I am taking a 30min break from work and I spend a few seconds of it browsing at cosplay.com. Seriously if you are not familiar with the cosplay circle, seeing all these "recent images" might tricks you into thinking that “cosplay photography” is just a fancy term for portraiture. If you are a fan of Tim Gunn you might even think it is a subset of fashion photography (??). Now I think about it there are indeed tons of similarities between these 3 fields but I view cosplay photography quite differently from the two.
Cosplay Photography is not a commercial art form
…and thus, cosplay photographs can be crazily creative. There is usually no (huge) money involved in a cosplay photo shoot (cause of all these copyright issues). So the job of the photogs and the cosplayers is not to produce works that please clients/bosses. Unlike in commercial photography projects, neither the photog nor the cosplayer is obligated to take shots in a certain way. Afterall, we are not trying to sell a product as in commercial photography. We are totally free to think out of the box and do ANYTHING we wanted.
Creativity is extremely important. A creative team is more likely to produce interesting cosplay photographs. Creative photogs are able to come up with unique concepts for a shoot while creative cosplayers are able to come up with idea to modify and inject personal vision to the original costumes of a character.
Understanding the characters
With the infinite possibilities in cosplay photography, I am most interested in telling stories about the character(s) or the series I'm photographing. Unlike in fashion photography, knowing the characteristic of the outfits might not be as important as knowing the characters you are about to shoot. Having the freedom to create shots that interpret a character my own way is really interesting. Again, since it's not a commercial project, it's entirely up to you and your subject to decide how to showcase a character.
Photographers competing against each others
IMHO, NOT worth it. The more you wanna “WIN” someone the more you’ll (maybe not on purpose) imitate his/her style. In the end of the day even if you “win” you probably won’t gain much plus now your style is nothing original. Since quite likely you won’t make much money doing cosplay photography anyway why not treat it as a personal/side project that allows you to break from your professional projects? Once you have this mindset you won’t be afraid of failure and you’ll be much more willing to test out whatever crazy idea in your mind.
...Now time for me to get back to work ^__^'')
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I just want to say your photography is amazing! I didn't know where to post this under but I usually wonder how cosplayers find photographers to take pictures of them. Some cosplayers have a lot of charisma and creativity, so does the photographer. I feel overwhelmed by how beautiful the process can be since I've only cosplayed once and never asked anyone to take my picture, hahaha, (didn't think I was good enough). Anyway, happy picture taking. I am looking forward to your future work.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your kind words. People from the cosplay circle are definitely one of the most creative groups of people I've ever met. They are energetic and they love the character they portray. They make cosplay photography an unique and fun experience.
ReplyDeleteWish you have great fun cosplaying! ^^