Skip to main content

Portrait Gallery Meet Up

At the beginning of November I shot with the DC Cosplayer and Photographers meet-up group at the National Portrait Gallery in DC.  The National Portrait Gallery has a  beautiful interior, especially the third floor which has several interesting little nooks. The other nice thing is the Portrait Gallery does allow flash photography in most areas, the only limitation for this shoot was photographers could not use light stands or tripods.  This limitation was not an issue, since that is the same limitation I work with at most conventions.  Hopefully, we will get to shoot there again because I know I missed some interesting areas.

For the Portrait Gallery shoot, I was limited to handheld equipment only and I did not have an assistant to hold things. I was shooting with my Canon 70D, with an 18 -200mm lens, a 450 EX II flash, and LumiQuest 80/20 flash modifier.  The modifier is called an 80/20 which when the flash is pointed straight up will bounce either 80 to 20 percent of the light from the flash towards the subject depending on what insert is being used.  This is actually a useful modifier, and good when you can’t use off camera flash.  

You can see all the photos from the shooter here.

My favorite shot from this shoot is Jennifer Glinzak Costumery  who was Naomi from Elena of Avalor.  I like this photo, because the photo frames her face nicely. I did modify the image in Lightroom by enhancing some shadows, brightening  her face just a little and adding some vignetting to draw the eye.  
Shot at: ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/250s, at 18mm

I also liked this photo of Roaring Girl Cosplay and Sgt. Bucky Bear cosplay as Leonardo DiVinci and Ezio from Assassin's Creed, because it looks like a clandestine meeting. What is nice, is this stairway was inside the building and contained an antique lamp post with lamps.  I modified the image slightly to add spots of lights coming down on each person and darken the surroundings to give it more of the secret meeting feel.  I also left it a bit yellow, to keep the image warm and keep as though they are meeting under old gas streetlights.

Shot At: ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/80s at 18mm

And finally  what would a photo shoot in an art museum be if there wasn’t a Carmen Sandiego (admit you thought of the theme song). Life of Cosplay did a very good Carmen Sandiego and what was great about this was she had a little Statue of Liberty with her.  So we did a picture of her sizing up the Statue of Liberty and then one of her putting a little one it in her brief case (shrink ray).   I like both of these photos the first one I left a little dark and sepia toned almost like an old newspaper photo. The other one I left dark, trying to go for a film noire look while still keeping the picture in color.  The only problem I had with shooting in this particular area was the light was very yellow/orange which clashed with my flash color. I should have gelled the flash but I didn’t have the gells with me.
 
Shot at: ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/60s, at 18mm
Shot at: ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/60s at 35mm


Overall, this was a good photo session and being limited in equipment is good practice for Katsucon which does not allow light stands or tripods.  This will be my last  photo shoot till the new year, due to the holidays, because it just gets too crazy during December.

On a side note for those in the DC, VA, and MD area I will be running a contest starting December 1, on my Munchkin Photos Facebook page. I will be giving away a 2 hour photo session (in studio and/or on location), to include 20 high resolution digital images and 3 prints.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Pumpkin Barron

On October 12th, I had the pleasure of working with the marvelous SunnyRae .   The general theme for the shoot was pumpkins but with coordination on outfits with SunnyRae theme evolved into official portraits of an 18 th century Pumpkin Baron. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 1 Westcott Strobe 1 rectangular soft box 1 strip box 1 6x6 silver reflector 2 C-stands 1 light stand Boom arm Color checker clamps Sandbags Backdrop stand Rough canvas backdrop Pumpkins Rough canvas drop cloth Flowers Old trunk Books Letters Wooden crate Fake leaves Chair Tri-level plant stand     The set up I wanted to keep this set up a bit rustic yet give the feel of staged aristocratic painting of the time.  I started with a plain rough canvas backdrop then placed an ol...
Post a Comment
Read more

Night Queen

On September 28th, I did a session with May.   This session’s theme was designed around a Halloween headpiece I made a couple of years ago but never got to shoot.   The vibe of the overall shoot was dark queen. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 rectangular soft boxes grids 2 C-stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Fuzzy grey backdrop Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps 2 trilevel plant stands Fake candles Goblets Fake flowers Black fabric Silver fabric Large Styrofoam block Dowel Rods Skulls Fake moss Dry ice   The set up I tried to keep this setup simple in nature.  I started with the base of a fuzzy grey backdrop to which I added a “throne” made from a large Styrofoam block, some dowel rods, and a piece of black fabric.  To that I added two flower pot hol...
Post a Comment
Read more

Belle Island with Central VA Cosplayers

On October 19 th I drove down to Richmond, VA to attend a Central VA Cosplay Photoshoot meetup on October 20 th at Belle Island.   I wanted to go to this event because it was in an interesting location, and I wanted to meet some new cosplayers.   For this session I used: Canon R6 2 Speed light Trigger 1 Light stands 24 - 105mm lens Gels Camera Settings: For this shoot, I was transitioning back and forth between being inside an old, dark, abandoned building to bright, sunny woods.  Due to the transitions, my settings varied greatly.  I mostly shot at ISO 100 except for when I accidently bumped the nob to “Auto” and didn’t notice, so I also took shots at ISO 2500, 3200, 4000, and 6400.  The shots at the high ISO actually look fairly decent, and not as grainy as one would expect.  My shutter varied between 1/100s to 1/250s with the most common shutter speed being 1/250s.  My aperture varied between F5 to F11 with the most common ap...
Post a Comment
Read more