Strike a pose: Samo photo students make magazine covers their own

Grace Gypes, Staff Writer

This year, photography teacher Martin Ledford assigned his Photography  students one of his annual assignments, a photo magazine.​​ In the beginning of the project, students were assigned to create magazine covers that could serve as a real cover for any well known magazine such as “Vogue” or “GQ.” Students proceeded to use each other as props, pulling each other out of class to take photos of them on “stage.” Stage is part of the photo room where students can set up and manipulate lighting against a white backdrop.  

The students then had to layer their photographs and logos using photoshop skills they had learned in the weeks prior. 

Ledford has been putting on this project since he started teaching at Samo in 2012. His goal is to encourage students to take a deep dive into magazine photography, as well as introduce them to complex photo editing apps like Photoshop and Lightroom. 

“I wanted them to figure out what kind of lighting they used, how to style the model and then how to put it all together. The magazine doesn’t have to be perfect, but the texts, logos and fonts need to resemble what that magazine would use,” Ledford said. 

The magazine covers range from Vogue to Sports Illustrated, Thrasher to Cuties. Almost any magazine is acceptable. Students use accessories in the photo room such as colored lights, cool backdrops and of course, state of the art cameras. Students then get to choose their own partners and have around one month to complete the project. The project was completed on Feb. 10. 

“I was inspired by Sally. Mostly, [I] wanted to put emphasis on everything that felt the most Sally. I had also looked at a lot of paper covers and saw how the covers focused on the subject as the main focal point for the cover and tried to do the same,” Colette Zighelboim (’23) said.

Monica Lopez’s (’22) magazine cover is based off the Japanese magazine “Cutie.”  “Our goal was to show the unique fashion choices with cameras and big shoes,” Lopez said. The brightly colored cover reflects the style she emulates in her everyday life.

Jaxson Lockwood (’23) (Left) and Ella Coffee (’23) (Right) posing pensively for their Vogue magazine. “My partner Jaxson and I shot each other digitally against a white backdrop intending the theme to be “business casual.” When the shots came out softer, we decided to edit them to be black and white as if we had used film,” Coffee said.