Planning & intended representation

The model that I used for my photographs is my friends older sister & I think that in itself worked well as I wanted my model to look like a young adult & not a teenager. I requested that my model wore all black clothing as one convention of rock is that rock stars wear dark coloured /plain clothing. She wore her hair down which is another convention for both female rock stars & male rock stars (who have long hair). This is because all though the hairstyle is common in society, in the context of rock it is prevalent at depicting nonconformity & not being a traditionalist. The location for the photographs was my model's house, mainly her garden & her kitchen area. Although the kitchen area was not a particularly conventional area to pose for a picture to be used for a rock magazine, I was not concerned. This is because prior to this photo shoot I had already taken some pictures of a brick wall which I intended to use as a background. Therefore, when it comes to producing my final product I plan to edit out the background of the kitchen wall & insert the brick wall using Photoshop. My model did not wear any makeup as I wanted to go against the trend of female rock stars looking quite trashy with make up smeared all over their faces in order to look reckless. I was aiming for a more laid back, cool approach to be produced by the model in my photopgraphs, something which is not so evident in rock stars especially females ones. However, I did instruct my model to wear sunglasses as this is a convention of many rock stars & again this adds a cool factor. She also wore jewellery, (silver earrings & necklace) although this was kept to a minimum as wearing lots of jewellery is more of a hip hop convention than a rock convention. I decided against having her pose with a guitar as when I conducted my questionnaire I found that the majority of my participants thought it nonessential to have an instrument on the cover of the magazine. In addition using a guitar with my model would be very conventional but I planned to challenge certain conventions when taking my photos as I did not want my magazine to look so typically rock like in every aspect.

The first and second image of my model both consist of her standing with a dog. In the first shot she is looking at the dog and the dog is looking away from her. In the second image both her and the dog are staring at the camera, and the dog has quite an agressive look on his face. What is interesting about these images are that they are not only focused on the model, but also the dog and the background scenery. The scenery is quite strange in terms of keeping with conventions of a rock magazine, as there is a lot of greenary & apart from the model's clothing there is nothing that indicates that the connotations of these images are dark and gothic or anything related to rock. However, this could be an advantage as it challenges the conventions of rock and the dog could be used to symbolise the model as being rebellious (dog barking) and also alert (first image, where the dog's eyes are focused on something that cannot be seen in the shot).
I may choose to edit the background to make it look more dark & grunge like, or I may choose to get rid of this background all together & use something more conventional for the background.

The third image is simply a head shot of my model slightly smiling which is done to show that although she is associated with rock, this does not necessarily mean that she cannot smile and be happy. This is because rock stars usually pose in a serious manner or strike a pose that portrays them as being weird or insane but usually never as being happy and joyful. The fact that she is smiling may be appealing to my target audience as it challenges rock convetions, and as my target audience are all fairly young they may relate to the more relaxed attitude being protrayed through this image as opposed to the serious rock star image that is so prevalent.

The final image that I have uploaded is a very simple, long shot in which my model is standing with her hands in her pockets. The justification behind this being that a convention of rock is that rock stars have relaxed attitudes and emulate a cool persona. Therefore, by my model having her hands in her pockets, she is protraying that she is not bothered with having her picture taken, or really posing for it, as she is a non conformist. This is also another factor of rock stars as many of them go against the social norms and therefore do not conform to society. She is dressed in all black to try and help protray that rock/goth/cool image and wearing sunglasses adds to this effect. It also makes it more evident that she is a star as many celebrities are seen wearing sunglasses to cover thier eyes in the hope that they do not get noticed by paparazzi or so people cannot see what they look like without makeup etc. This shows how my model believes she is a highly regarded individual and therefore she depicts arrogance aswell.