Evaluation

Evaluation
Thomas Stone

For my 3 page article I created a sport piece, where I interviewed one of the SNC Footballers, which included a single page spread of his firsts and lasts that he did in sporting and non sport related subjects. I then created a double page spread of his “Dream Team” which is his favourite eleven players in the football world at current.

The reason I chose to do these as my pages was because I researched into many football magazines, such as; match, fourfourtwo, ESPN and the sports sections in newspapers like; The Guardian, East Anglian Daily Times and Evening star. I also looked at football match programmes, as these would have a direct target audience of the supporters of the two teams playing. I did this research because I wanted to make my articles look as if they could be included in a sports magazine, programme or newspaper.

To do this I had to see what similarities all of them had to create a sports piece. These things were; large action pictures or the matches or relevant pictures to the articles, so for example if they were interviewing a player about boots they would have a small picture of some football boots. Also, they would have images of the actual person they were talking to, so if people were interested in looking at some sports images/pages they would know who the interview was with. They would also include small one or half page articles on an up to date topic. They wouldn’t use up too much space on an article because sports fans want to get the information as quickly as possible.

I also looked at some sports photographers to give me some ideas of how they would shoot some in action pictures. This would give me an insight into angles, positions, depth of field, focus and composition. This helped me a lot because I would be able to style my work into shots that would look very similar to their images and therefore be similar to sports shots I wanted.

I took the idea of the “first and last” interview by looking at an Ipswich Town Football Club programme. In this programme they had a section where they would have a page where they would interview a first team player each week and ask them about their football career and home life. This gave me an idea to do a quick fire interview with a football player because the readers would want to get the information as quickly as possible, as they don’t want to read a really long article when they can get the information in an article quarter of the size.

The reason I chose the colours and font for my pages was to incorporate the college football team’s colours into the pages. I used the colours in the background and in the font, so that people can easily see that these pages in a magazine are clearly the SNC Football pages.

I feel that the finished articles did look good because they looked similar to sports pages I researched into. This is because when I researched into the articles I made sure that mine were similar because if they weren’t they wouldn’t look like a sports page but something I had created. I could have improved on some areas I feel because it doesn’t show off my photography enough, but I was able to use both pictures and captions well to produce, what I felt was a good article.

1 Page final layout

After the double page spread of Jack's dream team i interviewed him asking him what his "firsts and lasts" were, here is the final page layout.

Finished Article

Once collecting all the needed information from Jack i created my pages for my article. Here is the double page dream team layout.

Ideas for my article

Ideas

After looking at a couple of sports photographers and some magazines i have come up with some ideas for my article. I looked at football based magazines as football is my favourtie sport and the most interesting to me. So i looked at "4-4-2" and "Match" to get some ideas. I found one area that i thought looked really good in "Match" which was an article called Dream Team. This is where the magazine interviews an up and coming football star or ex footballer what their current dream team would be and the reason for choosing that player. I have put the idea of the dream team below.

Then for my third page i will take an idea i have found in an Ipswich Town Football Club Programme. This is where every home game they interview a first team player and ask them good and bad points about life, such as good film they saw, bad point in football, favourite school subject etc. I will take these two ideas to create my own versions of these ideas with one of the college football players.

Outline of article

Idea for double page spread of football pitch

Research in Sports Photography (Peter Callister)

Sports photography

After looking at Bob Martin's photography i looked at Peter Callister's photographs. This is because i thought he was different to Bob by specialising in Car's and racing photography, predominately in the Isle of Man.

On the other hand they have some similarites to each other bacause they both are very good at talking pictures of action shots for sporting events. Below i have included a favourite shot i have found in his portfolio of work, it is from the infamous TT Isle of Man Race.

Living on the Isle of Man does limit a photographer a bit because of the events that happen on the Island are all of one genre and there are not many other events happening on the Island. This could also be taken as a possitive thing because if there are not any other events apart from car/bike racing he can establish himself as a well known TT and rally racing photographer, which would bring him a lot more business.

Now that he is an established Sports photographer in the Isle of Man he has also got the opportunity to create leaflets and promotional materials for the different races.

