Having friends who cosplay means that I get to practice my photography, mostly at different conventions. When Tiff told me that Ben (her boyfriend) would be cosplaying for the first time this year, I knew I had to do a shoot with him – mostly because my photography portfolio consists of the same 3 people over and over again. (That and it is pretty much ONLY girls right now. LMAO.)
Ben and I set up a general time frame of when we wanted to shoot (early Sunday morning) and discussed areas we could shoot at. I wanted to get up early to take photos to make sure that we got more overcast weather since he was going to be dressed as Jack Frost. We didn’t want to shoot too late as then the lighting would be too bright and cast too many shadows. Our goal was to make it seem as “winter-ish” as possible in sunny California haha.
Our first location was outside the convention center.
To be honest, I’ve been spoiled by working with Tiff and Rachel. Both of them know their best angles, what kind of poses to do, and they’re incredibly easy to work with. Ben, on the other hand, hasn’t modeled much and I still kind of suck at directing, so to be completely honest, it was a rough start! But once we found our rhythm, the pictures started rolling in really quickly.
Of all the photos, I think the three above are definitely my favorites! The grey walls of the convention building really gave us a more “winter”/”cold” kind of feel and really made Ben and his cosplay stand out. I think Ben captured Jack Frost’s essence really well in the last two photos. I kept pulling up reference photos for us to look at and kept shouting things like “now smirk!” or “stand up straighter!” or “stop smiling and look off into the distance!”
What a trooper. :’) Thanks, Ben!
For our second location, we walked through Guadalupe River Trail, located near the Children’s Discovery Museum. There’s a lot of trees and foliage in the area and we thought it would be a great backdrop! We worked more on getting full body shots here, but it was a little difficult at some points because I’m much shorter than Ben and had nothing to really stand on… so a lot of the shots were at awkward angles. Oops. I think the next time I do a shoot, I definitely need to bring some kind of stepping stool haha.
Overall I’m pretty happy with the photos we got! I learned a lot throughout this shoot (especially when it came to directing!) and I’m really excited to get some more practice in soon. This session gave me a lot more confidence in shooting with someone I haven’t worked with before and maybe one day I’ll be able to take random strangers’ photos at a convention haha.
If you would like to see more of Ben’s cosplays (or even his own photography!), be sure to check out his Instagram here: http://www.instagram.com/foresightphoto.
