Working on sets' mood :) (Patreon)

Today the first post of what I plan to do more for my Patreon blog: Technical explanations on pictures and costumes, views on photography and modeling, ressources and advices, and more backstage/cute stuff :)

So, today's post will be on set's mood and improvements I'm working on.

I will tell you about two differents things in this post: Editing (post-production work) and On-stage stuff (On the photoshoot itself)

With the incredible support I receive here, I am able to put more and more efforts and have more resources to create my sets, that includes costumes, locations, photography, and also editing. I edit all the sets myself, to provide you not just sexy pictures, but pictures that tell a story with different colors, contrasts, etc. 

Editing is a powerful thing, and I use Lightroom and Photoshop a lot on my sets. When I talk about Photoshop, most people see it as "cheating", and that makes me sad because to me, it's just a tool, and everyone uses it differently. As a cosplay photographer, I never edit people's body shape. I only correct things like temporary skin and tiredness marks (like red spots, dark circles under the eyes, etc...) and I always ask the cosplayer if there's something they'd like me to edit when it comes to scars, tattoos or eyes color. Besides that, I spend a lot of time on my favorite part of editing: The colors and contrasts. To me it really brings a mood and story to the picture, which is very important in cosplay pictures. The next step I'd like to get to (and I'm working on it) is special effects: I already did some in the past, but I'd love to make more!

I used to only focus on editing before, because working on that kind of thing on photoshoot requires a lot of material and can't be done everywhere. For my Velma set however, I was able to bring it to the next level!! 

On the photoshoot:

- We rented a nice, spacious AirBNB apartement in Paris. They allowed us to do the photoshoot so many thanks to them!

- We used a smoke machine to bring a "ghostly", mysterious mood to the set.

- We had two different lights: A classic flash on me to have my face/body clear and well lit, and a purple one for the mood of the room.

The picture of this post is not edited yet (almost, I did a "light" beauty editing because I had bruises on my legs for no reason!) : That's how it looks like when we took it.

Then comes the editing (All done by me) : 

- The first thing is to select all the pictures that will make it to the final set on Lightroom! It usually takes me 3 hours per set.

- Then to clear the pictures. Removing small imperfections and other things that I consider disturbing: Things like bruises, weird light reflexions on the TV, dust under shoes, correcting eyes colors, thread from clothes, etc. I do that for each picture on Photoshop. It usually takes me around 10-15 minutes per picture, so that's about 2 days of work. 

- After that, I take all my pictures and put them on Lightroom to work on the colors and contrasts. While it's quite long to find the right colors, once I'm happy with it, I can create a preset and apply it on all the pictures. After that, I only have to go back to each picture and make small adjustements. It usually takes me about 5 hours for a complete set. Sometimes I do this part first, and then clear the pics.

- Then, I go back to Photoshop to make sure that everything's perfect and add other effects! Like a small colored dark gradient to bring back the attention to myself when the background is to distracting :) This part usually takes between 5 and 10 hours, it really varies a lot depending on the background and mood of the set.

- For this set, adding some special effects on Photoshop in the end for few pictures! That part is very long and takes me up to 2h per picture, which is why I can't do it on every single pic from the set.

I hope this makes you understand how I create sets and how much work I put into it :) ♥

If you have questions, or have other subjects you'd like me to talk about, don't hesitate to ask in the comments below!