When we saw that Gotham was premiering today, we immediately remembered running into this awesome Selina Kyle at DragonCon 2015! We both love the show, and Selina has to be our favorite character (though Harvey Bullock comes in a close second). This cosplayer was so in character when we bumped into her that I made sure to check my camera bags to see if anything was missing. Hold onto your cell phones! Who else is watching tonight?
One of the best things about DragonCon is the chance to see cosplayers go all out for their favorite fandom. We knew the Skyrim cosplayers would not disappoint, so we went to their photoshoot on Friday to grab a few shots. Skyrim is an immersive action role playing game set in a fantasy setting. I have only played the game a little because there is so much to it and the possibilities are endless. For someone as indecisive as me, I find it simultaneously beautiful and overwhelming.
One of the great things about cosplay for such a game is the fact that you can cosplay a NPC (non-player character) with established attributes, or you can play your own character that you build in the game. Again, the possibilities become endless and you can have a great deal of variety without the added pressure of the “did I get it right?” question that plagues those cosplaying established characters. At any rate, these costumes were fun.
If you don’t know how these meet and shoots go, many times they assemble the whole group and then little subgroups of characters. We tend to focus on individual characters, so we practiced our portraiture in taking these shots.
So my Arcanum Sphere 2 cohort has become obsessed with (or possessed by) this fun twirl technique in Photoshop. I finally got around to joining in the fun today. I wanted to pick something both colorful and spiritual, so I chose this photo from the Tibetan sand mandala process I witnessed in the spring. I followed the examples from Alicia D’Amico’s twirling tutorial (see the end of the post for the video).
After doing the basic work of the tutorial, I played with some lighting, saturation, and contrast issues in Viveza by NiK Software and then made some color adjustments in Lightroom.
The resulting pattern reminds me of both a lotus flower and the acorn. Additionally, the sweeping lines of color from the corners reminded me of the process of mandala destruction as the monks brush the sand towards the center of the image.
After playing with the saturation slider, I also wanted to try a monochrome image. I decided to do a split-tone version of the same image in MacPhun’s Tonality Pro. This gave me a totally different feeling, with more appreciation for the lines, structure, and appearance of light and shadow in the image.
Here is the instructional video!
Twirl Photoshop Tutorial by Pure Emotions Photography from Alicia D’Amico on Vimeo.
Garber Geektography 