Name a place where you can find Alice in Wonderland, Batman, a Ghostbuster, Queen Amidala, Mike Wazowski and Bart Simpson all in one place? Comic Con, of course. Comic Con is a comic and entertainment convention that originated in San Diego a while back, became one of the largest conventions in North America and now there are fan events popping up all over the world.

For a person who loves to people watch, Comic Con is the event to be at. Your senses are assaulted as you are thrust into the midst of a giant Halloween-like party,surrounded by coplayers in intricate costumes who are fully immersed in their chosen characters.

For photographer Antti Karppinen, the Cardiff Film & Comic Con event was an opportunity for him to give back a little and show his appreciation for the effort and detail each of these cosplayers put into designing their costumes. Antti also saw it as an opportunity to get a few images for his own projects. We shared Antti’s love for making imaginary movie posters in this Captain Jack Sparrow movie article and for this, his second Cardiff Comic Con event, he decided to bring more equipment than the previous year so he could produce some quality images for these characters.

Antti shares, “At my first Comic Con event last year in Cardiff, I had a backpack and a flash attached over my head. I got some pretty good shots, but the light only worked well
with really tight closeups of the characters. So, this time, I wanted to push these images even further. This year, I loaded my backpack with following gear:

• 2 Godox Witstro 360 flashes
• 2  Godox 960 battery packs
• 4 Godox lithium batteries
• Radio transmitters
• 90×60 Umbrella softbox
• Reflective umbrella
• 2 light stands
• Canon 5D Mk 2 camera
• 2 Extra batteries for camera
• Canon Ef 24-105mm f/4L lens
• Lots of Memory cards

Though everything fit perfectly in my bag,  it was rather heavy.”

Antti found the perfect place to set up his gear, an area where he knew almost all of the cosplayers would eventually end up – the Cosplayer’s Lounge. During the two day event, Antti took over 2000 images of over 200 different characters. The lighting and the retouching were all designed to give the images a “superhero poster” effect, a simple well lit portrait that played into the cosplayer’s alter ego. Usually, events of this type render numerous cell phone quality images. Antti was happy to be able to provide high quality keepsakes for the attendees who put so much time and thought into their costumes.

Antti also will be using these images to create composites for his own personal projects. Here is the first one from the series that he sent over:

Antti will be sharing more of his composites in some future How You Shot It posts, but if you’d like to see more of his work, check out these articles and his website here.