Convention Cosplay

This is a project that I still don’t quite understand and maybe will never amount to anything more than just this page but it’s something that I think about and to be honest jumpstarted photography as my creative outlet. My parents bought me a Nikon Coolpix when I was in middle school that I carried everywhere. Then in my senior year of HS I bought myself a D3300 and tried to teach myself to take pictures with the confidence of someone who just watched “How to take amazing pictures in 3 easy steps” on Youtube just 15 minutes prior. I bounced back and forth taking pictures here and there in college but never got invested enough to really take the time to learn any real technique. I just spun dials at random until my pictures came out semi-readable. Then I got bored, put it down and didn’t think about it until FanExpo Dallas in 2022. Somewhere between getting bored with my camera and it becoming an obsession, I got very into cosplay. It was a tool for my transition and community building at a time when I was very alone. So when I moved back to Texas and began cosplaying with my friends my previous interest in photography suddenly returned. I started bringing my camera to conventions to take pictures of all my best friends. And things grew from there. Cosplay is such an important community and activity for me, so I love the idea of capturing in other people the pure joy and community that you experience in this art! I try to emphasize natural expressions and just the pure joy of everyone here in their silly little outfits that they’ve poured blood sweat and tears into.