Research into sport photography (Bob Martin)

Sport Photography

After looking at different areas of photography I decided that the area i would do my 3 page article on would be Sports Photography. The reasons for this are because i thought as this is an area of life i am very interested in. Also, as i'm involved with sport outside of college this would be the easiest thing to get articles and pictures for. Before i create my article i will look at a couple of photographers who's career is in Sports photography to give me ideas to what i can do in my articles.

The first sports photographer i found is called Bob Martin. He has worked with many sporting legends through the years. Not only has he done portraits for these high profile sporting stars, he also goes to the matches and takes a lot of in action shots like the image below at a Watford Vs Manchester United game.

I feel that his in action photographs are amazing because he captures some really good images of various sporting events a lot more creatively than any other sports photographer i have seen. Some images are of such imagination and of angles that i wouldn't have thought to take for a sports picture. He also have to be very spontaneous because with all these events the action packed part goes so quickly he must be so quick to capture it. The image below demonstrates exactly what i mean.

Bob Martin has taken photographs at many different major events, this includes both the Winter and Summer Olympics for the past ten times. Also, he has taken images for events that have a bit more variety such as Elephant Polo and Ice horse racing! He is a a world renowned sports photographer, where he takes images in all different places all over the world.

Bob Martin also takes photographs for more commercial things to show the public more in your face things such as the paralympic games. This is done because when people watch it they think of the event as just a sporting event and cheer on either a certain country or event. People tend to forget that they are people with great talents who happen to have disabilities, where i think Bob Martin shows you this. One of his Paralympic Games images are shown below.

He has also won many prestigious photography awards throughout the years, he has won the British Sports Photographer award 3 times and in 2005 alone he won 23 awards.

Magazine mini assignment

Magazine mini assignment

Thomas Stone

Different styles of photography

Fashion

With fashion photography that are in magazines the main aim is to sell both the clothes that they are wearing, but also with some models who are more famous than others, the pictures are used to promote them as a model. Most fashion pictures use a very basic lighting set up, where they light up the model clearly, so that the reader can see everything easily and instantly. Also, the background is mainly very plain, with either having only one or two colours or a simple location shot to compliment the clothes the model is wearing. This is very effective because with some pictures, the background can distract the audience away from what they should be looking at.

The composition of the shots vary depending on the shot size. If they are close up on the faces they are generally on one side (see first image), mid shots and long shots are always centralised to draw your eyes into everything thats happening on the picture at one time (See pictures 2 and 3). This is also the case when using multiple models for the same shot.

Wildlife

This is a great expressive form of photography that i love because it is such a painstaking long process to get even one amazing picture. Photographers would study one area to see where the animals would spend a lot of time and then would position themselves far from it, but in a way they can use extremely long lenses to get the pictures they want, they would wait until they get the "money shot" known as this because this is the shot they would go out to aim to get and this would generate them and the magazine the most money.

The whole message for all wildlife photographs is to show how wonderful and amazing animals and nature is. The effectiveness of these images are so dramatic because one or two images can tell a whole story about one creature, these images can completely change a person's ideas on that animal. So also the message would be to promote the animals in a possitive way unless it is a magazine that has an article talking about animal cruelty when obviously they would show some horrid images.

The composition of these sort of images varies, but they mainly have the animal as big as possible in the shot, which could be either centralized or to one side. Then the background could be out of focus, this is due to it either not being needed or not interesting enough for the article.

Sport

Sport photography in magazines have many different reasons for being there, depending on the article, these reasons could include; action shots from a recent game, head shots for players/coaches for interviews, studio pictures for portraits and action shots for promotional things like adverts.

The whole idea for these types of shots are very effective because the images are used to grab the action from a game with just one or two images, so that if the reader has missed the game they could get the feel for that match with the reports and images. With th studio and promotional shots they would be used to obviously promote the brand and the player to generate money for them both and the head shots would be there just to break up the article instead of having just solid text.

The composition is not so structured as some of the other types of the photography because some of them have to be taken so quickly to get the shot, as long as they get the thing they want in the frame the composition does not matter as much.