Cosplay & Photography Shoot-Out at PAX East 2019 Crushed It
Anyone who’s been to a PAX event knows how incredible their conventions are. PAX is a huge event with massive attendance. Cosplayers bring their A-game, especially their videogame-themed best. So it isn’t an exaggeration to say the entire Nerd Caliber team was beyond excited to bring our Cosplay & Photography Shoot-Out to PAX East 2019. And sweet Jeebus, did you guys crush it!
A quick explanation for anyone who doesn’t know what the Shoot-out is: We gather photographers and cosplayers together and randomly pair them via drawing. The audience is given a choice of a handful of topics and votes on the favorite. The teams then have a short amount of time to go out into the convention and make the best image they can that represents that topic. Once all images are in, the panel critiques them, and chooses a winner.
By overwhelming audience vote, the theme for the Shoot-Out was Game Over!. We had 31 teams, most with at least two cosplayers, because we also had 42 cosplayers. We showed off brilliant, creative, stunning interpretations of the theme. With only 30-40 minutes to decide on how to capture the theme, find a location, and make the photo, everyone did an incredible job of nailing the shot. Props to everyone for another fun, interactive, creative Shoot-Out.
With so many spot-on photos, the final decision was really tough. Our winners are:
First Place: D.Va (featured photo above) – photo by Alex Icon with cosplayer nikomeleon.
Second Place: Cuphead group – photo by Jacob Kelly with cosplayers John and JimDavisMTG.
Third Place: Undertale group – photo by Spencer @ Mr Lexington with cosplayers The Undertale Trio.
Huge thanks to the talented panelists who joined me on stage: Bethany Maddock, Kayhettin Elysium, and Rodney Brown.
Below is a gallery of all the submissions from the amazingly creative teams. This year we have started a new way to present cosplay photo galleries. We have a Smugmug account and will post all photos there, with a link to each gallery in its own gallery article. This will allow us to save money on hosting storage, and give you higher resolution images to download — still for free.
To view the entire gallery, just click on the image below. If you are pictured in any of our galleries, feel free to download the images and use them non-commercially on social media, with appropriate credit.
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