Thread by @FioraAeterna

so marie and i just did a thing that i would recommend to anyone wanting to get better at cosplay photography, whether as a subject or camera-wielder

find cosplayers who have work that inspires you, similar to what you'd like to do. check out their photos: bonus points if they have photo books or big photo sets.

go through the photos. postmortem them all. roast the things that don't work. spot all the clever things that did.

"this pose makes her look too wide". note it down! "she used her long hair here to avoid her back looking out of proportion". note it down! "her friend stood farther back in this photo to make her look relatively smaller." note it down!

not everything will be directly useful to you, whether due to (lack of) availability of shooting environments, differing body shapes, differing outfits and so on. but you can build a lot of intuition about posing and composition by tearing apart piles of other peoples' photos.

in this case, i think i would actually recommend quantity over quality: you'll probably learn more from seeing 100 imperfect photos than someone's absolute 5 best.