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.
