[Bagpipe Cosplay] Arknights' Pastoral Poem: The Blue Pinafore Dress in the Rapeseed Flower Field

I have seriously been talking about shooting this Bagpipe look from last year until this year, and just as the blooming season was about to end, I finally put this wish on the agenda.

I had been indecisive about where to shoot before. When browsing photos of rapeseed flower fields online, my mind instantly auto-matched this blue-and-white pinafore dress and the bright orange twin tails. Preparing the costume and props went exceptionally smoothly; the small purple horn accessories are so highly recognizable, and the wig was easier to style than I expected, especially the braided pigtails on both sides—once their shape was fixed, they felt very lightweight, so I didn't have to worry about them flying around wildly while doing poses.

The shooting location chosen this time was Yunlin Tianxiang, and I must say the scene was truly fantastic. The area of the flower field is massive enough to create a great sense of space, and the landscape in the background paired with the yellow sea of flowers in the middle makes the colors rich yet clean. The weather on the shooting day was also amazing; when the sunshine spilled down, the light penetrated the flower field and hit the orange wig—it was absolutely stunning.

To capture that feeling of being completely free and at ease in the sea of flowers, it indeed took quite a lot of effort. Because the flowers grew quite densely, if you leaned over even a little, it was easy to crush them, so we had to search for all kinds of angles. Especially for the low-angle perspective in the second picture, my whole body had to lean backward while stretching my arms out, while simultaneously controlling the arc of the two braids swinging in the air. We tried it back and forth many times, and I felt the photographer was almost driven crazy by me, but the resulting photos have great tension, which was a pleasant surprise.

The high-angle perspective in the first picture is also one of my absolute favorites. This angle not only reveals the depth of the flower field but also beautifully displays the drape of the entire pinafore dress. When reaching out close to the lens, it feels like greeting friends on this side of the screen, pushing the sense of interaction to the max. This choice of perspective and framing often gives the stills a bit more agility and emotion, going beyond just showcasing the costume to express the character's state within the scene.

Honestly, cosplay is something that sometimes really cannot be completed by one person alone. Choosing the location, calculating the time, changing clothes, monitoring the makeup, and adjusting the wig—every step requires care. For the makeup this time, I specially emphasized the effect of the purple colored contact lenses to form a contrast with the blue elements on the clothes, and also did some highlighting on the overall facial contours, so that when shot under harsh light, the skin would appear very translucent rather than muddy.

Of course, bloopers are also inevitable. As we were shooting, the wind picked up, and sometimes out of dozens of raw plates, only a few were usable. Although the flying petals looked beautiful, sticking to the wig strands made them truly hard to clean. Looking at those little black and white dots during post-production photo editing was both helpless and amusing. However, when selecting the final cosplay photos and seeing that beautiful light and shadow, I felt all the previous hardships were entirely worth it.

Perhaps my finished product isn't the most perfect, but I can always keep exploring how to arrange the wig more naturally and how to make more vivid movements in the sea of flowers. These few angles and compositions attempted this time can serve as a bit of inspiration for friends doing a rapeseed flower photoshoot in similar scenes later.

Trying low-angle and high-angle shots this time indeed made the frames much more three-dimensional. Low-angle shots can elongate proportions to highlight presence, while high-angle shots display rich ground details, beautifully reflecting the integration of the character and the flower field. If there's another opportunity next time, I should bring a wider-angle lens to roll in the entire distant mountain range. I quite like this batch of photos taken on my phone as well, so I'm posting them for a photo set sharing session of the past few days' joy.