Cosplay at Cabell's Mill

On November 5^th, I attended the D.C. Cosplay Photo Shoots’ meet up at Cabell’s Mill, in Chantilly, VA. The historic mill is now a small event venue, popular for small weddings.  The area was very pretty with the fall colors, even though it was unseasonably warm.  While yes, I live in Virginia, with typical fall days being in the 50’s but 80-degrees is a bit much.

For these sessions I used:

• Canon 80D
• 1 Speed light
• Trigger
• Light stand
• 18-200mm lens

Camera Settings:

For this shoot we had access to the inside of the mill, which looked like a typical event venue, but had some nice windows and two large fireplaces. We also had access to the grounds around the mill, which had some nice wooded areas and tall grass field. For this event I shot at ISO 200. While I could have shot at ISO 100, the bump in ISO let me compensate for going in and out of the building as well the shade. My predominate aperture for F8 with a few shots at F9 and six at F16 because I was shooting directly into the sun. My shutter speed ranged from 1/60s when I was in heavy shade or inside the building to 1/500s, when I was shooting directly into the sun. My most common shutter speed was 1/250s followed by 1/200s.  My focal lengths ranged from 18mm to 50mm with 18mm being the most common.

The Photos:

Because this was an on-location shoot, with multiple cosplayers whose characters all have a different tone/feel, I did not have the luxury of doing one edit and applying it across the whole set, each photo needed to be edited individually.  For this blog I’m going to try something a little different and show the before and after image, with an explanation of how I got there.

This first image is of the lovely Saragobragh as coronation Elsa from Frozen.  I like this image because I feel it captures the emotions of Elsa before she accepts her gift. The back lighting from the window light creates a nice rim light around the model’s profile. I did not use a speedlight with this image resulting in a very underexposed image, as you can see from the before image.  In lightroom I brought the exposure up by almost two full stops of light. I increased texture and clarity, and used a medium contrast tone curve.  I then sharpened the image and reduced noise using the luminance slider. I then used the transform panel’s full adjustment preset to remove the angle distortion. I then added a long narrow radial filter along the model’s profile to add a touch more light to the face. From there I added a medium vignette to the image and then finished with a blue (shadow)/orange (highlights) color grade.  I went with the blue/orange color grade to add warmth to the light coming from the window while keeping the blues in the shadows.  I did this because the light is warm thus should have a warm tint, but the feelings the character keeps hidden and in the shadows are cold thus should have a cooler color cast, which balances the overall image.

This next image is of the lovely Coralinx_cosplay as a mushroom, specifically a death cap mushroom. If you are not aware mushroom cosplays and fairy interpretations are trending right now.  For this image I wanted to go a bit fantasy and mysterious, however raw image was very bright and not really in line with what I had pictured in my head.  The image brightness was due to where my speed light was located which was to my left but very close to the model without any type of diffusion.  So, it lights the whole image. The first thing I did was adjust the white balance and pull the exposure down a half stop. From there I adjusted the highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks while adding some texture and clarity.  I used a medium contrast curve. I then sharpened the image and reduced noise using luminance slider.  I then added a few radial filters, the first was an inverted filter to darken the area around the model. The second was on the model’s face to bump brightness up slightly. The final was added to a bright spot on the model’s dress to make it less distracting by pulling down its brightness.  I cropped the image, then added a strong vignette to add to the first radial filter and really darken the edges of the image. I finalized the image by adding a teal (shadows)/orange (highlights) color grade. I added this color grade because the teal enhances the greens which are mostly in shadow while the orange adds warmth to the white and skin tone without turning everything orange.

For this next image of Spiral_may I wanted to capture something reminiscent to being deep in a castle with light only entering through a single high window.  To do this I placed the model in front of the stone fireplace, and then placed the speedlight to my right and almost parrel to the model.  I then zoomed it to about 80mm and raised it up and pointed down, that is why you see the nice triangle of light.  Now I wanted it dark, but the raw was a bit too dark in some areas resulting in lost detail and very bold highlights on the subject. I processed this image in two steps. I first did all the standard adjustments and increased the exposure by 2 stops, applied a medium contrast, sharpened the image, and got rid of lens distortion.  This resulted in a decent image but not the final look that I was going for, so I created a virtual copy of the image and applied a preset.  The preset raises the black point, resulting in the image looking more matte, reduces the contrast, and reduces the clarity slightly. The original image was white balanced how I wanted resulting in cooler highlights, then I wanted. So, to finish the image, I added a slight orange color grade to the highlights to warm the image up slightly without affecting the overall white balance.

This final image of Egdramaqueen is a very simple edit compared to previous edits, the image itself just needed a little punch. The most challenging part of this image was getting the speedlight and myself into the correct position. The speedlight was to my left.  I had it zoomed to about 80mm so that the light was focused on the model’s face. It looks fairly good right out of camera, it just needed a few minor tweaks. I did all the basic adjustments first, to include exposure, clarity, contrast, and sharpening.  I then used Lightrooms new select and mask subject feature, and then inverted the mask, which allowed me to darken the background slightly thus separating the model from the background a bit more. I could have increased the separation further by dropping my F-stop to decrease my depth of field.  However, lately I have been keeping a medium F-stop just to ensure the whole cosplay is in focus.  I then added a small radial filter to the model’s face and upper body to brighten it just slightly, for added separation.  From there I added a blue (shadows)/ orange (highlights) color grade to match the setting. I then finalized the image by adding a strong vignette to the image.

As you can see the raw image can sometimes go through a lot of post processing to get to the final image, and that post processing can change the whole mood and tone of the image.  I try my best to get it right in camera, but sometimes in post the image says it wants to go a different direction. Fortunately, I have the tools and understanding to take the image to were it wants to go.  

If you want to see all the final images from this meet up, you can see them here: Cabell’s Mill.

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