Cosplay: Lord of the Rings
On October 11th , I got to do a little bit of cosplay photography with Eowinth Cosplay and Apollo Ven. This was a Lord of the Rings (LOTR) shoot, which we did out at a local state park.
For this shoot I used:
- Canon 80D
- 2 Speed lights
- Light stand
- Umbrellas
- Trigger
Eowinth Cosplay and
Apollo Ven like to do joint cosplays, were the characters have some sort of relationship
with each other. In this case Eowinth was Thranduil and Apollo Ven was Legolas,
for those not up on their LOTR lore, Thranduil is Legolas’s father. Thus, during this shoot, I tried to capture a
little bit of the tenuous relationship between Thranduil and Legolas. Additionally,
in preparation for the shoot, I looked at several of the LOTR movie stills for
both characters to guide me on some poses, lighting, and most importantly color
tones that set the overall mood of the image.
This shoot was a bit of
a challenge, due to the location. While
the location fit the theme perfectly, the low hanging branches, vines, and uneven
ground made it hard to place the light stands. I shot this session using a combination
of bare speed light, and modified speed light with an umbrella.
I shot at ISO 200 with
an aperture of F5. My shutter speed stayed
in a rather tight range between 1/125s to 1/250s with most of the frames being
shot at 1/125s. My focal range varied
from 18mm to 40mm with the most common focal length being 18mm. In this case my tendency to shoot wide worked
well for the group shots. However, I really need to adjust my aperture to F8 or
F9 to ensure focus across the whole frame and given me a bit more depth of
field. Depth of field is important when
your subjects are not on the same plane and both need to be in focus.
My personal favorite duo
shot from the session is below. For this shot I place the duo in a tree and
vine combination. I light this using two umbrellaed speedlights. One speed
light was used to light Thranduil and one used the light Legolas. Each speed
light ended up with a different power setting due to the cosplay themselves. Thranduil’s
outfit is very silver and reflective, requiring less light to expose properly, while Legolas outfit is darker and not reflective
which requires more light to expose properly. The image out of camera had a relatively
balanced exposure across the image, but I did adjust it slightly. In Lightroom I improved the light on tree, and
on each cosplayers face. I then added a vignette
to finalize the image.
 |
| (Focal Length 18mm, Aperture F5, Shutter 1/250s) |
My favorite image of Eowinth
as Thranduil is below. I like this image
because while it is more of a back shot
it nicely shows off the coat and the crown. Also, the profile image fits in very well
with several of the movie stills. I shot
this using two lights, a main bare speed light up and to the left of me and a speed light with an umbrella to my
right which was used to light her face. When
editing the image, I adjusted the lighting on her face slightly, reduced the green
cast in the coat due to the leaves, and lightly color graded the image using a
yellow/violet split. To finish the image,
I added a vignette.
 |
| (Focal Length 35mm, Aperture F5, Shutter 1/125s) |
My absolute favorite image from the shoot is this one of Apollo Ven as Legolas. For this image I was going for the same feeling and look as several as the movie posters for LOTR featuring Legolas. This image also tends to align with several of the movie stills of Legolas in the forest. I did my best to try to capture the general lighting and color tone of the movie images. This was shot with one umbrellaed speed light up and to my right aimed at the cosplayer’s face. When editing I adjusted the color by removing the green cast given off by the leaves, brightened the cosplayer’s face, blurred the leaves in the background a bit more, and added a warm split tone. To finalize the image, I added a vignette.
(Focal Length 40mm, Aperture F5, Shutter 1/160s)
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