoot.
Fourth Photo. Walking right to left, once again Paul Ringo and George all in mid step. The traffic has gone through but the bus has stopped to watch. This photo is the cover of Abbey Road by Brian Southall.
Fifth Photo. This photo was used for the cover of the album and is the only photo where we see Paul smoking. The only one with their legs in perfect formation. The three men on the left above Paul's head are Alan Flanagan, Steve Millwood and Derek Seagrove. They were interior decorators returning from a lunch break. On the right side between John and Ringo's head is Paul Cole an American tourist.
Sixth Photo. Ringo slightly too far behind John.
After the shoot Iain went to find a road sign for use on the back cover. It was taken on the corner with Alexandra Road. During photographing the sign a girl in a blue dress walked through the shot. Iain was angry but later it was chosen as the back cover.” (www.beatlesbible.com)
Second Photo. They walk back in the same order. Good spacing but only John has a full step.
Third Photo. Left to right again, full steps this time but they are all too far left. There is now a traffic backup. There is a taxi, two vans and a double decker bus waiting to come forward. Paul is now barefoot.
Fourth Photo. Walking right to left, once again Paul Ringo and George all in mid step. The traffic has gone through but the bus has stopped to watch. This photo is the cover of Abbey Road by Brian Southall.
Fifth Photo. This photo was used for the cover of the album and is the only photo where we see Paul smoking. The only one with their legs in perfect formation. The three men on the left above Paul's head are Alan Flanagan, Steve Millwood and Derek Seagrove. They were interior decorators returning from a lunch break. On the right side between John and Ringo's head is Paul Cole an American tourist.
Sixth Photo. Ringo slightly too far behind John.
After the shoot Iain went to find a road sign for use on the back cover. It was taken on the corner with Alexandra Road. During photographing the sign a girl in a blue dress walked through the shot. Iain was angry but later it was chosen as the back cover.” (www.beatlesbible.com)
Iain Macmillan died on 8th May 2006 from lung cancer.
Final Edit
Evaluation
My finished CD cover came out better than expected considering I don’t usually get on very well with photoshop. My final image wasn’t too different to my initial one as most of the things that it did include where in my original ideas.
To begin with I imported a CD template onto photoshop and saved this; as I knew that I wanted to use the famous Abbey Road Beetles cover I searched for the image I required and then inserted it into the section on the CD template that it was required to be in. I then changed the images opaqueness to about 30% so that I was able to scale the photo up to the correct size to fit the box and then changed its opaqueness back to 100%.
My finished CD cover came out better than expected considering I don’t usually get on very well with photoshop. My final image wasn’t too different to my initial one as most of the things that it did include where in my original ideas.
To begin with I imported a CD template onto photoshop and saved this; as I knew that I wanted to use the famous Abbey Road Beetles cover I searched for the image I required and then inserted it into the section on the CD template that it was required to be in. I then changed the images opaqueness to about 30% so that I was able to scale the photo up to the correct size to fit the box and then changed its opaqueness back to 100%.
I then had to decide on an image for the back of the CD case, I didn’t however want it to be similar to the front cover so I chose a picture of a 1967 Beetle as I thought it would be somewhat clever and ironic to have the name of the band’s name as The Beetles and then have a picture of a Beetle car. I then did the exact same changing the opaqueness of the image to make sure that it did fit perfectly.
There was then the tricky task of making the CD image, for this I found an image of Abby Road without any of The Beetles members in it and cut the image down so that it was a circular shape and fit the CD template. I change the opaqueness down to about 50% as i wanted it to look a bit softer that the front cover of the CD case and didn’t want too much attention paid to it. I then used a black version of The Beetles name, i however put that layer underneath the main image layer because then I didn’t have to remove all of the white background around the text as it was hidden.
For the inside of the CD case i used a completely different image compared to everything else I was using, this image has a dark background with very vibrant colours in it whereas in the other images the colours were very neutral and simple; however somehow the total contrast works. For the wording of the spine I used the text that was from the from the front covers text but I just rotated it so that it was facing the correct way and would fit. When it came to choosing the text colour for the back of the case where all of the songs are listed it took me a while as it was difficult to find a colour that wasn’t hidden by all the colours in the picture or didn’t overpower it and make it look amateur. I used the same title for the front cover of the CD as I did for the actual CD, this was because I didn’t want it to look too dissimilar to everything else, I then placed it in a totally different place where it was on the original cover; it hopefully doesn’t obstruct anything or doesn’t get hidden away from other things in the image.
Bibliography
http://www.beatlesbible.com/1969/08/08/the-abbey-road-cover-photography-sessionThe image that they have used captures the mood of the book, as the dark tones of colours that have been added into the sky create a much more eerie atmosphere and it just makes you feel almost a bit unnerved, as the man isn’t lit very well in the image either so you can’t see any real detail in his face; expression etc it makes you feel concerned for the little girl that is in the picture as the light is portraying him as quite a dark and evil character. Whereas the soft lightness on the girl portrays her as innocent and vulnerable. The way that the man and the girl are positioned; the girl being further away making her look smaller, and the man being closer perceiving him as larger gives off the idea that the man is more stronger and has more power over the girl making him far more in control, which may not be such a good thing.
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