My friend Allyson organized a cosplay photography event recently over a weekend.
Basically a bunch of cosplayers and photographers getting together taking
some photos. If you don't know what cosplay is... It's basically people wearing outfits
from Anime, from TV shows, games.. things like that. We try to find locations that
work well with those characters. And get together, take photos, learn from each
other, try get nice images out of it. My friend Jason and I were the first
ones to get there so we got the first tour of the location. Really large
beautiful place. Lots of landscape to use potentially. There were sheds. There were
different spots that could work really well for different characters. We were
checking out the place. She had an ATV, large ATV, that we were able to use and
drive around. Look at different things. Got the full tour. We didn't use a lot of
the larger area. We kind of stayed closer to the house eventually. But seeing the
whole place is good because we might go back in the future. Check more out
different times of the year. The tour was intense going on an ATV pretty quick. Her
dog was there running around with us... and... Oh? What was that? That seems to surprise
everyone that goes through there. Anyways, there are a good number of spots that
can be used for photos. Even with two days you're still pretty limited on time.
After the tour I decided to walk around by myself. Try things out. Take a few sample
photos. See locations.. If they would work potentially for different situations.
I also got so much that I'll probably be making a video about nature photography
there. Really nice spot for that type of stuff.
Besides the outdoor locations we also had a few indoor locations in the main house.
Allyson has been taking her own photos. She has an A7iii. She does some
really great work and has learned very quickly with all that. She made sets for
her cosplay photography. And basically taking photos of herself or taking
photos of friends. Really nice sets. We did use it was quite a bit. Especially
later in the day. Of course, with multiple photographers, multiple cosplayers, it's kind
of a big mix of who wants to take photos of who first.. whatever. Really it doesn't
matter. It's just whoever goes first. Started taking photos... Sometimes we work together,
which is really nice as well. But it depends on the situation. I don't want to be
kind of a situation where too many cooks in the kitchen happens. What you can do a
lot of the time is use different focal lengths than someone else if you're
taking photos with a second photographer. So that way you're not in their way. If
you do use the same focal length sometimes you kind of pick the same
spots, which is not a good thing. Anyways, it does work out well. Sometimes I would
hold lights for someone. Throw some glitter for someone. All those situations
work out. It's just being helpful. Trying to learn from each other. And it is good
actually just to hangout there and see what they do. Learn little things that
they do. Look at light different ways than you might. Pick different angles then you
might. There's just so many potential benefits to hanging out with other
photographers, other cosplayers. I should mention the equipment that I was using...
I was using the pair of M50 cameras from Canon as the main photography cameras.
I also had the M100 for video. All the b-roll that you see here is with the M100.
Had some focusing issues apparently that I didn't notice, but it's no big deal. Also
I had the 32 millimeter f/1.4 lens. That's really my favorite lens for
people photography. Just basic straight photography in this system. It's a great
lens. It's accurate, it's consistent with autofocus. Just really nice results that
come out of it. I was also using the EF 85mm f/1.8 with the standard OEM adapter.
Turns out I had a lot of issues with focusing that I didn't realize at the time...
Because it's just very close, but still off where the eyes are not in
focus. Now, that could be a mixture of my technique and other issues potentially.
But I'm not too thrilled about that result. I only had a small sample of good photos.
Some cosplayers like the poison ivy, of course, worked out very well in the
nature situations. Also the Final Fantasy cosplayer...
Then I had the two sisters with the white outfits and the green hair. That one was,
of course, a very horror related anime. I haven't seen it. I don't know too much
about it. But with that they had good props, and also the locations
especially later in the day worked out well. With those situations I was using
the little light that I had with the red gel tried to make it pretty spooky,
pretty creepy. I think some of them turned out interesting in that situation.
The Full Metal Alchemist cosplayer worked out very well in the shed areas,
So good mixture of locations and cosplayers.
We had Bulma from Dragonball. The ATV itself was a great spot to take photos.
Let's go over the main benefits of stuff like this. We've got the hanging out with
friends. Taking photos. Getting practice in. Learning from people. Just so many
good things about photo shoots.. photo sessions.. like this. Especially over a day
or two. Full days where you can really spend a lot of time with people. Getting
to know them, of course. I know these people for a long time so not really so
much that, but in a lot of situations spending a lot of time with photography
as like the cornerstone really works out well. I did meet a lot of these people
through the convention scene with the anime convention, sci-fi conventions. You
might eventually see them outside of conventions and it works out where... Get
close enough that you can do things like this with the multi-day photoshoots. Anyways,
hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please consider subscribing the helps me
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help out a lot as well. Thanks again! I'm Scott from Photography Banzai.