I have got it 'covered'...

Imagewise informed me that the longest part of printing a book is the book cover. Therefore I designed that first on Indesign. With the help of Ken and a few phone calls later to the printing company, the cover was ready to be sent off straight away. I wanted my cover really simple with the title of my fairy tale; 'Adriana' and my name on the back, all black. The font I found online that I could download for free called 'Italiano' which had a script style but still easy to read.  I originally wanted the cover font to be a dark pink but although I would have loved it, it was inappropriate for the overall product and could have made it look cheap, tacky and silly. I also though white looked to boring so I played around and went with a gradient of white to grey to black which complimented the style and edit to my image with a dark filter fading on each of them.

Photoshop is the fairy god mother...

I was worried about editing as I have NO IDEA how to use Photoshop. After consulting with peers and adopting youtube tutorials as my best friend I soon got to grips with basic editing. A couple of my images needed extra work as my tutor noticed in one of my images I had a shadow on my models face but it was the best image to use for my book, It took a long time to do but I managed to remove the shadow. My tutor also said I should make her appear paler as she was supposed to be dead in the image and she still looked quite flushed so I cooled the image down making her look pale and cold compared to the bright flowers surrounding her. Another image I needed to do more work on was the image where Adriana is about to die and she protects Teddy from the fire. I needed more smoke in the image, so I researched how to do this and I was able to add a smokey effect over the top to create the same look as the narrative was describing.

Considering I had no idea how to even create a new file on Photoshop, I am really proud of the job I did on editing my pictures. They all still look really natural which is what I wanted and needed for the product with a few essential tweaks here an there. 

The chosen ones and a final tutorial...

After hours and hours of trolling through my shoots I have found the final images. I have increased the amount of pictures I will have in my book as I love more than one from a number of shoots and they help the story flow better. This may increase the price of the book but I am willing to take that risk to increase the quality of my final product.

I have favourites and least liked , the images I feel are most successful are mainly shoots with Jen alone. The best quality image is on I re-shooted, one where Adriana's character is crying, I am so glad I took the time to re do this image as the results were great. I love the images of my model in the green dress, in a black floral dress and the two together laughing at the cottage. I feel they show the Disney fairy tale element I was to add to the product whereas the storyline displays aspects of the darker tales told centuries ago. The combination appears to be working together well, proving my idea successful.

A particular image I am not overly keen on is the two models together sat on chairs under the tree. I love the location and layout but I feel their facial expressions and posture is awkward. I wanted to re-shoot this particular picture but had unfortunately run out of time due to me needing to edit and submit for printing and my models going back to college.

I showed my final images to Jennifer and she gave advice on editing. On a couple pictures she said it would add to the effect and theme of the storyline if I had a dark filter to the image and then to add it to all of my images to create a theme and style throughout the book. I loved this idea as it was as though the characters are in a dream world with a nightmare of curse lurking around them about to consume all happiness.

An up and a down...

This week, I went to Eastleigh to visit them and talk more about my final book design and see previous examples. Patrick filled out forms of all my book details, paper style, amount of pages, type of cover and bind etc so he could give me a cost estimate.

I decided on an A4 landscape, aluminium clip bind, approximately 30-40 pages half text half imagery, my text would be on translucent paper and images on silk paper, my cover black and glossy and I would order 5 for the moment, this was estimated at around £215 a lot cheaper than I thought! 

The agreed date to submit book to the company was the week commencing 27th April.

Later that day I received really bad news about my model. She died her hair blonde. Naturally I went into crazy panic mode, thinking the worst, thinking my project was ruined and there was no solution. I managed to see a picture of the damage and she had dip-dyed the ends of her hair a bright blonde, I had my final shoot starting early the next day with both models. I was planning of seeing her hair first, then potentially going out to my brunette hairspray, brunette extensions, or re-shooting all the previous shoots. I felt the latter was the most sensible idea so prepared to go out an buy more flowers to re-shoot the death scene and planned potential solutions to shoot on other days.
Once I met up with her in the morning I looked at her hair and you couldn't see any blonde. My sigh of relief must have echoed across the whole country! In the picture I saw there was a filter and effects, her hair actually looked like it was shining in the sun. Luckily this allowed me to not dig deeper into my budget and to not waste any more time than I already had been. 

Tutorial, planning shoots, writing stories...

After talking to my tutor about my overall final storyline, Jennifer told me not to worry so much about having narrative first. She recommended I go straight into shooting images I have imagined and love then the storyline will flow from that. This regained a huge amount of confidence for myself as I was starting to worry about accuracy and timings etc.

I went home and started to think of ideas, poses, places to take pictures I would love to create which worked a lot better, quicker and easier for me, and just as Jennifer said, the storyline wrote itself.

The final storyline came together incredibly quickly and I am so proud of myself for the words I wrote myself. I really fell in love with the tale and when I read it back I hope other feel as connected and touched as I do. Finger crossed my words are a success!