Looking back at the shooting journey of 2025, my first reaction was a sense of gap when scrolling to the bottom of the photo album. Compared to my highly productive self in previous years, the progress bar this year moved exceptionally slow. While sorting through materials, I even found that quite a few costumes and stylings were shelved after taking just one or two photos.
To be honest, 2025 was indeed a year where real life felt a bit suffocating. When work got busy, the time left for hobbies and ACG creation was severely squeezed, causing the overall frequency of releasing photos to take a sharp downturn this year. To complete this year-end summary, I had to pull out some archived photos with repeating styles but different scenes just to make up the numbers, which made me feel a bit amused and helpless as I looked through them.
Regarding photography techniques and post-processing, I truly felt a barrier that was difficult to cross. It felt like no matter how I tried adjusting light, shadow, and composition, the final photos always seemed to lack distinctiveness when looked at for long, easily creating a repetitive visual fatigue. The works released this time include very diverse environmental attempts: some were taken in outdoor bamboo forests using natural light, utilizing natural vegetation as a background; some arranged a single hard light in the studio to create a high-contrast texture; some were cyberpunk night scenes scouted and shot on outdoor streets, relying on the neon tube ambiance; there were even special studio and location shooting photoshoots using transparent balloons and waterscapes specifically to capture that floating sensation. Yet, no matter how much heart went into the pre-shoot planning, that feeling of 'dissatisfaction' during post-editing was always lingering.
And what caused the most mental friction was nothing other than the high investment and low return of the entire process. Every time I did a full cosplay photoshoot, going through the whole process—from brainstorming and discussions, purchasing props for the specific scenes, adjusting costume pattern details, to hair/makeup, location scouting, and the official shoot—not only drained a massive amount of energy and time but also incurred very substantial financial expenses. I remember for a few of those outfits, just to prop up the gorgeous skirts and complex accessories, manual modifications alone took two or three days, yet the resulting photos turned out mediocre. This feeling that the input and output were completely disproportionate truly drained my passion.
However, this period of stagnation also gave me an opportunity to re-examine my shooting habits. Previously, I was always rushing for quick results, wanting to produce flawless works, which inadvertently made me neglect the stability of the most foundational lighting and composition. In fact, many mature photography styles are not shot by luck, but require a vast amount of repetitive training and an understanding of light and shadow. Although there were fewer photos this year, it allowed me to see exactly where my technical shortcomings lie.
Facing this so-called photography creative block, anxiety is inevitable, but now I plan to let myself off the hook. I will no longer force a mandatory output of how many sets of works per month, nor will I shoot just for the sake of shooting. Let's leave 2025 at that, calmly accept this year's low-yield state, and coolly shift the focus back to life and work itself. Casual cosplay and photography should originally be a way to document passion, rather than becoming a mental burden. Next year, I will re-adjust my rhythm, bring along my current realizations, and strive to repolish those unfulfilled ideas into a better texture. Let this become another meaningful entry in my cosplayer growth diary.