Winter Wish Cosplay Galleries

Hi guys!

if you see this message, it means you’re on the mobile version of my site (well, blog)

basically I will be uploading pictures in here as well as the gallery once I find a good mobile plugin or find a way to convert my gallery3 with a mobile theme.

the full desktop site has more content, but I will work to add more into mobile.

next redesign I will do a responsive design =) thanks!

because sometimes, it’s just not light enough. not the light you want but the light you need. okay I’ll stop quoting from batman.

so flashes. there’s so much you can do with them. the flash is very powerful and there’s ways to control that because there’s things you can to the flash. there are things you can add on to make it more shinner or matte. depending on the shape of the advice, it will either spread the light around more or restrict where it’s going. there are situations where you want harsh light for artistic reasons (grungy/night shots/etc), so all depends on what you want to achieve.

BASICS
we have
BARE: nothing on it
DIFFUSER CAP: a simple piece of plastic on it so the flash isn’t as harsh and get you those crappy point and shoot
UMBRELLA: what you think it is. an umbrella. it’s big so it ensures light goes everywhere and lights up your picture. also makes it soft. since it’s shooting from a curved object there’s dimensionality to the light
OCOTDOME: kind of the same thing, imagine it’s shooting out of a flat octogon. so it gives some dimensionality as well.
SOFTBOX: shooting out of a flat square. purely flat so if you want to hit a face with equal lighting, this is your best bet as it’s one flat plan of light
GRID: when you really want to tone down the light. it’s like putting a cricross of walls so imagine little rays of light coming out
BEAUTY DISH/RING FLASH: so imagine a giant bowl cept the there’s metal plate so light shots out in a ring. basically this gives it hard light but renders the edges soft. this is great for studio shots.
REVERSE UMBRELLA: same as umbrella but you’re shooting INTO the flash and it’s bouncing off the inside (silver). it’s very reflective
SNOUT: essentially a long tube, so the light goes through a tunnel before exiting. it’s like shining a flashlight on someone
BOUNCE: bounce it off a surface (say a ceiling) and it will come down on that person. it’ll soften as it got reflected once

there’s usually NEVER a case where you aim a flash at a person full power for portraits unless you’re trying to overpower the fun. msot of the time you’ll be trying to soften it.

I’ve made a diagram of how each light affects the model. I’m sorry for defiling jessica alba so please forgive me.

so now these lights be be mofied in any way. you can add gels for coloring, also additional layers of grids/fabric/white material to further soften the light. or you can just the power levels on your flashes.

So now you know what you can do with flashes, now you can begin to “paint”.

if you put a flash behind someone, they will have a white outline lighting up. if you put a flash to the side, one side will be light than the other. and so forth. so it can be as simple as “hey it’s too dark and I need to light this person up” to “let’s light up the hair and the left side”

the other important thing is CATCHLIGHT – which is basically a little dot of the flash firing off in the eye – as your eye actually reflects what they see. you don’t see that white dot in the eyes for all pictures but it draws you in subconciously as a user. I always make it a habit to lighten the eyes so they ‘pop’ a bit.

HOW TO TRIGGER
now this gets a bit tricky. you’re gonna need equipment for this. lightstands hold up the flashes (think tripods), and you can put on whatever you need on there on top of the flash(umbrella, softbox, etc). for triggering you can either put a cord into your camera or have a flash/your camera/triggering system trigger it.

there are 2 kinds. there is “line of light” meaning you have to be able to see it. so if I put a flash behind someone it won’t fire because the signal won’t go through the person if I”m shooting towards him. this is built into the camera flashes in itself. you may have to put a flash on your camera to trigger the other flashes if you don’t want to use wires. the other is wirelessly, and you can achieve that thorugh a triggering system. put transmitters on your flashes and a trigger(sets off the flashes) on your camera. some of the expensive ones (pocketwizard) go through objects while some do not. in a small room the signal may also bounce off the walls and hit the flash so indoors is generally more reliable.

WHEN TO USE FLASH
for dramatic effect. if there is no sun and there is no lighting source – make one!
if you want that little light in the eyes and not photoshop it
sometimes you need to mimic “natural” light
at night because you can’t see anything and your camera can’t either

DEMOS

so now I’m sure you want to see some examples. it’s not that hard to deduce where the light is if you just look at where it’s coming from – pretend they’re flashlights.

