Thank you Christina Forst for modeling!

Click the button to download the CoCo 2026 Posing Guide

The Costume College 2026 galleries are finally here!

And before anything else, I just want to say thank you.

Being your photographer at Costume College means a lot to me. Truly. Every year I get to stand behind a camera and watch this wonderfully creative, talented, slightly crazy group of people walk into the studio wearing things they somehow MADE WITH THEIR OWN HANDS.

You guys show up, I just push the buttons!

I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who stepped in front of my camera, trusted me with something you worked so hard on, laughed at my terrible jokes, and patiently put up with me saying things like, “chin forward…now down…no, not THAT far down.”

I also want to give a huge thank you to everyone who came to my posing class this year. I was honestly so touched by how many of you showed up and were willing to spend part of your Costume College weekend listening to a photography nerd talk about chins, elbows, hands, weight shifts, and why none of us seem to know what to do with our arms the moment a camera appears.

I hope you had fun with it, and more than anything, I hope you walked away feeling just a little more comfortable and confident the next time someone points a camera at you. The posing PDF guide is here for you download.

And I especially want to thank Brittany and Christina. The amount of work that goes into making Costume College happen is enormous, and I got to see firsthand just how hard and tirelessly the two of them worked to make this year as special as it was. There are so many things happening behind the scenes that most of us never see, and I really want them to know how much I appreciate everything they did for all of us.

Just one more thing in wrapping this up…

One of the things I talked about in my posing guide and class this year was why I think photography matters so much.

A photograph gives us a way to come back to a moment.

Years from now, hopefully you won’t just look at these pictures and remember what you were wearing. You’ll remember making it. You’ll remember the people you were with. You’ll remember the convention, the laughs, the hotel hallways, the late nights, the sewing emergencies, and maybe even that one thing you were still finishing five minutes before you put it on.

Because I know what I photograph at Costume College represents a LOT more than an outfit.

There are hours and hours of sewing, research, fitting, patterning, building, painting, gluing, problem solving, taking things apart, putting them back together again and so much more.

The photograph becomes a little record of all of that.

And that’s also why I really hope you SHARE these photographs.

Post them. Tag each other. Show off your work. Tell people about what you made. Be proud of it.

Social media can be a strange place sometimes, but I think there is something genuinely wonderful about filling a little corner of it with people making beautiful, weird, historical, fantastical, completely over-the-top things simply because they love doing it.

And years from now, I hope one of these photographs pops up somewhere and you think:

“Wow. I made that.”

It has been a real honor to photograph all of you.

Thank you for the creativity, the kindness, the laughs, and especially the trust you give me every time you step in front of my camera.

And with that, a few notes before you click the link…

The photographs are available to download at full resolution, and there is also an option in the pull-down menu to download smaller web-resolution files if you just need something for social media. Please feel free to edit, crop, or adjust them as you like.

For the full-resolution files, I strongly recommend downloading them to a computer rather than directly to your phone. They’re big files, and your smartphone may not enjoy the experience nearly as much as you do. The galleries will only remain active until January 3, 2027, so make sure you download and save the photographs you want before then.

Here are the Costume College 2026 galleries (COCO WILL PROVIDE YOU THE PASSWORD):

[CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE COCO 2026 ONLINE GALLERIES]

And one last thing: if you ever want a little more time in front of the camera without a Costume College line forming behind you, I also book private studio sessions. If you’d like to set something up, please feel free to reach out anytime.

Mark

Still need some help downloading photos? Click the button for a PDF of my Photo Download Instructions!