Capturing Cosplay - Point of Light Productions: Adam Foster - A While Ago, In A Shoot Not Far Away...

A while ago, during Harbour Con-Fusion 2013 time, I was contacted by someone off the Maritime Heavy Armour group. His name is Adam Foster and he had a few Star Wars based kits (built or constructed costumes) he had made with the intension of joining the 501st Legion. The 501st is a group of Star Wars costumers and performers that appear at many events and provide charity work all across the world. It's one of the oldest and most famous cosplay organizations today. To join the 501st you need to submit a series of high quality images, showing in detail, a 360 degree view of your costume. You may remember this set in the HCF image catalog.

This is Adam in his Republic Commando (from the video game) costume, playing the character of "Boss" "RC-1138" "Delta 38". Thankfully these images finally gained him access into the ranks of the 501st. He told me at the time he had another costume that needed approval as well, Darth Vader. So a few weeks after HCF 13, I went to his place with my portable backdrop and lights and we did the same for Vader.

Again, this costume was approved by the 501st to his and my satisfaction.

After we got the technical photos out of the way we did some fun images. I still had to use my cloth backdrop at this time (I can't wait till I get my vinyl backdrop), so there was a bit of post edit work done on the background. Luckily I tried very hard to cut light from hitting it and didn't have as much issue smoothing it out.

We both wanted some lightsaber images done, so I suggested we do one trying to capture the light from the FX blade as much as possible so I could use a practical light source to edit into the images with flash used.

The light source from the flash will effectively cancel out the light from an LED source. I see the same effect when photographing Phil as Iron Man. The best thing and photographer can do in this situation is capture a non flash lit image to use as plate data for placing in your other images. You may have to use a higher ISO and shutter speeds, so make sure your have a tripod or monopod handy. The end result when edited to other images should look pretty convincing once you play with the position and angles in Photoshop.

Has a huge Star Wars fan, shoots like these are fulfilling to me in way I dreamed of as a kid taking pictures of action figures with a point and shoot. It's not just the stuff I'm a fan of either, I'm always concerned with making images that will please the fans in front of me, dressed as their favourite characters. Still I get a great satisfaction presenting work from something that still influences me to this day. With that said, here are the images, and thank you Adam from this opportunity to both photograph and help you.