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First Session of 2025 - Queen of Hearts

My first official shoot of 2025 was with Lady Cels on January 4th, to shoot her Queen of Hearts cosplay based off the NoFlutter Design.

For this session, I used:

Photography Equipment

Props/Miscellaneous

Cannon R6

24-105 mm Lens

Transmitter/Trigger

2 Phottix Strobe

1 FJ400 Westcott Strobes

60-inch umbrella with sock

1 rectangular soft box

1 bell reflector

grids

2 C-stands

1 Platypod

Sandbags

Backdrop stand

Savage Primary Red

Spyder Color Checker Card

A-clamps

 

Gold ring wedding altar pieces

Playing cards

Flowers

Styrofoam block

Scotch tape

 

 

The set up

The inspiration for this shoot was obviously the Queen of Hearts, but I took my set design cues from the original NoFlutter drawing.  I wanted to create something similar to the swirls used in the background of the image, so I started looking at wrought iron garden fences and ended up on gold wedding altar pieces.  I added red and white roses, via a lot of scotch tape, to the piece to tie them back to the Queen of Hearts.   

For the actual set I started with a Savage Primary Red seamless backdrop, then placed the Styrofoam block in the center.  I then flanked the block with the gold altar pieces.  I then placed the FJ400 strobe with a bell reflector on a Platypod stand directly behind the Styrofoam block to light the background.   Then, to my right, at the front edge of the seamless, I placed a Phottix strobe with a large, socked umbrella to act as general fill.  To my left, at the front edge of the seamless, I placed a second Phottix strobe with a gridded rectangular softbox, which would act as my main light.

Camera Settings

For the camera setting, I used ISO 200, with an aperture of F9 and a shutter speed of 1/200s.  My focal length varied from 24mm to 76mm, with the most common focal length being 24mm.   

The Photos

All my edits were basically the same across all the images for this session.  I started with adjusting the white balance then, using the Spyder Color Checker program to ensure all the colors were correct.  I did tweak the color checkers suggestions slightly as I wanted to ensure the reds and oranges were properly saturated without making the skin tone seem off.  I then adjusted the exposure slightly, as well as the vibrancy and saturation.  I used a medium contrast curve throughout all the images.  The image I did run into is that the dress is very wide, which resulted in me having to use either content-aware-fill or generative fill in photoshop to extend the background.  In most cases, content-aware-fill worked fine, but in some cases, I had to jump over to generative fill if the areas were rather large.  I also used doge and burn on some of the images to do a little contouring and even out lighting.  I also removed any minor blemishes.  Overall, the bulk of the work was extending the background on several of the images.

This first image is my favorite from the lighting to the expression.  This image only used one light and was caught during mid-spin.  I like the placement of the hands and the movement in the dress.  The expression says, “I’m done with you.”   I think the whole image works beautifully for this version of Queen of Hearts.

This next image uses the wedding altar piece to frame Lady Cels beautifully.  She is perfectly centered between the two rings.  The glow behind her is from the FJ400 behind her, which adds to the framing.

This last image is a repeat of the concept I did with a previous Queen of Hearts look, but I think is a requirement for any Queen of Hearts session.  I had my husband throw playing cards in front of our dear model.  I had him do this several times.  This image is a composite of several attempts to get as many cards as possible flying through the air.  I like doing these shots because they are aways fun and never turn out the same way twice.  Plus, this type of concept is easy to do in a studio setting, and something I would never do at a convention as it is too messy and takes several minutes to perfect.

Final Thoughts:

As always working with Lady Cels was an absolute pleasure, and the detail in this cosplay is stunning.  I’m happy I was able to capture it in a studio setting.  I’m also glad I kept the set simple so details of the cosplay could shine.

Yes, I have done a Queen of Hearts shoot previously, but that was a different cosplay that had a completely different vibe.  Yes, the underlying concept may have been the same, but the images are special and unique to each cosplay.  I enjoy doing Queen of Hearts shoots, because the character itself can be interpreted in so many ways.  In general, I enjoy revisiting concepts and characters because I find the images always have their own unique vibe.

You can see all the images from the session here: Queen of Hearts_NoFlutter

Credits:

Models: Lady Cels (IG: ladycels)

Design: NoFlutter (IG: noflutter)

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