CD cover - wednesday 13th

For today brief we had to think of our favourite song and try to take a photograph which would be used to design a cd cover for that particular song , I initially struggled with this task as I had thought of too many songs , eventually i came up with the song: Photosynthesis by the artist Frank Turner . 

This is the original CD cover for the song, which is basically a clip from the video. I wanted to steer away from this and wanted to try something more simplistic which had more symbolic meaning towards the song. 

The first idea that came into my head was to use some kind of clock to use within the image, so i decided to take a look around the bargain shops on the high street, I found a timer which was in the style of an old fashioned alarm clock , I thought this was perfect . I wanted to show that the song was about growing up, as it is , and how his life is one big timer and eventually it will go off and it will end. Here is the photograph of the clock I used.

As well as having the clock within the photograph I wanted to include the idea of photosynthesis, by adding some sort of natural plant, so I walked around Blackburn and photographed the clock in different natural landscapes, such as on the grass, near leaves, and on tree branches, I think the most effective was the tree branch. Here is the contact sheet of the entire photo shoot to give you an idea of the sort of photographs I took. 

After taking a series of photographs I decided that my most favourite and suitable photographs for the song i choose where the photographs with the branches. Here is the photograph that I choose to develop for my final design. 

I choose this photograph because I felt although it fit the brief and showed the meaning of the song clearly but doesn't overcomplicate it. The depth of field on the image is effective and takes the viewers eye away from the background and makes you focus more on the clock/timer on the trees branch.

I also like how the background is out of focus because of the pattern it creates. I developed and edited the image on photoshop CS5 , I only wanted to edit it slightly as I feel as though the meaning would be taken away if I changed it too much. 

I started by cropping the image to fit the Cd size I then resized the image to 12cm by 12cm which looked like this: 

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I then decided to change the colour of the image to make it fit the whole theme of plants and photosynthesis, so i changed the colour and make it into a sepia tone. I destaturated the image then changed the colour by using the colour balance tool. To make the colours come out stronger I used auto tone. 

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This is the look that i wanted for the cover of my chosen song, next i had to add the text to complete my design. I decided to choose a text which was similar to the text on Frank Turners other albums, I resized the text to fit the image.  

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This is my final image , I am pleased with the final outcome but could possible think about changing the colour of the texts so its clearer the see but other than that I am happy with the image and feel as though it shows what i wanted the image to show about the song and the artist.