Genshin Tarot is a fan-made boardgame based off the incredibly popular free-to-play game Genshin Impact (it was news to me that HoYoverse allow and encourage fan-made content, more companies should take note!), based on the mechanic of combining elements, and performing powerful moves, to damage enemies as you make your way to the final boss.
Each hero card in the deck is also fan art, created by a range of different artists and each one represents a card from a complete Tarot deck. It was this tarot theme, that is so crucial to how the game looks, that was the inspiration for the shoot.
Theme
Tarot readings bring to mind the picture of a darkened room, limited light, an air of mystery and suspense and a feeling of closeness or claustrophobia, which I wanted to play through the entirety of the images I took.
The initial shoot of the cards themselves needed to evoke the feeling of moonlight coming through an open window, spilling a single ray of light through the centre of the images while still maintaining the darker atmosphere around them.
The beautiful artwork on the cards also needed to be a key part of these photos, so we decided to pull in close, and limited the light as it travelled across the table.
Gameplay
For the gameplay shots, it was important to keep up the theme of playing in a darkened environment, but I really wanted people to focus on the artwork and variety of the cards.
So we came in close on these ones, keeping a relatively shallow depth of field that ensured the viewer could focus on the main elements of the shot, without looking the ability to show off just how much was going on on the table, and the quality of the components themselves.
Finished Gallery
This was one of the first boardgame photography shoots I ever took part in, and honestly I couldn't have been happier with how they came out.
The theme worked perfectly for the game, and the way the lighting was set up worked so well to not only highlight the cards but to create that darker, more ominous environment that we were going for.
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