Narrative

• Three words

friendship, teenagers, girls

• A sentence

following along with four girls as they explore themselves while living on a small island

• A paragraph

During your teenage years, friendship is one of the most import things in you life, this is to show you how four girls rely and support each other as well as having fun driving around and exploring their small island. You will see how they explore themselves through portraiture as well spending time together before they all start new chapters in their lives by moving to university.

Design

Paper and ink

I will be using white paper behind my images in my photobook as well as black ink for the title and quotes on the inside. I have chosen to stay with white as I think that is a neutral colour helps to accentuate my images as most of them either have a lot of colour or are in black and white. By using a white background the colour images tend to look brighter making them standout against the darker black and white photographs that will be presented in my book.

Format, size and orientation, binding and cover

For the size and format of my photo book I will have a soft cover as I think that will be fitting for my style of book, I will also have the front cover be matte as I want to add a different type of texture instead of the classic shiny cover. I also think that the matte cover will look better with my front cover where I have a yellow background which I have chosen due to that colour being the colour for friendship as well as having one of my final images layered over the top with the opacity turned down so that you can still see the yellow peaking through.

Title 

I struggled when picking out my title as I could not find one that was fitting for my photo book, I first wanted to experiment with names including the word YELLOW as I thought that it would fit best with the concept. For example, YELLOW HEARTS. After I looked up the meaning which is the opposite to what the book is about I moved on to thinking about my friends, the title I was experimenting with was DIRTY BLONDES as their in one blonde and three brunets but I felt that this really only focused on one person where I wanted everyone to be included. Next I was thinking about doing something simple like a number or letter so I started off with 18 which developed into ALMOST 18 as three of us are 18 but we are still waiting on one. The age 18 is very important, we are starting new chapters in our lives and everything will be changing so I wanted to have a title that represented that.

Editing and sequencing

For my images I will be using a mix of coloured and black and white images which will all have similar editing techniques used so that my photobook looks cohesive. In my book I want sections that are dedicated to one person with a mix of group photos included. I will start off with a black and white portrait and there responses to the questionnaire, this will lead into different compositions of images of the induvial and finish with group images, I will then start a new persons section.

Images and text

In my photobook I will use a small amount of text, but I will be add a singular quote from each person next to another portrait. I think that by adding a quote which they picked out themselves and that they like will allow for the viewers to get to know each person more. By adding text will also help break up the images so that they don’t seem like they are to squashed together in the book.

Layout

In my photobook I have been experimenting with different image layouts, I have a range of layouts presented in my photobook as I wanted variety to keep the book interesting and not repetitive.

To keep the book from looking cramped I have left blank space around some images as well as leaving while white pages to help break apart the colours and shades which can get overwhelming. I like the contrast between the black and white and coloured images in the first layout as it is of the same two subjects but completely different compositions.