Shooting Begins for Cosplay Underground v. 003
October 6, 2008 by super-no1
Sure, I have yet to put together v. 002 of Cosplay Underground, but I’ve already begun shooting v. 003. For Cosplay Underground, it’s nice to have some photos in the bank and work on issues when I get the chance. The first issue that I completed this year was shot entirely at Fanimecon in San Jose. The second issue will feature photos taken at an organized cosplay picnic, Nisei Week, and Mikomicon. Basically, the first two issues were shot at conventions or cosplay events. Issue 3 is going to venture away from the conventions and organized cosplay events, at least in part. Basically, I’ll be going to various locations in Southern California with a few adventurous cosplayers and seeing what happens.
Over this past weekend, I travelled with a group of photographers and cosplayers to the Antique Gas and Steam Engine Museum in Vista, CA. In the back area of this museum is a truck, tractor, and farm machinery graveyard. There’s a lot of old rusty vehicles and random pieces of junk. It was a very interesting and colorful location to take photos of cosplayers. On this day we had several cosplayers dressed as characters from the video game Persona 3. I actually had enough cosplayers on this occasion to finish a whole edition of Cosplay Underground and have it completely devoted to this group. It would have been the biggest issue so far, but the weather did not cooperate and I was only able to work with three cosplayers on this day.
The photos appearing above are cosplayers “Sushi Monster” as Ken, “Shiya” as Fuuka, and “Susan” as Aigis.
This series look very exciting so far. I can’t wait to see the rest. Keep up the good work!!
Awesome photos Nergene! Cool location…were you all scouting for areas to shoot? Hehe…how about the Winter time at the Grapevine or ski area when there’s snow for snow cosplay photos. I don’t think I’ve seen it done but good job dude! Look forward to your second and third book!!!!
This photo session was put together by my fellow photographer, Tony Quan, the person who posted the first comment on this blog entry. This location is about 30 miles from where he lives. We originally wanted to do this last month, but the weather was too hot.
There were 5 photographers for this session and 8 cosplayers. It’s very common for us to work together on these and even at conventions, we work in groups. It keeps everybody busy. Most of us on the photography side agree that doing this type of photo session is more fun that just doing them at conventions. It gives us more flexibility and these days, most of the conventions in the Southern California area are absolutely dreadful places to take cosplay photographs. Most of the current convention locations are either ugly or too crowded. So we want to take some of our most trusted cosplayers to these photo events.
I was actually thinking that a photo session in the snow would be fun if we get enough of it. We have another excursion planned for this weekend and the next location looks really dramatic. We’re definitely going to talk about some photo session ideas sometime over the weekend.
Cool! I think con cosplay photos are becoming too boring. Too many people doing similar shots. And with these events too packed and I agree, the venues are quite non-attractive… I support what you and the others are doing and scouting and eventually finding cool places to take your photos.
The overall atmosphere of these three photos alone are just breathtaking and way better than seeing concrete buildings, the typical bush or tree or stairs in the background which seems to be too common with other cosplay photographs.
Heck, I’m open to seeing beach/ocean photos as well, as well as snow. I think the fact that you and the others are doing this is really exciting and will set the standard of cosplay photography of trying something different, fresh and unique!