Let’s face it, everyone likes a photograph. They help create moments in time to look back at. For some, it’s a badge of pride, that crowning moment, the pleasure of getting to show something worked hard on through hours of toil, late nights, and rushed lunch breaks. For others, it’s a bit of fun, getting to embody their favourite character, a dream of making it big in the content creation world, or the possibility of making it as an actor.
It doesn’t matter what the cosplay looks like, it could be thrifted from the local charity shop, purchased from one of the many online cosplay shops, or hand-made from scratch. The photography equipment also doesn’t matter. The relationship and how you communicate with the people involved in taking the photograph are what make or break the photo.
We’re going to explore some of the techniques I use professionally as well as within the cosplay community to help make photoshoots a bit more enjoyable, stress-free, and straightforward.
Building Relationships
It took me over an hour to work with my very first cosplayer at a convention. It seems insane when looking back. Even today, when I have bad mental health, it can take me a while to switch on to start working with people. Some of this is down to confidence, yes, but for me, it was also down to not knowing how to ask.
I walked in as a fresh baby-faced photographer with zero experience working with people collaboratively to create a photo. Here, we walk into my number one issue. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Asking someone for a photograph, the worst thing someone will say is no. No one’s going to die, your leg won’t fall off, and there’s going to be another person right around the corner you’ll be able to ask.
There’s this magical tool that we can all use to make this first ask so much easier. A question with a compliment or positive statement.
- “Hey is that a video game cosplay, can I take a photo?”
- “That looks like a cool camera, could you take my photo?”
- “I’ve been watching how you’ve worked with others, and it looks very relaxed, would you be up to working with me?”
Once a person has said yes, job done, right? For some, it can be, but we’re here to have a fun relaxing time. This is where small talk comes in. It can be nerve-wracking for some people to take photographs or be photographed. To ease those nerves, you can make small talk, light conversations that doesn’t mean anything, but will build that relationship. Here are some different conversation starters you can use:
Improving communication
The cosplay community is a massively diverse space. It welcomes young and old, neurotypical and neurodivergent, amateurs and professionals. Everyone is at a different level of their own cosplay journey. Because of this diversity and the fact that we’re all human, we communicate and understand things differently.
We communicate through language (our voice or sign language), body language, text and images to name a few. How we understand and communicate can be impacted in various ways. Attending conventions can be stressful and overwhelming for people; or shooting in public spaces outside of conventions around the public who may not understand the cospaly community. This might lead us to speak less, feel very tight and a lot more shut off as opposed to hanging out with friends at home.
There’s a lot of theory behind this and it’s a very interesting topic to look into, but we can think of our brain as a bucket with a hole in it. Every day we have lots of different stimuli that will fill our bucket. Different sights and sounds will fill our bucket up at different speeds.
Our hole at the bottom will reduce that (think of it as our brain processing that information). At some point, our bucket could become full leading to us not being able to process or handle things given to us. For some people, this could be thought of as brain fog.
There are some things we can do when working with each other to keep that bucket low.
Asking closed questions can help narrow down responses and keep both parties focused during a shoot. Questions such as “Would you like to shoot full body or portrait?” over “How would you like to shoot today?” can help you focus on one aspect of the shoot at a time.
When taking photographs, a ‘what’ question used to identify a pose the cosplayer likes lets us focus on that pose, over why they like a specific pose that people often can’t say off the top of their heads. Simple questions and simple language will help us think less but will still get effective answers. Here are some example questions you can ask at a shoot to help keep the bucket low.
- “What standing pose would you like to shoot?”, over,” Can you explain what poses you like to use?”
- “What does the character feel the most?”, over, “How can we shoot today to include complex emotions?”
- “What side do you feel more comfortable shooting with?”, over, “Can you explain the insecurities you have when taking photos?”
When suggesting or helping posing both as a photographer or cosplayer, keep to one instruction or question at a time. Try rubbing your stomach with one hand, tapping your head with another plus jumping up and down at the same time. Difficult right? Now try each one, one at a time. A lot simpler.
The same idea can be used when asking questions. A vague question such as, “what pose are we going to shoot today?” can be split into multiple questions to help keep that load low.
- What feelings are we going to shoot?
- What body language are we going to use?
- Are we going to shoot standing or crouched?
Dual coding
When trying to get a pose idea across, use visuals as well as your voice. Use a photo and talk through how to achieve that pose. Alternatively, if you do not have a photo, use your body and ask the cosplayer to mimic the pose talking through how you achieved that pose.
When talking through the pose, talk through one element at a time: “Can you put your feet shoulder-width apart, slowly pull your neck higher. Finally, pull your shoulders back to show more power.”
Takeaways
If all of this was a bit too much, here’s the summary.
