Photos From Costume / Fashion Photoshoot

The costume and fashion photoshoot at Melbourne Museum was a huge success!

Approximately 24 people attended, a third each of photographers, models and onlookers/friends. The weather was overall very good, despite being four seasons in one day.

The location was terrific as well, and we took advantage of many different spots in the area.

We did learn however, that to shoot anywhere inside the Museum’s doors, even in an isolated open-air courtyard, requires permission and payment. We were advised of this and asked to leave by very friendly and understanding security staff. Something to note for the future.

Photos, and some additional thoughts mixed in with them, plus a link to the full gallery of the shoot below:

This shoot was the first time I got to play with some new equipment I have just purchased: a set of AlienBees CyberSync flash triggers. These let me fire my flashes remotely and with almost 100% reliability, which is a far cry from the poor reliability of the cheap triggers I have been using up until now. For the photo above I put them to use and fired a flash from behind and each side of Scarlet to give her a cool “rock” type lighting.

It was great to briefly catch up with Rebecca, whom I hadn’t seen in years. The last time, in fact, was when I did a photo shoot with her in costume. This time she was on the other side of the lens. It’s as a photographer, rather than cosplayer, that she has been more active lately, and she is very talented at both. It was Rebecca’s photo blog that inspired me to start this blog, and I can credit a lot of my success as a phtographer to that initial impetus.

Siera (above) and Annie (below) are two of my favourite cosplayers and good friends. I haven’t seen Siera up close in quite a while, and have been forced to photograph her from afar or through a mask. Annie, on the other hand, is fast becoming my most photographed cosplayer, having done a number of recent shoots. Once again, they are gorgeous here in their elegant gothic lolita outfits.

One of my new favourite cosplayers is Mii, seen here above and at the very top, cosplaying characters from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I want to thank Mii for her help with the processing on these photos. She is a big fan of cosplay idols in Japan, cosplayers who have become so popular and successful at their craft, that they have gained a level of celebrity. One idol in particular is Kipi.

Mii loves the way Kipi’s photos look, and encouraged me to try processing this shoot that way. At first I thought the look was a bit too bright and artificial, but the more I look at it and try it, the more I like it. It’s kind of a “fashion magazine” look. I processed most of the shots in this shoot that way, and I like how they came out. I’ll try to write a tutorial for a future post. So thanks Mii! If you think Mii’s as cute as I do, make sure you check out her new youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/miicosplay

In conclusion it was a very fun day! It was great to see so many people come along to the event I organised, especially the photographers, most of whom I hadn’t met before. If you attended the meet, as a photographer or cosplayer, please leave a comment below! Photographers, please share the link to your gallery of photos from the shoot, so the cosplayers can all see how their photos turned out :)

It would be great if we could do this again sometime soon!

Here’s my full gallery of 184 photos and two videos from the shoot.

Other Photographrs’ Galleries

• Elias – http://www.flickr.com/photos/elo123//sets/72157620985380992
• Rebecca – http://www.flickr.com/photos/40157947@N03/sets/72157620880675855/
• Ian – http://share.ovi.com/album/iann12.Cosplaymeetupat