I always love finding new people to work with... especially those who are also into one of my favorite anime series: Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Miad. I met Cezahn Cosplay at San Japan earlier this year and we've been bouncing idea back and forth for a bit now. This was the first one we were able to bring people together for a shoot and everyone loves how the pics came out.
Another one of our cute and goofy shoot ideas. The Sailor Senshi getting together to decorate Christmas cookies and trade presents. Allybelle Cosplay (Minako Aino/Sailor Venus), Mermaid Child (Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon), and Taco's Treasures (Chibausa Tsukino/Sailor Chibi Moon) and I shot this right after our Christmas Love Live session. This time around we were joined by Lorelei from Colony Drop Cosplay (Ami Mizuno/Sailor Mercury).
Allybelle and Rob had been working for a while to put this one together and we were finally able to pull it off. Tacocat Cosplay knew of a place that could work well for this version of Zelda and it was perfect. There were spots that worked so well with the setting sun and made for some amazing pictures.
This shoot was a great example of things coming together at the right time. I was trying to put together a shoot at Texas Gamers Lounge when I saw a post from Lilfaun Cosplay with some initial pics of her Cammy and how she wanted to do a shoot in an arcade. I had been wanting to work with her for a while so for things to come together like this was amazing.
There were a few new things I wanted to try with this shoot. First off was using some of the new Godox lighting gear. Not long before this shoot they had added FujiFilm support to their R2 wireless system. At first I had picked up a couple of their TT350F speedlites along with the X1TF trigger. While the system itself worked well I was a bit less than thrilled with the performance. Not long after that I read up on the AD200s. I ordered one to try out... and fell in love with it. So I quickly ordered another one.
Another thing I wanted to try out here was the Phottix Luna Folding Beauty Dish. I had been been researching light modifiers to change up things from just using either shoot through or reflective umbrellas. And there was something about beauty dishes I really liked. But I also wanted something that was a bit more portable. For some of these pics it worked really well (especially some of the close up shots). Though for others the shallow shape of the dish allowed a bit more light to spread then I may have liked at least for this particular project. Even though I had many lighting options at my disposal we only used one AD200 with the Phottix Luna dish.
There was a stroke of luck that allowed me to pull off one of my favorite shots. I got there to the venue about 45 minutes before Lilfaun would arrive to hang with Imran and his team (and to arm them with Red Bull and coffee since it was rather early for them on a Saturday morning), walk through the place, get some ideas on how to shoot, etc.
Randomly Imran had a completely empty Street Fighter 2 cabinet that still had it's control panel. I saw it, looked at him, and said "I want to use THAT."
So we set it up in a good place that would look like it would be in a natural spot relative to the rest of the cabinets. I set up the Phottix Luna about five or six feet away from Lilfaun... but this time around instead of going angle down like I had for some frames I decided I wanted to position straight on to her face. I actually got inside of the cab to take some shots... and snapped probably one of my favorite photos (it's the header photo to this post). One of my photographer friends saw this pic and said "Wow, that looks 90's as fuck."
Thanks to Imran for allowing us to come in and use the arcade for this shoot. Especially for putting up with me being a photographer and moving cabinets around for good shots. TGL is an awesome gaming venue and his game selection is seriously legit. TGL is not fully open yet but they are running preview weekends and tournaments to give the public a taste of what the place is like. Keep an eye on their page for upcoming events.
This was one of the more involved shoots I've been a part of. When Allybelle Cosplay and I were first discussing ideas for shooting Snow Halation Eli we figured out fairly quickly that doing this one outside was a non-starter. Given that it's summer this version of Eli wouldn't make sense with all of the greenery around. Plus when it's summer in Texas... yeah, would prefer to avoid that.
So when we got to thinking about it... why not do some things similar to the video? Since neither one of us have an idol label's budget we went for something evocative of the design. And I think it worked well here.
Thanks to Justin Mathias for assisting on this one.
While I was able to get some pics of Allybelle Cosplay as Azura at Anime Austin we wanted to be able to get more pics where we could plan things out and not be crowded. Thankfully Tacocat knew of some places that were barely being used so we took advantage of it.
Since it was Azura we knew we wanted to get some shots of her in water. Taco's Treasures knew of some places where we could try this out including a couple of ponds. But then came a larger concern with using the ponds: we didn't know how deep they were... and we weren't sure if they would mess up Allybelle's costume. Thankfully there was a pool with a bit of a beach design we could use. Plus it wasn't very deep which would be important for a shot I wanted to try.
The material in most of the costume would survive chlorinated water pretty well save for possibly the paint on her leg bracelets (which were going to be remade at a later date anyway). So we were able to have more freedom with how we shot in the pool.
The idea of Azura standing on the surface of the water came from an idea I had seen years ago from a Sport Illustrated Swimsuit Issue video. They wanted a photo of the model sitting on the surface of the water. So they basically built something not unlike an ironing table made out of thick and very clear lexan. But since we obviously did not have Sports Illustrated's budget I wanted to see if there was some way we could pull off the same trick.
I had a small height adjustable folding table that had a white surface that I thought could work. If the top of the table was far enough below the surface to be obscured then it could work. The first issue we ran into that the only place we could certainly secure all four legs of the table was pretty far out into the pool to where it was almost four feet. Thankfully I had bed frame risers with me (I use them to help raise my camera tripod to gt above the heads of people when I used to film concerts). So with those and a bit of finagling we got Allybelle in place.
Then the second issue was that if the water was still enough I could still see the surface of the table a bit. So I had Taco's Treasures back off to the edge of the pool and start splashing the water so we would get an active and uneven surface. That way the light refraction of the water and the sun would hide the table.
The sky kinda messed with us during this. Would be a bit overcast, then sunny, then the sun would dart in and out for seconds at a time. Made it a bit difficult to figure out how to set the speedlites or even on how to use a reflector. So in the end I did rely a little bit more on RAW processing in post. But in spite of that we did get some really good pics.
This one was a lot of work and a lot of fun. It had been a while since I worked with Fil Tso (he was the main guy behind a short Halo/Star Wars fan film that I did camera ops on). He hit me up about doing a photoshoot and when he explained that the concept was G.I.Joe and Cobra cosplayers aboard a submarine and a destroyer that both served during World War II I was totally in.
The bulk of the shots were done on the USS Stewart. There was a bit more room to get interesting angles and fight scenes. Though during the day I had to make a point to stay on my feet as much as possible as trying to kneel on the deck of the ship would quickly have me going "ow ow ow" due to the heat. We even waited until nightfall to get more of the inside shots since otherwise it would basically be like an oven in most of the ship.
Originally I had planned on using my Yongnuo speedlights for the inside shots... but save for a couple of pics we really didn't need them. The lighting that was already inside the ship along with the high ISO performance of the X-T2 made things a bit easier to deal with. Especially given that a destroyer isn't really designed to stick speedlighs places unless you got super creative.
Unfortunately we didn't get any shots inside of the USS Cavalla. The space was even tighter than the USS Stewart. At the time I only had the 18-55mm f/2.8 lens so framing was rather difficult. If I had something like a 10mm available I might have been able to pull off something. But there was one other issue we ran into... quite a few of the Cobras even had trouble getting through the ship (any heavy armor guys like Pit Viper were right out) just due to being really tall and whatnot. The group shots on top of the Cavalla came out really well though.
Thanks to the members of the Fightin' 788th who could make it out to this and for putting up with me being a photographer. And special thanks to the staff of the American Undersea Warfare Center for hosting us and allowing us to be a bunch of nerds and running around the place. If you're down in Galveston I recommend checking it out: http://www.americanunderseawarfarecenter.com/
