Music Magazine - Development of Front Cover

For my front cover for my Music magazine i have again decided to use the monochrome and red colour scheme as this works with the synergy of the Contents Page and Double Page Article Spread.
I also decided upon using a monochrome image from my photoshoot for the Cover Image - however; this image in Landscape, which caused a lot of problems with fitting it into the frame proportionally and professionally.

This is my first attempt at placing the image onto the page. 
I first made a box that covered the whole page and then 'placed' the image into this box, then using the white arrow tool i positioned the image into the frame; making sure her face was central and her shoulder touched the edge of the frame.
The decision then was what to do with the white gaps at the top and bottom - i used a box and the eyedropper tool to create this effect.
I decided then that i didn't like the effect of this, because it looks 'odd' without the top of the bow on her head reaching the top of the frame.
I then experimented further:

This time, i placed the image at the very top of the frame so that i didn't have the issue with her bow, and moved the box from the top of the page into the now bigger gap at the bottom.
I feel that this looks better, however i need to work on how to fill the grey gap at the bottom.

The next step was the create the heading - I used the Zapfino font in red; in font size 48. I felt that the title was 'bold' enough, so i created a copy of the title and layered it on top (and then grouped them together) to create a 'shadowed' effect on the font. I am pleased with this result as i feel it add something extra to the title that it doesn't have alone. I feel that a bold heading is key to an interesting front cover.