We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Wes Smith a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Wes, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?

The short version is I have had friends who were photographers for years, but it never really clicked with me so I never pursued it. Two of my cousins were in need of a photographer (one for senior pics, one for a wedding) and since I didn’t have any camera or startup money to help, I agreed with them that if they purchased me a basic camera I would do their shoots for free. They did, I did, and that really got me started down the road to learning photography.

As far as the style I shoot now, I have always been a big pop culture nerd and after doing a “just for fun” shoot on the roof of a parking garage with some of my friends dressed up as super heroes I decided to start going to local conventions and taking pictures there. I had done a lot of research into camera settings and just started messing with shooting in manual mode and learning what each setting did. I know I wanted to be able to take cool pics anywhere, not have a bunch of people in the background, and get that high contrast punch and excitement that comic books I had read my whole life gave me. I started going to conventions, have met some amazing people and it has opened so many doors and opportunities for me over the years.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I am a photographer who specializes in cosplay / drama / fantasy style photography. For over ten years I traveled to a lot of comic an anime conventions, but now I mostly cover fantasy masquerades, nearby renaissance festivals and some local outdoor drama promotional material. I love being able to get cool pictures no matter what the location is, so that allows me to show up at their place of business, bring my lighting and really transform the pictures we get in that place. My favorite thing is the reaction of people who shoot with me for the first time as I show them a picture on the back of the camera, and they turn around with a confused look on their face and say “How did you take THAT here?!” Never gets old and is very fulfilling to get them so excited about getting their picture taken :)

Some highlights for me since I started shooting cosplay photography in 2013 is I have been able to have my work be published in dozens of international publications and marketing campaigns. I have also had the privilege of working with Stan Lee’s team to provide photography coverage of him for two large events, covering the C2E2 Crown Championships of Cosplay multiple times and seeing my pictures used in their promotional materials, officially working with the Ohio Renaissance Festival as well as the Tecumseh! outdoor drama in Chillicothe, which is a very significant local outdoor drama production. My work has taken me all over the Eastern and middle United States and has opened doors for me to meet and work with some AMAZING and incredibly talented individuals who I am still close friends with to this day. COVID closing all the conventions for a long time really forced me to take a look at how I was running my business, make some adjustments and instead of having all my eggs in the cosplay convention basket, I am more diverse in where I go now and still only shot what I love to and do what I like. If I am not excited about it, I don’t want to shoot it – even if it pays well.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

I have always been a firm believer that unless a potential client sees that I am willing to meet them halfway and remove any opportunities for them to say “No” before we get started, I can’t expect them to feel connected and committed to the project. I can show them pretty pictures of what I have done for other people, but that has not been nearly as effective in attracting new clients as me telling them “I will be more than happy to meet up to do a short test shoot for you. That way you can see my style of shooting, how I interact with the talent and adjust on the fly to any preferences or issues that come up. This way I can show you what I can do specifically for you and how I can meet your needs.”

Depending on how I feel about the project I can set the terms and offer to work around their schedule and allow them to use samples I provide them to test out on social media and see if it gets the response they are looking for. Since I am offering, I can set the terms I feel are fair at that time and offer to work around their schedule. It doesn’t always land a gig, but a majority of the times I have met with a potential client with this method and they can see I am able to adjust on the fly to what they are looking for, and have them look around after seeing a bck of camera sample and say “How did you take THAT here?” it changes their thought process from “This dude takes nice pictures” to “He will be able to take a lot of work off my plate and deliver exactly what we need”.

I have used this multiple times over the years and many of my regular contracts started with a “I would be more than happy to work around your availability, come to you, put some skin in the game and show you specifically what I can do for you.” If they aren’t interested or if they do the shoot and they say no thank you, worst case scenario you end up back where you are now and move on to the next client, you get a good story out of it and some dope shots for your portfolio to show other clients.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the hardest things I have had to learn is “The best gift you can give yourself is permission to suck at something new while you are learning”. I am self taught in photography and in many ways I see that as a strength because I have not been told “You can’t do that thing that way” before I tried it. Don’t worry, over the years I have had TONS of people comment on my style of shooting and critique how I do things and especially the settings I chose to use to get a certain look, but I have pretty thick skin so it doesn’t bother me anymore. Give yourself permission to play and learn when trying something new and make sure to take notes. I would start with manual settings and decide “I am going to learn what this setting does today” and I would make one change, take a picture, make another change, take a picture and continue till I see a noticeable difference. Make some notes in my notebook, reset back to where I started and take the settings the other way to see what that does.

Try different locations, see how working with artificial light as well as natural light factors in. If I had put pressure on myself that the pictures had to be good while doing this, it would have made the process much more stressful. Knowing I am not going to know what I am doing as I am learning really freed me up to try some wild stuff and has led to me having a style I am very happy with that gives my clients a way to see themselves through somebody else’s eyes and be able to tell them “I just took this picture of you. No photoshop, no editing, no tricks. You just said it looks amazing and that means YOU look amazing walking around right now and you can’t argue with that. I hope you have an amazing day.” It is an amazing feeling to be able to not only encourage people, but to really change how they see themselves and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to do this.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.theportraitdude.net
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/theportraitdude
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/theportraitdudecosplay
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/theportraitdude
• Other: theportraitdude@gmail.com

Image Credits

Image 1 (“Hurry”): Tecumseh – The Scioto Society, Inc (Richard Neal)
Image 2 (Freddy Kreuger): Erica Fett
Image 3 (Sombra / Overwatch): Melanie Jasmine
Image 4: Aryn Fox Art (Body Paint), Melanie Smith (Venom), Mike Ludwig (Carnage)
Image 5 (Shigaraki – MHA): Tawko Cosplay
Image 6 (Krampus): Yuletide Village
Image 7: Casanova Julius Frankenstein
Image 8: Lani Mask