Skip to main content

Whetstone Pond Shoot



On September 8th  I hosted a meet up of the Dayton-Columbus-Cincinnati Cosplay Photoshoot group at Whetstone Pond in Columbus.  Whetstone Pond is located next to the Park of Roses in Columbus.   We had 14 cosplayers and 3 photographers attend, so it was a very busy shoot.

I worked with 11 cosplayers of which 6 were in groups of two.  I shot a total of  227 frames in three hours. Of the 292 frames I edited 146 images and delivered 83 final images. I shot the whole meet using a light from a single bare off camera speed light on a light stand. I shot with a bare speed light to compensate for the sun. I shot using ISO 200.  My aperture and shutter speed varied throughout the shoot, due to the changing lighting conditions due to the drifting clouds.  My aperture ranged between F5 and F14 with the most common being F8.  My shutter speed varied from 1/40s to 1/250s with the most common speed being 1/250s.  Finally, my focal length varied from 18mm to 100mm, with the most common focal length being 18mm.   

This was a very busy shoot because we only had three photographers for 14 cosplayers. I wanted to ensure as many cosplayers as possible got to work with a photographer and get photos for showing up.  While I shoot relatively fast, I was going faster then normal and it showed in some of the images when I was conducting my image cull.  However, there were still some very nice images.  My favorite from the shoot is of ButDragonsTho Cosplay.  While she was easy to photograph, the tricky part was the post edit, due to the tattoo sleeve she was wearing for her cosplay.  There were two issue I had to contend with 1) the seam of the tattoo sleeve and 2) the color of the tattoo sleeve, which was a shade darker than her natural skin tone.  I’m going to discuss how I changed the original image on the top into the final image on the bottom.  

To get the final image on the bottom,  I first did basic adjustments in Lightroom. These adjustments consisted of color balancing, increasing the contract, adjusting the exposure, and removing any noise from the image.  From there I exported the image into Photoshop to do the heavy lifting.  The first thing I did was use the content aware tool to remove the seam of the tattoo sleeve and touched up a few fly-away hairs.  I then applied frequency separation to the image and applied localized gaussian blur, to smooth the skin.  This was very important in the area of the tattoo sleeve to ensure a decent blend between it and the model’s natural skin.  From there I added some highlighting using dodge tool.  I then flattened the image and sent it back to Lightroom.  I did a few more minor adjustments and added a slight vignette to the image to finish it off.  While this process seems simple, it took me about 20-minutes to complete.

Original Image shot at  ISO 200, Aperture F8, Shutter 1/100s, Focal Length 40mm


Final Image

Overall, it was a great shoot.  You can see all the images from that day’s event here: Whetstone Pond

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode.  I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs.  I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work.  But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated.  While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing.  I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year.  I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023.  I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Optical Spot

The weekend of November 16 th , I got a little ambitious and did four sessions to test out the Lindsey Adler Optical Spot .     I originally rented the optical spot from LensRentals , but that session had to be rescheduled; however, I didn’t want the rental to go to waste, thus a TFP weekend. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 1 Optical Spot 2 strip boxes 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 2 light stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Fashion Grey Seamless Gobos Gels Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps Star filter Red Curtains Posing stool     The set up While I did four shoots in one weekend, the lighting setup was basically the same for all four sessions; what changed was the gels and the gobos.  I started with a fashion grey seam...
Post a Comment
Read more

Whispering Waters

On July 19th, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, NY to attend the Whispers of Waterhouse photo event held by Everlore Events . This was an all-day event, which included a light lunch, vendors, arts, and crafts areas, and three different styled shooting locations.  I was one of the roaming photographers for this event, which means you work with models who are not currently working with a featured photographer (who have schedules), and can wander between all three shooting locations at your convenience.  For this event I used: Canon R6 1 Speed light Trigger Umbrella Gels 24 - 105mm lens Camera Settings: This was an outside shoot that had sets in heavy forested areas, out on a pond, and sunny meadows; thus, I was adjusting the settings to the lighting conditions.  I used ISO 100 and 400.  My goal was to keep my aperture around f/4 to achieve a nice background blur; however, depending on the conditions, I had to stop down to f/9 and f/11 to manage the light...
Post a Comment
Read more