Live Magazine February Issue February 2014 | Page 110

COSPLAY

PHOTOGRAPHER

RYAN LEASURE
COSPLAY PHOTOGRAPHER FROM USA

We discovered this amazing photographer after talking to Sara Moni,
who has photographs taken of her
by Ryan Leasure. Born & raised in
Phoenix, Arizona, he creates unreal
photographs, and explains how it’s
all done right here at Live magazine!
Welcome to Live Magazine Ryan could you tell us abit about yourself? Where do you live & what
you do?
Well, first off, I just want to thank you
so much for asking me to do this interview. I was born in Phoenix, Arizona and have lived here my entire life.
Yes, it really does get to 115 in the
summer! For the past seven years,
I have been working for a photography studio as a retouch artist/graphic
designer. About eight months ago,
I decided that I wanted to do more
than just retouch people’s skin all
day. So I picked up a camera and
started to shoot friends, co-workers,
and whoever who would let me take
their picture, honestly. I completely

fell in love with the whole process
and have been hooked ever since.
We’ve seen some awesome superhero/Cosplay photography.
How did you get into this genre?
It’s quite funny actually because I had
no idea what Cosplay was originally.
One of my coworkers said he had
a friend who did Cosplay and that I
should take her pictures because my
style would fit in great. My response
was, “what the heck is Cosplay?” He
then explained the whole Cosplay
concept to me, and because I was
already a huge nerd for super heroes, I became really engaged with
photographing cosplay models.
Do you have a favourite Super
Hero?
It’s so hard to choose because each
one has really cool abilities, but at
the moment, it would probably be
Flash. Being able to have super
speed would be amazing!

Can you tell us abit about the process of making these images? Is
there alot of editing/adding effects after the photos are taken?
Mostly all of my work that you see
is composited. This means that I
shoot my background and models separately and use Photoshop
to combine them into one image. I
photograph the models inside a studio on a white background and then
cut them out and place them in the
background. I have a couple of techniques that I use to get my unique
style but mostly it is just dodging
and burning. I am a huge fun of
adding special effects like fog, gunfire, rocks flying, explosions, etc.
Anything that helps bring the image
together. There is a good amount
of time involved into my images. It
usually takes around 2-3 hours of
Photoshop work for each image.
For some of my big composites, like
the Justice League Fight Scene, it
can take up to 20-25 hours.