This photo set mainly aims to present the feeling of daily forest interactions between two Moriya Shrine characters from Touhou Project. Before the shoot, we mainly considered two challenges: first, how to eliminate distractions from the cluttered forest background on the subjects; second, how to balance the spatial relationship between the two characters. In the end, we chose a wide-aperture telephoto lens combined with natural light to complete this set.
Let's first talk about costume and prop preparations. This time I played Kochiya Sanae Cosplay. The hairstyle is light green long hair; to achieve a voluminous look, I used styling wax as a base so it would flow naturally in the wind. The outfit is a blue-and-white shrine maiden robe with intricate tassel details at the collar and cuffs, and the skirt has just the right weight, draping beautifully while walking. The golden tower-shaped prop in my hand was custom-made, with its metallic sheen reflecting gorgeously under natural light, though holding it up all afternoon made my arm quite sore. The Suwako Moriya silhouette next to me was played by my friend, wearing a woven straw hat with red cord and green leaves wrapped around the brim, a dark vest with golden patterns, and red rope knots at the shoulders. This pairing of deep and light tones created an intriguing contrast in the frame.
The shooting location was selected in a man-made forest with afternoon light around 3:00 to 4:00 PM. Sunlight filtered through the foliage, forming a warm side-backlight. This light penetrated Sanae's hair strands and formed a soft rim highlight along the edges of the background leaves. The background bokeh was round and creamy, ensuring the background brightness wouldn't steal visual focus from the characters. The shooting process involved quite a wait because of thick clouds causing the light to come and go. To capture the most natural facial expression, we held our poses until the clouds parted and the sunlight fell perfectly across my face.
From a professional photography composition perspective, the framing logic of this photo is very clear. Wooden railings were placed at the very bottom of the frame as foreground elements, creating a visual frame and adding depth to the scene. The characters are not pressed against the frame edges: Sanae on the left sits right on the golden ratio line, while Suwako wearing the straw hat on the right occupies the other side as a background element, establishing a strong sense of space. In post-processing, we mainly leveraged warm-cool contrast—the blue-and-white clothes of the character on the left lean cool, while the straw hat and background lighting on the right lean warm. I kept the clean tonality of the original raw photos without stacking excessive filters to faithfully recreate the character's canon temperament. The interactive feeling under this setting feels like a quiet slice of daily life from an ancient shrine, which is what moved me most about this photo set.