Most of the time, I’m in front of the lens, but since my 21st birthday I’ve had a Canon DSLR in my midst but never really gone out and used it. It came with a 55mm lens which is great for learning, and good for general group photos and the occasion portrait, but a few years ago I was able to borrow a 50m lens, and I was amazed at the depth and detail this wee lens could pick up!
When I borrowed the lens before, it was at a music festival event, but I always wanted to take photos of models and photographers. What I love about cosplay photography, other than it’s fun to pose for them myself, is that the character posing is more exciting then any old model. They’re a super hero, a bad buy, a magical girl – anything!
And so you it means you have that extra push to be creative, there’s more things you can try and more fun to be had! Of course photographers in general do this for any photography subject, but as I’m well versed in most media that cosplayers portray, I’m better equipped to know the kind of photos I should be taken compared to say, commercial photography.
Do I know the best way to take a photo to advertise a car? Hell no. Do I know a tiny bit about good poses for a cosplayer to do? Yes!
I’m friends with a lot of photographers, professional and hobbyists, and they’re where I get my inspiration from and who I learn from! Every time I model for a shoot myself, I love the photographer talking through why they’re switching lenses and what they’re doing so I can try to apply that to my own photography!
The best part of Scotland Comic Con as being able to take some photos of my friends, notably Mericon cosplay in her Aerith cosplay from the game Final Fantasy VII. FFVII is my favourite game and Aertih is my all time favourite fictional character, and so I had a lot of ideas for photos. Taking photos of Mericon was spur of the moment, but I had a lot of fun post-processing them later on.
In FFVII, the speech boxes are in dark blue to black gradient boxes, and so I wanted to recreate some with photos of Mericon. This photo was me trying to recreate the first instance where you meet Aerith in the game:
What I love doing with photos is downloading brushes for Photoshop CS5 to later use when post-processing them! I wanted to recreate the ‘lifestream’ effect from the game, and so downloaded some cosmic space brushes and changed the colour to represent the colour of the lifestream itself. I’m not the best at this aspect of post-processing but out of everything, it’s the thing I’d want to work on and improve the most.
Sometimes one little tweek on Photoshop can make a good photo amazing!
I didn’t spend a lot of time taking photos like I wish I did! I’ve learned it’s hard to balance being in photos a good amount of time and balancing the time taking your own. Maybe I should cosplay a character that’s a photographer next…
All my photos can be found on my Flickr account, and I’m debating on creating a page for them so they can be found more easily, but photography is purely a hobby, just like drawing. Though it’s handy to use with my freelance work and to promote other things I do, I’ll never call myself a professional in it and nor do I want to be. I just enjoy all forms of creating art! May they be making music, drawing or taking photos!