http://winterwish.net/gallery3/index.php/2012-AOD/Best-of-the-best/1_002 – flash to the left of the person undiffused
http://winterwish.net/gallery3/index.php/2012-AOD/Best-of-the-best/4 – hard flash to the right of the person undiffused
http://winterwish.net/gallery3/index.php/2012-AOD/Best-of-the-best/FANIME2K10_WEB-69 – lit ONLY behind the person so you get that little glow around her
http://winterwish.net/gallery3/index.php/2012-AOD/Best-of-the-best/fanime2011web-4 – big softbox on the left angled so only a little bit is lit. soft light.
http://winterwish.net/gallery3/index.php/2012-AOD/Best-of-the-best/fanime2011web-118 – 1 flash in back to light up hair, 1 flash in front to fill face/catchlight
http://winterwish.net/gallery3/index.php/2012-AOD/Best-of-the-best/wbayonetta-4 – light back to light up hair(hard), 1 flash in front with umbrella to soften
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150603579433355.402171.206732428354&type=1 – here is a set I did recently. 1st shot I used a flash to light up my face, and another to light up the bedsheet behind me so it looks like a white background. 2nd/3rd shot 1 hard light in the back and 1 in the front with beauty dish for just little bit of detail so you can see my face.

CONCLUSION

so in the end it comes down to what you want to achieve, and then it’s a matter of tweaking how hard/soft/intense each source to be. this can be done with flash positioning, hardware, photoshop or simply turning down the flash. the more you do with flashes the less you have to fix in photoshop so remember that.

Thank you for reading. I hope that was helpful.

so I asked you guys what would you like to see and I thought I’d just do a little introduction into it before we dive into advanced stuff like flash.

I. PROFESSIONALISM & THE NATURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Let me emphasize clearly. Photography is a SOCIAL hobby/profession/process/etc. You have to interact with people all the time – it helps to be friendly and communicate clearly. I admit before photography I was definetely not as friendly or clear communicator but photography made me a much better people person. No one likes shooting with pissy photographers who aren’t decisive and act like they don’t know what they’re doing. Don’t be afraid to try things and always keep things positive! Try to treat the cosplayer like a friend and keep them entertained because half of a shoot is the shooting experience. If you’re a dick and produce godlike pictures you’re still losing some reputation. if you need time to adjust something or there’s an issue try to solve it yourself first and appear calm. do not touch the cosplayer try to use verbal instructions for posing or demonstrate yourself. I’m just going to say it, if you shoot people long enough of either sex you might see the occasional wardrobe malfunction – discreetly fix it with posing direction or photoshop it out but never bring it up unless you have to. no one’s fault be professional and move on.

Also have your documentation – whether that be a model release commercial or non-commerical. I’m not going to go into discussion about paid shoots or not (been on both sides), but once again, get your paperwork in order. Don’t go into a shoot and expect to debate stuff later. Get all that legal stuff done before the shoot. Communicate with your cosplayer – get an idea for the shoot so you don’t have to make it up on the fly. be sure to provide a phone #/location to meet up as well as their information before confirming them.

I know the above sounds troublesome at times, but trust me when you have 20 shoots or whatnot(as I usually do at Fanime) it really helps when you have all the above set up. plus it makes you look creditable. that’s really important.

II. BUY WHAT YOU NEED – NOT WHAT YOU WANT

Now a lot of people ask questions for upgrades. my answer is “what are you trying to do?”.

if you’re doing night shoots, yes be prepared to drop a lot for flashes/triggers/lighting equipment as that is the nature of things.

but day shoots it depends. want wide shots? you might not need a full-frame camera first. go your cheapest crop camera and a tamron 17-50 2.8 which is a decently sharp lens. or if you want fast lens, 50 1.8 you can’t go wrong with. (yes it’s a 75mm on a crop). a 18-55 kit lens will do just fine for starting out. sharpness doesnt matter much if you don’t know how to compose. It’s like those camera reviews where they take a $8000 camera/lens and take crappy shots in auto mode because they don’t know how to use the camera.

another option is renting. I rented some $1500+ lenses for fanime once just to test them out. ALWAYS TEST OUT LENSES BEFORE BUYING. by that I mean rent the equipment for a day and take it out a real life situation and not focus tests.

now granted if you know what you want to shoot, and the only way for you to be satisfied is the top of the line lenses, go for it. personally I wanted more sharpness because I’m a perfectionist. just know what you want and budget for that to achieve it.

III. THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE

so the basics of photography is the “golden triangle”. ISO APERTURE SHUTTER.

APERTURE is a measurement of how much light you let into your camera. a low aperture lets you shoot in low light and leaves things in the background heavily blurred. a high aperture is for when the sun is in your face or if you want the whole picture to be in focus.

SHUTTER is basically how long your camera stays open to “record” the shot. depending if it’s an action shot. adjust accordingly. the longer it’s open, the lighter the picture will be. for action shots you might need to make it shorter and shorter to freeze the action. also if you are shooting flash, check your camera settings it varies from 1/160 to 1/250th. any less or more will make your pictures have black bars and other weird artifacts. also anything higher than 1/60 you will have to need a tripod or it will be blurry – you can get it to 1/15 steady if you shoot enough. anything more than 1/60 you can easily handhold.

