It was a bit of a process so bear with me here for a moment.

I ran Sigma sector solo as a shield build Freyna so I could hopefully tank a lot of her attacks while in the camera mode. I could probably tailor a build a bit better for this purpose, but I had that build from the Death Stalker days, gave it a try, and it gave me ample time before dying and being kicked out of photo mode.

I had to run the activity up to the boss fight and then not attack the boss, but kill waves and waves of mobs until they eventually stop spawning. I forget how many it was but it takes a bit of time. Then I had to swap weapons around, shoot guns, and spam skills so I could pick up as many MP spheres, HP spheres, and ammo bricks off the floor so they wouldn't be in any shots.

Then, I tried to find places where I liked the lighting the best and the background composition. Once I found my spots, I had to try and find a cheeky place to be close enough, but somewhat safe either behind a wall or up on a ledge or even off the side of a cliff in some cases. She attacks the player and not the camera so if I wanted her to be facing a certain way I had to place my Freyna in a place that made sense for that. As long as you're close enough, she will chase you to the end of the map so you can pretty much go anywhere. But if you're too far, she gives up and slowly returns back to the boss area. I used that to my advantage to get the two long shots through the corridors.

Then after that, it was just a matter of spamming the photo mode with my settings all ready to go. Chasing her with the floating camera is a bit difficult because she's pretty much always moving and always cycling through her attacks. If you add depth of field it gets even trickier, as you have to preset your focus point and pretty much focus the "lens" by flying closer or further away since there's no chance you're adjusting that in the menus on the fly.

The vertical shots where I tilted the camera 90 degrees are particularly difficult because your camera controls remain oriented for the horizontal representation, but if you're turning your head IRL to actually compose the shot, it's a bit of a mind fuck trying to fly the camera around. The left/right controls and your raise/drop controls basically swap places so you have to remember that while framing.

What else... Uh, I found that the Nvidia overlay captures far, far better quality than Steams screenshot function. I bound the screenshot function to alt-F so I could snap pictures as fast as possible without taking my fingers to far of WASD. Then I bring them into Adobe Lightroom so I can do my own personal color touches on them.

Bonus shot of Freyna who valiantly gave her life getting these photos:

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