Before the internet took over as the source of much of the information we now receive, magazines were just one of many options we had for news and entertainment. They were often dedicated to a specific theme or topic, prettier than newspapers, more current than books, and more portable than televisions. We would peruse them at home and on commutes, and they were a fixture in lobbies and almost every waiting room.
Early in my career, I contributed regularly to a number of local information periodicals published by local and national governmental agencies, a few large companies and publishers, as well as small editorial offices.
The above is a regional information quarterly that was published by a central Japan utility company. The area is known for its machine tool industry, and the theme of this cover was manufacturing technology in our daily lives.
The model was my younger daughter, who was five or six years old at the time and handled the tedium of a studio shoot with aplomb. This was long before Adobe Photoshop became widespread (Version 1.0 was introduced in 1990), so the atmosphere for the photo was created completely in the studio and camera. That took a lot of time.
Lit by studio flash, the film was 100 speed Ektachrome. Polaroid Type 55 was used to confirm details before the color transparencies were exposed. The camera was a 4×5 monorail with, probably, a 210mm lens.