we should have more specialized creative photography of fursuits
posted
I’ve recently been uploading and organizing photos of the furry fandom on Wikimedia Commons, as I have of course needed a new freely licensed data/media hobby after musicbrainz and archive.org. you can thank psychpsyo for this one.
as I’ve been searching through photos on furtrack though, I’ve realized something harrowing: most fursuit portraits are kind of boring!!!
I don’t want to say “poor”, of course. most of the portraits there are wonderful in their special little ways. I’m personally a fan of candid photos where the photographer is invisible to the subject, and there’s plenty of just Well Composed Shots that are wonderfully apt to put on wikimedia. but! for how many good and well composed photos there are, there is a severe drought of some experimental, wacky, or delicately-put-together photos of fursuiting.
I think it’s self-evident to look at some portraits of fursuiters peeping through a rotating tunnel or fractaling across the frame and see what I mean. There’s also shots where someone sits down with a suiter, walking around ambiently, planning lots of little decisions to make a scene something special.
But all of these require extreme setup and care. I saw that first guy’s setup during megaplex, and he was stationed in a very permanent, unchanging place so that he could setup about four separate lights with color gel for that wonderful rim lighting on the fur. while this does have the benefit of absolute autonomy and ability to get a photo to come out just right, it also means losing out on the Rest Of The Con with whatever zany thing you could come up with.
the “black hole” seems to be used for that tunnel effect, and a “liner” for some kind of astral project-y effect. just look at some of the example images of the different SZ Filters filters! could you imagine going to a furry convention with one of these and turning animals into the hive?! make them look like they’re in a cyberpunk movie or something. there’s so many possibilities!!
fursuits are a wonderful artistic expression in of themselves—I’d argue sometimes more than the fashion that usually gets this creative portrait treatment. furries should step up and give them the photos they deserve!!!
what’s that word where you say “we should have X” but you don’t provide X yourself? because I am kind of doing that. I don’t take these kinds of photos right now—mine are pretty boring portraits usually. but one day I hope to be a provider of stuff like this.
