First Entry. Well now that bit is out of the way.

Just really working to do more research about photography. Right now my main areas I want to focus on are cosplay/kigurumi portraiture, macro, nature, and lower-end studio flash work. The main challenges I'm having is working on building the knowledgebase for kigurumi photography. This is an area that really doesn't have much formally organized.

Before this year, my main experience in this realm has been enjoying Kigurumi pictures, enjoying the occasional event on my short visits to Japan, and the occasional dressing up myself. These days I've taken an interest in doing more work behind the cameras. Experimenting with depth-of-field, white-balances, and even the digital-darkroom work. The more I do my research, and the more I experiment, the more the specific requirements for this style of photography are being revealed.

First that which helped me make the move from performer to photographer. When I was at cosplay events, it would drive me absolutely nuts when people would use fill-flash inside poorly lit building, resulting in very "shiny" photos. Moreover my relative inexperience in kigurumi-finishing (details like hair, and surface reflectivity) and performing did none to help these issues.

The consistent themes I'm finding in cosplay photography in the pictures that have the most impact, they don't try to capture a "saw it/documented" photo, but rather immerse you in that escape-from-real anime/manga feel. Experimenting around with lighting and other post-processing, this is the same case with Kigurumi. We aren't so much trying to be bound what reality presented us in terms of lighting and visual appeal, but rather assist in that escapist world of cosplay.

Not to go to waxing philosophical (that will be for future journal posts) in this spot here, but this is a place where I want to collect my observations and ideas, and even hear your takes on this. I know that this style of cosplay does have narrow-appeal, but I would appreciate sincere comments and critiques of both the work posted, and the journal entries registered here.

For future posts:

~Remembering to document the processes I used; both during and after the shoots
~More information building and collaboration

That is about it that I can think of at this hour of the day (shortly after midnight), cheers.

Kurisu