This time at Shanghai CP33, with a full attendance, I finally have time to organize the convention photos from this period and a few composite blockbusters I've saved for a long time. Attending conventions is truly physical work, especially when wearing outfits with heavy props or long dresses; moving around the venue feels practically like physical training, but in order to capture satisfying pictures, all this hard work is totally worth it.
Let's talk about the real-scene convention photos first. The environment at the convention site actually places high demands on photography, with complex overhead lighting and numerous pedestrians in the background. To capture clean pictures, I usually try to avoid the main aisles, utilize specific light sources from booths, or find darker corners to darken using a flash. For example, in the white stockings fluffy skirt styling, considering the cluttered background, I intentionally processed the background into a black-and-white faded effect in post-processing, so that the colors focus entirely on the subject, the white skirt hem, and the white stockings, utilizing warm-cool contrast and light-shadow relationships to highlight the line sense of the legs. As for the pink-haired styling holding a lightsaber, it utilized the venue's built-in lighting plus a bit of special effects light, making the high-slit skirt hem and the edges of the stockings more eye-catching in motion.
As for the composite photos, I actually don't take many commercial composite orders normally; most of the time is reserved for my own creative work. Compositing isn't simply cutting out a character and placing them into a background; the hardest part is light-shadow matching and the unification of material textures. For instance, in the starry sky mecha piece, it was necessary to add reflections to the character's edges based on the cool tones of the cosmic background and eliminate stray light from the original environment. For the ruins chains piece, the purple lightning and neon reflections on the ground needed to be hand-painted and layered one by one, even taking into account the diffuse reflection of lighting effects on the leather clothing.
And for that red-haired styling with lava cracks, the mechanical structure behind and the red glowing cracks on the ground were key areas treated in post-processing. In order to make the floating posture look reasonable, the perspective underfoot and the smoke/dust effects went through many versions of adjustments. The lighting in the temple picture is the most complex; the huge halo behind and the strong light from the held weapon needed to create a sense of sacred backlit feel, while also retaining the oppressive feeling of the dark guards in the front.
Doing cosplay is really not as simple as just putting on clothes and wearing a wig; the tailoring of the costume, the choice of material, including the thickness and glossiness of the stockings, and even the painting details of the props, are all infinitely magnified in front of the camera. This time I brought different styles, including sci-fi techwear style, classical Japanese style, and gorgeous gown style. Every refinement of makeup and styling was done to get closer to the atmospheric setting. Although putting on and taking off each set of equipment is quite troublesome, and the wigs need to be groomed at any time, the moment I see the final photos, all the fatigue vanishes—this is the joy of the hustle.