It is difficult to be confident and talk to people when your mind plays tricks on you. It is especially difficult when you've been living in that country for only a couple of months and their language is your second.
I've always admired cosplay and convention culture. However, since it was a challenge to find an event to be a part of back in my country, the first thing I did after coming to Canada was to purchase tickets for the biggest comic book convention in the country. I was feeling great because my overly social sister accepted to come to the event with me. When I'm with her, she makes me less worried about social occasions.
So the event time came and we rushed to the convention center. I was amazed. It's a unique feeling when you see tens of thousands of people sharing the same niche interest with you. I couldn't stop myself from taking the crowd shot.
Do you see that? Isn't it amazing? There are people from age 18 to 70, from every religion and skin color. Some of them just want to see the second best "Doctor" and some just want to see their favorite comic book artist. My post today will be about the third group, cosplayers.
I enjoy cosplay. I mean I don't have the balls do it but it is always fun and interesting to see someone cosplaying. The problem I have with cosplay is the photography side of it. I don't like softened skins, erased cracks, added gloom effects, incredibly synthetic poses. This makes me sad. I understand it, but it makes me sad because nobody in the chamber deserves it. Not all cosplay photography is like this, there are some amazing photographers out there putting out unbelievable colors with great tone.
By the way, I'm not a professional photographer, I'm just a consumer with an interest in both cosplay and photography. Since I'm specifically interested in street photography. I wanted to try and do cosplay photography, my way.
Let's talk a bit more about the title. I find it difficult to talk to people. I wasn't always like this, it developed as I aged. I don't have anxiety, I'm just... shy. When the time came for the convention and I entered the area. I'm seeing all those beautiful cosplays but I can't ask them if I can take a photo or not and sadly my sister's presence didn't encourage me at all. Well, that was a bummer. So after an hour or so I became tired of not taking any photographs so I started to distance myself from the object, cosplayers. Because of this, I missed all the posing action or at least couldn't photograph their best selves. However, I found the results amazing. I mean I exactly got the photos I craved since the beginning of time.
This is a girl, cosplaying Poison Ivy. Even though she is out of character, just on a smoke break, I don't think that I could get a another shot as Poison Ivy as this one if she posed. I was at the rooftop and then saw her and zoomed in like there's no tomorrow with my kit lens. If I was on the same level with her, I would totally miss that great shadow.
Let's return to my favorite superhero. You'll see many Spider-Man shots in this post, sorry about that. Now, this shot is the most street photography I've ever shot. I mean put some Beastie Boys on the background or A Tribe Called Quest. It's your choice, this one's one of my favorites. Again, they were just having fun with themselves and I was just passing by.
This one might be the most awkward one I took. I think I was 30 meters away from them in a weird angle (45 degree or something like that), talking to my sister. Just took a couple of photos of them because I like X-Men. When I was home editing the photos, cropped the hell out of this one and then pressed the auto-perspective button. Just wow. Now it looks like I took it from directly in front of them from a 5-meter distance. Also the seperating line of the wall. What a beautiful coincidence it stayed uninterrupted. Other than these, I don't know why but this photo looks too synthetic for my taste. Like a wallpaper.
This is an interesting one. Again, I'm on the rooftop. This kid and his another Robin-suited buddy doing a photoshoot on the first floor's stairs, trying to achieve the perfectly dramatic three-point-perspective. The kid in the photo puts different poses above stairs, and his friend taking photos below stairs. What they miss are the flowers. By focusing on the posing too much, we miss the maximum beauty we can get from the environment for our photos. Even though I feel like I've butchered the colors, the idea is there. Tried to achieve a painting aesthetics with the color editing only, didn't succeed.
This is what happens when I try to take a traditional cosplay photo. Again, I couldn't get the cosplayer's attention with my never-to-open mouth. Tried to get a good shot but nada. Photo still look kinda cool because she is awesome. Also I really enjoy the color work I did.
At this point of the convention, I feel like I'm eating out of a trash can. Distance-wise speaking, I was the 6th or 7th person from her with a camera. Even the people with phones were in front of me as you can see in the photo. But I think, that person with the phone is the only reason I liked this photo other than the cosplayer's awesome costume. She provided good depth for the photograph to mean something. Also, what a wall.
Before closing down the post with a photo dump I'll talk about a couple of more photos. This is another one with me above ground. I really enjoy the shadows in this one. In fact shadows are the only reason I keep it. Captioned it as "The Beauty and The Beast."
They were doing a photoshoot with a photographer. I caught them on their break. Sliced a good laugh. The Galaxy needs this positive image of the Empire more than anything. When I see red, I can't stop myself but muting every other color, this might be a weird medical condition.
The photo dump is incoming.
And finally, the MBP (Most Beautiful Person) award of the convention goes to the girl with Mercy costume.
After I took these photos, I reached out to my local cosplay group and asked them that if they are able to name the cosplayers so that I can credit them. There are still unnamed cosplayers but here's the list:
The girl with the red costume is 
The girl in the black and white photo that has blurred smartphone photographer is 
The Spider-Gwen in the last photos is 
The Twi'lek Sith Lord lady is 
The aerial shot of the Beauty and the Beast is a real-life couple, 
That's all folks! Thanks for reading. I was going to write a lot more but gotta work on some assignments.
Also, you can follow me on Instagram, I go by @emre.la however, I don't share much nowadays, waiting until the next big event and winter go away. So you can just follow me here. I'm planning to share some photos I took on steemiverse.
I hope I didn't offend anyone. Peace!
