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[Ashurachan]

I've never refused to take a couple of shots, but I don't do extended photoshoots of characters I don't know well enough.

[claudillama]

Im new to cosplay photography and from one photographer to another i would like to know how much time you put on editing your photos! What editing technique do you use. I just started and i seem to go over board when im editing my photos! Looking through some cosplay photography, it seems that there isnt much going on, other then contrast and lighting. Maybe there is much more then i think, but what about when you have hundreds of photos to edit, what all do you do... I hope i didnt sound confusing!

[brucer007]

@ Claudillama It depends on whose photography you look at. Some of us use much more than contrast and brightness when we edit our photos.

I see some photographers, including myself add filters to add a stylized look to the photos. I think cosplay photography is often ideal for creating a style, especially when it makes the character look even more like the source it is based on. Like when I photograph characters from Final Fantasy, I use filters to make them look like computer images. I use a software plug-in called Topaz. It has many different looks to choose from, that can be customized to our taste.

The time I put into it depends on how much work I decide to do. Some images that just need brightness and contrast, and some stylizing can take 5 to 30 minutes. Some images have elements that I may choose to delete, like if there are people that got in the background, I might clone them out. Sometimes I decide to cut them out of a bland location, and edit them into so background location photo that I have on my hard-drive. This can add hours to get the edges right, especially if there is hair or fur to deal with.

[Surfsama]

Like Bruce wrote, it can be 5-30 minutes or many hours depending on the how you want to present your work. Allot of post-processing can be avoided if you get the image as right as possible in the camera. That means getting the background, lighting, and camera settings as close to how you want the picture to look as possible. Getting as close to how you want the picture "in-camera" to look frees you to just touch-up in post or spend the time being creative.

My typical convention photography routine is:
1) Shoot in RAW format
2) Import to Nikon Capture NX2 for minor photo corrections and jpeg output
3) Import to Photoshop (if needed) for minor blemish corrections
4) Done

Usually 5-8 minutes a photo.

[claudillama]

Originally Posted by brucer007

@ Claudillama It depends on whose photography you look at. Some of us use much more than contrast and brightness when we edit our photos.


I see some photographers, including myself add filters to add a stylized look to the photos. I think cosplay photography is often ideal for creating a style, especially when it makes the character look even more like the source it is based on. Like when I photograph characters from Final Fantasy, I use filters to make them look like computer images. I use a software plug-in called Topaz. It has many different looks to choose from, that can be customized to our taste.

The time I put into it depends on how much work I decide to do. Some images that just need brightness and contrast, and some stylizing can take 5 to 30 minutes. Some images have elements that I may choose to delete, like if there are people that got in the background, I might clone them out. Sometimes I decide to cut them out of a bland location, and edit them into so background location photo that I have on my hard-drive. This can add hours to get the edges right, especially if there is hair or fur to deal with.

How long did it take you to get comfortable in editing, and do you have any tutorials out there i can see how you do your editing.

[nathancarter]

@claudillama:
On average, I spend about as much time editing as I do shooting. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. Sometimes a LOT more, sometimes a lot less. If I'm learning a new editing technique or tool, the editing time goes way up. If I'm repeating something I've done in the past, the editing time goes way down.

As mentioned above, it's very important to get it as correct as possible in the camera. Be mindful of the lighting, the pose, the background - the better these are in your original shot, the easier it will be to finish the photo later.

If you're new to photography, the first thing you'll want to do is get your head around the exposure triangle. This is the way the three main camera settings (ISO, aperture, and shutter speed) work together to make your exposure. There's a good book for this, called Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. After that, it's practice. Shoot, read, evaluate your own images, evaluate other images, shoot more, submit for critique, shoot more, read more.

As for tutorials on post-processing: I'm a fan of the tutorials on lynda.com. I use Lightroom primarily, and Photoshop for the things that Lightroom can't accomplish; lynda has tons of great training on those tools as well as a host of other software. kelbytraining is also good, but I don't have a subscription to that.

It's important to understand the tools you're working with before blindly following someone else's tutorials. Since every photo is different, what works well for one photo might not work well for another photo - but if you understand your tools, you can adapt someone else's tutorial to work well for your own photo.

On a side note: It seems that many of the photos you've posted are a bit underexposed. Perhaps you're shooting in fully-automatic modes on the camera, and the camera is picking settings that underexpose. Or maybe your monitor's brightness is turned up too much, and you're decreasing the exposure in post. It's hard to say.

[TykeJack]

Originally Posted by claudillama

Im new to cosplay photography and from one photographer to another i would like to know how much time you put on editing your photos! What editing technique do you use. I just started and i seem to go over board when im editing my photos! Looking through some cosplay photography, it seems that there isnt much going on, other then contrast and lighting. Maybe there is much more then i think, but what about when you have hundreds of photos to edit, what all do you do... I hope i didnt sound confusing!

