Music Magazine: Photoshoot and Manipulation

Now that the focus of my magazine and what kind of artists will feature had been decided, I had an idea of what kind of photos I needed to take.
From my preliminary activity, I knew I needed to use a better quality camera so I borrowed a friends and decided to shoot outside to reduce 'graininess' as much as possible. I wanted an environment for my photoshoot that represented my artist, so chose an urban setting to show that their music is 'real and gritty.' The area I chose wasn't as much like this as I would have liked, but included graffiti and a run-down fire escape, so fitted the requirements well enough.

On the actual photoshoot, I took over 200 photos, but here is a (severely condensed) slideshow of the best ones:

After taking them, I chose some photos to manipulate to explore the ways I could display them in the magazine.
Here are some of my manipulations (click to enlarge):

 In this photo I increased the shadows and contrast within the picture to emphasise the griminess of the environment, and therefore the artist's style and attitude. Doing this also increased the brightness and clarity of the grafitti behind the model, again highlighting the urban environment.
Click [here] for the original (pre-manipulation) photo.

 For this photo, I played around with the saturation levels to give a washed-out look. This is probably my favourite manipulation because it does everything I aimed to do in the first photo and through this makes the grafitti and the model's eyes and hair stand out more than the monochromatic background. I will try and include this type of manipulation in my publication and try this technique on other photos to see how it works out.
[Original photo]

 In this, I attempted to draw all attention to the model by increasing the light and brightness of the photo - causing the background to become white like a photography studio. It did create a dramatic effect that I liked but the angle of this photo isn't very good so the effect is lessened by the fact you can't really see the model's face. I think this could be a successful manipulation effect on the right photo so I will attempt it on other images.
[Pre-edited image]

 I didn't use any particular technique for this photo, but wanted to create the kind of image that might be used on the artist's album cover instead of a poster in a magazine. I played around with the levels of colour, contrast and light in this image until I was happy with the effect. I like the almost-posterised effect of this image and could imagine this as an album cover.
Click here for the [original image] and my mock-up of it as an [album cover]

For this last manipulation, I tried a more subtle approach and re-touched some of it. For example, I removed any slight skin blemishes that the model had and changed her make-up slightly to fill the water line of her eyes. I also removed some strands of hair in her face. The changes aren't really noticeable, which I'm proud of but I found this a time-consuming process that was ultimately pointless but might consider it for any close-up shots I use.
[Unedited image]