Tip : colors and expression and styling and….

In a good photo everything has to fit together.
During a recent cosplay shoot we had one of the final setups with a beautiful young lady holding two guns and blowing bubble gum… now in my opinion that didn’t belong in a side lit dark situation, but I wanted something more like a spotlight.

During sets like this you always have to look at the outfit, the look you want from the image (the mood) but also of course what the model wants. So we decided on (my choice) the pink backdrop with a spot on the model creating a focused light source where the model really jumped out. So lighting ok, colors ok, outfit ok… now the rest.

The first shot was easy, just blow some bubble gum (see top image).
After this I wanted more so I asked the model to smile like crazy, almost insane… well she did ok but it was not what I wanted.

A cool tip to get this MUCH MUCH better is let the model MOVE… yeah you heard it right MOVE… in this case I asked her if she heard about “scarface” and his final scene where he screams “say hello to my little friends” while he waves his machine-guns around. After 2 testshots we ended up with the final shot you see here… the guns might be a bit blurry but the result of the smile is (in my opinion) MUCH better.

So don’t overthink the technique… sometimes it’s better to have a slight blur in a gun (they were moving really fast) and an awesome shot, than have everything sharp and an OK shot, dare to be extreme boys and girls 😀