Cosplay on the Farm

ISO 3200, Focal Length 15mm, Aperture F8, Exposure 1/30 (shot by my husband)

On October 5^th  I hosted a meet up of the Dayton-Columbus-Cincinnati Cosplay Photoshoot group at Lucas Brothers Farm in Centerville.  This was on of the rare evening shoots for the group.   We had 16 cosplayers, 7 photographers, and 3 assistants attend, so the cosplayer to photographer ratio was relatively good. The best ratio is 1.5 cosplayers to every 1 photographer.

I worked with 11 cosplayers of which 4 were in groups of two.  I shot a total of  284 frames in three hours. Of the 284 frames I edited 173 images and delivered 86 final images.  It should be noted that my husband also shot a few frames using a fisheye lens and provided 5 final images. I shot the whole meet using a light from a single bare off camera speed light on a light stand. I shot using ISO 100, which I shouldn’t have done since part of the shoot was at night.  My aperture and shutter speed varied throughout the shoot, due to the changing lighting conditions due to the setting sun.  My aperture ranged between F4.5 and F8 with the most common being F4.5.  My shutter speed varied from 2/3s to 1/250s with the most common speed being 1/250s.  It should be noted the flash sync speed is 1/250s and I used 2/3s shutter speeds for long exposure shots. Finally, my focal length varied from 18mm to 100mm, with the most common focal length being 18mm.   

ISO 100, Focal Length 18mm, Aperture F4.5, Exposure 1/160

This shoot was held on a farm with a pumpkin patch, a corn field, and woods making it a good location for Halloween themed cosplays. I believe Izabel Cortez had the best cosplay of the night with her gender bent Pennywise from the movie “IT”.  She is a very good cosplayer and always a pleasure to work with.  The other cosplay that was very good was Space Mermaid Cosplay as Sally from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”  I will discuss one photo of each of them. 

This first photo (left) is of Izabel as Pennywise.  For this image I had her act like she was coming out of the corn stalks and give me a creepy look. I got down on the ground and shot up, while zooming my flash to 80mm to provide a more spot light appearance.  When editing the photo, I white blanced on her make-up. I then used a preset that cranked up both the clarity and sharpness of the photo while reducing the color saturation to give it the grungy dirty look.  I also adjusted the exposure slightly, did a bit of localized adjustments round her face, then added a vignette.

ISO 100, Focal Length 18mm, Aperture F4.5, Exposure 1/80

This second photo (right) is of Space Mermaid Cosplay as Sally.  I like this photo because I think it fits the character, and who doesn’t enjoy dancing in a pumpkin patch.  For this photo I used a wider flash spread between 35mm and 50mm.  I mostly used the flash as fill to pop the cosplayer in the frame. I was relatively low to the ground to ensure I got a nice view of the pumpkin patch. As you can see the sun was setting and it was setting fast.  When editing the image, I kept it close to straight out of camera, but bumped up the color saturation slightly, and adjusted the exposure slightly.  A quarter moon was in the raw image, but showed up as a white spot, due to focal length.  I removed the original moon and add a half moon back into the image using Photoshop. To finish off the image I add a slight vignette.

Overall this was a great shoot. It was a bit challenging during the changing lighting conditions due to the setting sun, but overall, I feel I got a lot of nice images.  You can see all of my images plus my husbands five images on our web site under the Farm gallery.