[Yae Miko Cosplay] The Divine Kitsune of Genshin Impact, Strolling Under the Mystic Flowers and Ferris Wheel

The exact moment I started retouching these photos, I suddenly felt a wave of familiarity, like reuniting with an old friend. Although I went a bit heavy-handed this time with some intense color grading, the feeling of letting my creativity run wild was absolutely captivating. Counting the days, I've spent almost the past few months shooting videos and figuring out camera movements, rarely sitting down to take a few exquisite, static outdoor portraits. When I picked up the camera again this time, I even felt a slight, clumsy nervousness from being out of practice.

Huge thanks to photographer Jimmy; his location scouting landed exactly on my aesthetic preferences. The shoot took place in a vast sea of Chinese roses inside an early summer amusement park. Combined with a green archway bursting with roses and a glowing Ferris wheel in the background, it instantly pulled out the full romantic vibe of the Blue Hour. The primary undertone of this photo set carries a slightly cool blue-purple filter feel, which perfectly balances out the sugary sweetness of the pink flowers and pink wig.

When preparing Yae Miko's costume, I paid special attention to those accessory details. The golden circular hair ornament on top of the head and the ear styling needed to be securely fixed, which, when paired with the waist-length long wig this time, presented a highly natural floating effect along with my movements. The outfit is a light blue-and-white off-the-shoulder gown, and the deep blue bow at the neckline provides an excellent color contrast. During the shoot, I tried to abandon complex expression management as much as possible, attempting instead to convey that lazy, lightweight character tone through my gaze and body language.

My favorite is definitely the final shot standing under the floral archway. At that time, the sky had darkened completely, leaving only the deep blue evening sky as a backdrop. I stood slightly on one foot, gently lifting the fluffy hem of the skirt with my hand, and aligned with the direction of the wind to let the skirt flutter naturally. Compared to videos that require the editing of a narrative arc, the blank space left by static photography captures the emotional tension of a single split-second much better. The entire retouching process was also a secondary creation inside my head, trying to use the channel mixer to compress the blue of the sky into a deeper shade, while boosting the saturation of the roses to heighten the hot-and-cold collision between the pink and blue-purple tones. It's been a long time since I've attempted such intense color adjustments.

Although crawling around in flowerbeds for an outdoor shoot in an outfit like this inevitably got me covered in leaves and dirt, leaving the skirt completely wrinkled in the end, that fulfilling sense of creation rushed right back the moment I saw the final photos. This feeling of returning to image-based documentation is like setting down a heavy work burden, using the slices of imagery to re-understand the character I am portraying, and projecting a piece of my emotions directly into this set of photos.