ISO is something only photographers understand. it’s a measure of light sensitivity/noise. so if you’re in a really dark place, and you have your aperture/shutter set to get max light and it’s still not enough you raise ISO. a common setting is 400, but you can stick at 100. so if it’s dark and you like the shot but don’t want to use flash, jack up the ISO.

so sometimes I shoot manual vs aperture priority. it depends. if you have the time, set everything manually. if you don’t set the aperture AKA how blurry you want the background to be, and raise up ISO if needed and the camera will auto-adjust shutter speed to compensate.

So that really about does for part I for now.

I had a great time at AOD 2012!

I mainly shot with primes and ambient light. tried to get natural bokeh and “sunkissed” shots.

http://winterwish.net/gallery3/index.php/2012

Enjoy! =)

I’ve been semi-inspired to post this for a while now. I know some of you have been satisfied and some have not (perfectly okay!). you fail in life sometimes and that’s how you learn. just apologize and move on. but I wanted to share how I do things so maybe everyone will have a better idea of how I shoot and such.

*I know there are a lot of cosplay photographers, but this is rather how I do things. so please don’t generalize.

Step 1: advertising/setting up
this typically happens 1.5 months before the con and continues til 2-3 days before. Basically I take a combination of public requests and also cosplayers I want to work with. There’s a lot of back and forth communication, social networking activity, and such. Things about location and time and special requests. Sometimes people re-schedule and you have to shuffle people around or let them go. I don’t make it a personal habit of re-scheduling a shoot unless I have a personal emergency or need to squeeze in lunchtime – I am there to shoot at a con 95% of the time.

Step 2: packing
this happens the week day before the shoot. checking all the equipment. and checking which backback/suitcase setups I want to go with. doesn’t seem like it would take long, but I would say it’s about 2 hours for me. It’s a somewhat stressful thing as the equipment is 4 digits worth + if you know what I mean.

Step 3:transportation
I usually drive there, and depending on the con, stay or park valet so 2 hours before I shoot I pack. then I have to do an quick equipment check before I leave the car.

Step 4: shoot shoot shoot!
so I try to get there earlier by an hour so I can scout around. After that I start shooting by calling/texting them and letting them know I have arrived. Sometimes people show up. sometimes people don’t. if they don’t I walk around and shoot someone else after 15 minutes by staying around in the general area if they call. I usually take a 30 minute lunch (or less) and am shooting 95% of the time. I spend 5% talking to con friends and some hall shots. this is usuall 6-10 hours a day depending on how many days I am going.
and if you think we don’t suffer physically we do. our backpacks are heavily. our cameras make our wrists scream. setting up over and over makes us tired. and all those shots where we’re bending over to get the perfect shots works your abs to no end. just how I imagine you’re sweating to death in your giant mascot plushie or dying in that miniskirt and 6 inch heels with full makeup and fake eyelashes. we all suffer =)

Step 5: editing – lightroom
I accumulate 50 shots per shoot on average. I usually average 400 shots a day (varies if there are action shots, then there’s a LOT more). after that I put the shots through a first round of culling (trimming out similar angles/over or under exposed/bad poses expresions). The second round is basically I have 2 good shots, but which one is BETTER? I delete the other one. After that I apply a round of global general edits to all photos, followed by specific style edits (b/w, desaturation, etc). this has been known to take up 8 hours or so. About 15-30% of the shots survive this process.

step 6: photoshop magic
this is where I go and remove dark circles, large pores, background people, or any kind of major flaws for a select few pictures. there’s also a few special shots I want to revisit to enhance with creative edits averaging 5-10 min per picture this takes up to 2-3 hours.

for the special shoots I send out the edits for approval to the shoots which it was a 50/50 collaboration for approval. upon approval and re-edits if needed I post those at a later date. there’s a little bit of back and forth here but that’s natural.

step 7: posting/social networking
so I now produce full and web size JPGs. I upload the mass of them to my website. then select ones go on facebook/deviant. links are then posted on my facebook/twitter/website. this is about an hour of work

step 8: backing it up
I power up my 5 hard drives. yes 5 externals. and put the JPG and RAWs on them. I file away my model releases. may take up to another hour.

step 9: double checking
at this point I check on my sites everything is working because I am a perfectionist.

At this point I am exhausted and go to sleep or play a videogame to relax because odds I drove to a con, shot for 6 hours, came back and spent 5-6 hours finishing it. and I probably haven’t had dinner yet.

so yep that is what goes into my process. A lot of effort and love into my photos =)

Hi everyone,

thanks everyone so much for bearing with me and hopefully being educated on SOPA! as a web developer my passion is for web (aside from cosplay photography) and I felt I had to do something.

Hope to see everyone at AOD!