This was the first shoot I did after about a year long hiatus in Taiwan. Now looking back, despite being so close with the numerous prolific cosplayers in the area, I really blanked out an entire year of shooting due to work. I was too glad when I finally had the chance to pick up my camera again.
The shoot was located in an abandoned apartment complex in mid construction. Thinking it was located in the outskirts of Taipei, I was quite surprised to find that it was at least an hour away by train and another half hour by taxi in an adjacent town of Taoyuan. The structure was magnificent, but being my first time there, I had no idea how to navigate through the floors. By the time I found the cosplayers and the other photographers, it was already dawn with skylight light dimming every minute.
Initially, lighting wasn’t much of a problem because I relied on strobes as my primary light source. But as as the sky got darker, the camera was starting to fail to focus, and finally, I wasn’t able to see a thing through the viewfinder.
At this point, I was literally shooting, then using the glimpse of strobe light to reframe my shot. It wasn’t the easiest of tasks, but we still managed to get a few nice photos out.
In post-process, I used a lot of clarity adjustment in Lightroom to bring out the textures of the background and the sword, and also fiddled with colors and shadows to bring a closer feel to the original series.
enyen as Black Gold Saw from Black Rock Shooter.