Well photo editing varies from person to person. Photo editing is complex enough to be considered its own medium, like photomanipulation. Some photographers use it as just a touch up tool to compliment their photography. Most people would fall between the 2. I personally recommend starting with using it just to touch up things and as your skill develops you can experiment more with it. Feel free to take a look through my gallery. I think it shows a clear progression of skill and editing over the course of the last few years. I like to use www.photoshopusertv.com because they have a casual webcast where they introduce different simple tips and tricks for you to use. Over the course of time, all of these different techniques will start to add up and will enable you to do great things. Their quick tutorials tend to be more on the creative side or give creative ways of solving classic problems.

If you like the manner in which they teach, then join www.kelbytraining.com. You have to pay monthly for Kelby Training, but what I like to do is join for a month then watch all of their tutorials from professionals all over the industry, then quit for a few months until they've gained enough new videos to merit signing up again. I'm a really big fan of kelby training because they are consistent in the terminology and diction they use and really allow you to gain an understanding of what's happening. Most other tutorial sites just say "Do this, then do this, then highlight this, then do this, and you're done." Like Nathan said, sometimes these techniques won't work for every image, but with Kelby, they actually explain to you why they use the tools and techniques they do and explain why they are better than other methods. This gives you much more insight on how photoshop works and which tools to use in certain situations.

[brucer007]

Originally Posted by claudillama

How long did it take you to get comfortable in editing, and do you have any tutorials out there i can see how you do your editing.

I have been doing photo editing for over ten years. I don't know what you mean by "comfortable", but I just do the best I can with what I know. Maybe it is about striving to improve, and appreciating any improvements we make. I still wish I knew more than I do, so, maybe it is not about being comfortable. Learning skills is a journey, rather than a destination, so I might feel similar as you do now. I want to know more, and be better than I am now. I learned mostly by playing with Photoshop, just seeing how each feature affects the images. It is often a matter of how much you move the sliders to achieve an effect you like, since moving them too much can bring some undesirable results.

I don't have any tutorials available at this time, other than some relatively short posts in these forums of tidbits.

[Access]

Realistically, I think you'll see two types, the mass-produced taken at cons/gatherings/events and posted on sites like facebook or this one, and then the best images that a photographer will spend more time on.

For the former, I think timeliness is the most important. If I have to spend more than 5+ minutes on a mass-production type photo, then it stops being feasible to finish the photos for an event within a few days to a week or two; and this ought to be your goal if your are shooting conventions.

For the latter type of photos, spend as long as you need to, even if it takes you half an hour, an hour, or more at first, it's those photos that will define who you are as a photographer and show what you can really accomplish.

[claudillama]

@ everyone !! thank you soo much!! thank you for all the great advice and great website! I will practice really hard so that someday ill be up to y'all level. Ill keep practice and learning! Thank you very much!!!!

[claudillama]

I went to my first anime convention photoshoot at ikkicon 2012! It was loads of fun, and meet 2 new cosplay photographers that taught me some new things! I really loved it and I can not wait to keep going!! I would really love to meet new photographers and obverse them while their working! Im a visual learner . :3 Here is a link to my first conventions! photoshoot What do you guys think? From one photographer to another

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8649202...7632398195739/

[VisualRemix]

I'm going to be honest and sound like a jerk. But here's what you need to work on first. The basics.

-Use manual mode
-Manually select your AF points
-Fix your ISO. Why is it constantly at ISO800?

Watch John Greengo's Fundamentals of Digital Photography.

He has a free online web class coming up in February that you can stream. Although, his 2012 version is very very very good for beginners.
http://www.creativelive.com/courses/digitalphotography

After your first 10,000 shots in Manual mode, you will recognize the difference in skill.
You will thank me later.

[ashe2kawaii]

Question about camera's

For good quality Cosplay Photography what kind of Camera's would reccomend or have used that you enjoyed? I'm planning on buying one and can't think of which is better and what would have a nice hopefully crisp like quality to it.

[Foques]

^^
this question is basically same as "what kind of car should I buy? I'll be driving it on a road"

you've got to give more info.

You get the "crisp like" quality out of proper exposure and proper post processing, not out of camera.

[ashe2kawaii]

I understand, sorry. It's kind of hard to explain i want something a least $500 and below preferably even $100-$480. I want to be able to take shots where some can actually move and still have the shot clear and not blurry/ unable to capture.

I want a camera that has nice zoom and doesn't create huge pixels or make what i'm shooting bigger in size (hope that was a clear). I'm still trying to figure out some other question in mind and how to ask them, but i hope this kind of gives an idea of what i'm looking for.