Cosplay: Lord of the Rings

 On October 11^th , 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)

I liked doing this shoot, and I was very happy to be shooting cosplay again. I really miss the cosplay conventions and cosplay meet-up, and working with very creative people, this year has put a big damper on that. Overall, I feel the photos from this shoot came out well.  I do wish I had a bit more time for the shoot and my assistant was with me for it because I could have done a bit more with the location. However, since I was shooting this solo, setting up and placing my lights was taking a bit more time than usual and limited a little bit of my potential shots.  You can see all of the images from the shoot here.  I also suggest checking out both Eowinth Cosplay (Facebook, Instagram)  and Apollo Ven (Facebook, Instagram) social media sites.