Wow, I didn't expect such a series of responses here.
Based on my experience of the past couple of years photographing cosplay events, principally in Canada and Japan, here are my thoughts to above.
First, for the photographer in the video, I'd say he was an
attendee who happened to be a noted photographer. That's since B&H was doing the video, he has a backdrop with lights in the halls at, and his image results were pretty good compared to much of the
bleh I see produced during the shows.
For a 20,000 attendee cosplay even like Otakuthon, there's easily 1,000 shooters in general and 100-150 money making shooters, like
Heny. Some of the generic shooters and most of the paid hang out around the lobby and hallways stopping attendees to ask them for a photograph. To me, these shots are fun, but useless because there's so much environmental noise around the photo it's hard to highlight the cosplay artist.
Out of these 100-150 photographers running around, only 20-25 have paid bookings. These bookings usually are for singles, but groups as well who pay for 15-60 minutes of the shooters time. Some of the sessions have second shooters and lighting assistants too. Pricing for the bookings start around $ 20 USD and go upwards. $ 60 USD is the most I've heard in Canada. In the US, I wouldn't be surprised there are $ 150 USD sessions. Sometimes, the payment is by donation.
These bookings usually have more collaborative staging and lighting effort than the 5-30 second hallway shots. The paid photographer quality is quite varied.
Additionally, there's one to three photography "studios" in the event hall. Most of those studios provide a free two- to five-minute session in which you pay for prints. These photos also go up on the studio's social networks pretty quickly. Prior to prints, there's usually no retouching done. I don't know print prices. Never asked or recall from when I've looked.
On the cosplayer side, there are all kinds. There are serious lifestylers, living locally and afar who plan their year around cosplay events to have a different costume and persona prepared for every event day. These guys, despite being intense to their art, are really giving of their time and energy to the other cosplayers; whether furry costumed, cat tail and ear pieces, or fellow home made costume makers.
For cosplay events themselves, it's not only about folks walking around and showing off; there are masquerades, talent shows, workshops, anime reviews, knowledge quizzes, clubs, games, etc. It's pretty varied what all cosplayers are into.
For competitions, especially world level,
everything must be made from scratch. No buying premade pieces. You're interviewed about your costume construction and such to determine if you're a fraud for the serious competitions. Weirdly, some of the consistent, least energetic and therefore uninspiring photos I've seen recently have come from the studio assigned to shoot world level event participants. That's depressing when you consider these guys are making $ 20,000 to $ 100,000 USD for a team to prep, shoot and post about 100 to 200 man hours of effort.
Back to the video above, I would consider that cosplay couple on the intermediate to advanced level. While, they're attending a large con and made a pretty mean matching set costume from mostly scratch materials, they didn't have personas to match or at least those parts weren't shown during the video and additional costumes for their attendance days. Still, they looked great.
At every cosplay event, there's what's called
questionable life choice characters. E.g.,
old men in Sailor Moon outfits, very scantily clad
buxum babes, etc. While they're entertaining at times, you also are going why in the back of your head. Smile and take their photos, then scrub your eyeballs for impure thought removal.
Being an event shooter for Otakuthon 2016 this year, I didn't get much hallway time. That's okay, I'm still happy capturing energetic people like those in
Otakuthon Anime Convention 2016 | Flickr. Next August, I'm leading the team in Montreal, let me know if you'd like to help out.
At days end, I'm happy to shoot cosplay and I consider it one of my most fun and creative opportunities to shoot when I'm not shooting the event organizer's shot list.
Please help: If you do shoot cosplayers, ask nicely to photograph them if they have time, before shooting give them a little direction or ask for their suggestion, then snap quickly. Try to be done within 30 seconds. Some of these cosplayers swear by the phrase "I'm asked every 5 meters to stop and pose". The cosplayers want to attend the event too.
---------- Post added Oct 18th, 2016 at 21:16 ----------
Originally posted by bigdavephoto As I said above, I have never done cosplay, but I have thought about dressing as a character from a movie and going to conventions and renaissance festivals. If you are wondering who, Friar Tuck from Robin Hood.
I'm thinking barbarian since my wife refers to me as one. :P