studio lex chicago’s sip & shoot [halloween edition]
Friday october 17th 2pm 2025
📍Lakeview, Chicago
shot on: canon eos rebel t3i 18-24mm 70-300mm
Once again Studio Lex opened up their doors for a community creative event; this time they had a spooky season motif for all the sets. There were fewer people in attendance this time, which was probably because the halloween theme is not for everyone and can also be somewhat limiting for the kinds of outfits you can wear and photos you can take. As someone who loves Halloween, this was right up my alley! I’ve never done costume or cosplay photography before and this was a really interesting exercise for my creative eye. Am I focused on making this a good portrait or having the storytelling take center stage? Is it more important for the photo to be crisp and clear or for her to look like a vampire? Coming up with the storyline vision in such a short time was a fun challenge that I’d love to do again.
Raya was the first person I walked up to at the event. I love a monochromatic fit and her polar bear costume was shouting at me to take a photo. I set her up in front of a purple backdrop for contrast and we got to work! I think the lack of diversity in the poses shows where I struggled with the storytelling/composition and what exactly to focus on. So to make up for that, I went extremely hard on the editing style to add those extra creative elements I failed to capture. Some extreme vignette and a couple fish bowl lenses later and voila! I think I managed to create an interesting set of photos. It’s giving y2k polar bear stuck in your TV screen, poltergeist style.
Ava was the last person I shot and my camera died so I had to use my partners who came with me. Learning a new camera on the fly is one thing, trying to do that, create a story, and direct a stranger in under 10min was a wild ride. The rush really shows in the photos and I wish I had stayed a little longer to take the time to get more creative with the set and diversify posing. The set I shot Ava in is actually the reason I came to the event. I love red and black and immediately thought of some sort of sexy vampire goth scene as soon as I saw it. Seeing Ava dressed all in black had me running over before I could spare a second thought. Once again I was saved by the edit. The photos themselves are not inherently bad but compared to my previous work they really don’t interest me. So I upped the saturation, lowered the brightness and put a fun dust overlay on top of the images to give it that old victorian film photograph feel. I think that helped nail down the sexy vampiress vibes I wanted to capture, and it was also fun to do such hard edits when I usually don’t do more than adjust color and light.
All in all it was a really great time and I received a lot of inspiration for future shoots. I think cosplay photography might be in my future? Who knows. At the bare minimum I now know how to photograph a polar bear and a vampire, so a win is a win. :)