My kids are cooler than yours… Birthday wishes from my...

My kids are cooler than yours… Birthday wishes from my minions. Check out the origami minuteman… beard and all!

Crystal Graziano: Asuka Langley (Neon Genesis Evangelion)

Asuka Langley: Crystal Graziano Suit by anatomic-latex.com

It's been a while since me and Crystal last shot together-- the last time we worked together was back in July 2013 of last year to shoot her Powergirl cosplay around the time of Comic-con. Tomy from anatomic-latex crafted an Asuka plugsuit for Crystal to wear and we'd planned to shoot this together for a few months.

USS Midway!

I honestly was really crammed with my other job and had literally shot Sinne and Kana right before this shoot up in Orange County, so I didn't really have time to research any areas fit to shoot Asuka at. Ideally, I wanted to find some run-down blown-up looking buildings to portray that apocalyptic-the-world-exploded-because-of-you-baka-Shinji feel, but we weren't able to find any on such a short notice. Crystal suggested we try shooting down at an aircraft carrier museum since they welcomed cosplayers during nearby conventions and we actually got some really awesome shots~~

Attempting to shoot inside the ship... fail. Too many onlookers.

Right when we entered the museum we saw a bunch of planes we could actually step into, so I tried to shoot without even taking test shots-- but there were so many people staring at us I started to really feel nervous. It wasn't so much of being stared at but more of trying not to cause a scene and get kicked out or constantly get Crystal stopped by onlookers to take a picture with them.

http://instagram.com/p/o_ttzetc5V/

We wound up going right outside to the desk area and found some more nifty stuff-- it wasn't hot but it sure was sunny and so I wanted to shoot quick to get Crystal out of the sun since latex is a really crappy unbreathable material and mixed with sunny and warm weather, is a disaster.
Despite the fact that we were working with harsh lighting again (and the day before this I shot Sinne and Kana at the beach in direct sunlight also), I was able to manipulate Crystal into the shade by shooting her inside the planes. I didn't bring my reflector or diffuser since I wanted to stay as low-key as possible in public, but I made it work.

The top lid door thingy was just enough to shade Crystal's face--otherwise the harsh sunlight would have been horrendous in photo and details would have been blown out. For this image I actually shot pretty underexposed to make sure I got all the detail and then raised the exposure in Lightroom since I shot in RAW anyway.

I also really liked how the sunlight broke in through the windows of the planes when we shot inside them--it wound up making this beautiful lighting inside that just photographed so well. *crying tears*

"Crystal pretend there's turbulence"

I also just love how the latex material photographed so well. I was worried the red would really throw off my white balance and I'd have to use a grey card to set a custom setting... and I lost mine somewhere when I moved 2 years ago. But every detail on the plugsuit showed up on camera flawlessly.

I actually did a looot of post-work on this image. There was a lot of red duct tape I had to edit out. Quick video clip of the process in Photoshop here.

Since I was really familiar with Evangelion I had a general idea of the feel I wanted to capture for this set of images... the Midway was a perfect backdrop. Of course we have no Eva IRL to really shoot with but I was able to incorporate that mecha feel by utilizing a lot of the stuff that was on the carrier.

I mean, this sort reminded me of the facility they stored and repaired the Eva at.... it works...

We also wound up going below desk and following the tour and ran into a lot more really cool stuff. Sort of reminded me of the control center where Misato usually barks commands lol~