I had a really great time at the 2012 Kawaii Kon...it was especially nice to hang out with friends I hadn't seen in almost a year...and it was fun to get out and experience shooting at a cosplay convention. I've never done event photography before and I found it can be pretty challenging when you're shooting outside with changing light conditions and dealing with all the people walking around. I rarely shoot using fill-flash and knew this would be a good time to learn how to use it properly.
One of the conditions we had to deal with was shooting in shade with bright backlight coming from the surrounding area. In this shot Kenway wanted to pose Kagamine Rin with Boba Fett in the same shot. He moved them away from the crowded walkway and had them stand with their backs to the brightly lit buildings in the background. The top image is straight out of camera with no processing. Because of the bright buildings my camera's internal light meter said a setting of f/2.8 and 1/400 @ ISO 100 would give me the proper exposure...for the buildlings. But the main subjects were all underexposed. This is where knowing how to use fill-flash would have come in handy.
Lightroom 3 (LR3) and Photoshop CS5 (CS5) to the rescue. First thing I did in LR3 was up the exposure and add fill light. To keep the background from blowing out completely, I used a trick that Kenway told me about...I used the gradient filter to reduce the exposure on the buildings and then I used the adjustment brush to bring the exposure back up on the foreground elements. After getting the image close to what I wanted as far as expose goes, I finished up doing the initial adjustments in LR3 and then sent the image over to PS5 for noise reduction, adjust contrast a little more, a little more vibrance work, some smoothing and output sharpening.
One thing I learnd about shooting at a cosplay convention is that the people who are dressed up are more than happy to pose for you...the problem is they'll strike a pose wherever they're standing and I wasn't comfortable enough to ask them to move to another location that would present a better background and less people walking around.
In the following picture I had asked the cosplayer if I could get a picture and she happily struck a pose...in a not so photo friendly location where she was in shade, the background had a mix of bright and dark areas and lots of people walking around.
First thing I did in LR3 was to crop the picture tighter to the cosplayer to remove unwanted elements. I then did adjustments so that the main subject looked okay. Then I got the adjustment brush, reduced the exposure and brightness and painted the areas I wanted to darken. Then I sent the image over to CS5 for more adjustments. Okay, so that image is still pretty bad, but it was a good learning experience for me...it got me to use the adjustment brush more than I ever have and I think I'll be using it more in the future.
For this last example, Kenway asked this cosplayer to pose for us and as you can see I had a bit of trouble getting the exposure right. With all the bright buildings in the background I knew the meter would make the exposure darker, so I pushed the exposure up 2 stops so that the dark areas would not get plugged up. The exposure for face wasn't too bad, but the background got sorta blown out. Again, this is where knowing how to use fill flash would have been helpful.
To fix the image I first went into LR3 and cropped the image a little tighter. Then I used the gradient filter in the upper left corner to bring the exposure and brightness down in that area. Then I lowered the exposure and brightness for the entire image. I adjusted the colors using the vibrance and saturation sliders. Then I used the adjustment brush to increase the exposure and brightness in the face and chest areas to bring out some of the details a bit.
Then I sent the image over to PS5 for final adjustments and sharpening. I do final adjustments in PS5 because I have Photoshop plugins for noise reduction and sharpening that just make things easier for me. In LR3 I have the noise reduction and sharpening set to zero since all that is done in PS5. Seems like more work than necessary, but I don't mind...makes me feel like I'm getting my money's worth from both programs.
Looking at the image now, I think I could have left the background a little lighter to help separate the Samurai Darth Vader from the background a bit more.
I've been thinking about my photography lately and I think it's time to starting figuring out just what I want to do with it. I know I don't want to do this professionally, but even as a hobby I think I still need to narrow it down to something more specific. Right now I'm kinda shooting all willy-nilly and have been having fun with it, but something inside of me is starting to tell me that I should really start to focus on a particular type of photography. I don't want to be a jack-of-all-trade and master of none. I want to start to get good at a particular type of photography and need to know what to concentrate on. So in the next few blog entries I think I'll be trying to sort this all out.
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