Convention Photography Tips.

Well the annual Albuquerque Comic Con (ACC) is right around the corner and chances are if you are attending (assuming you live anywhere near albuquerque and you’re into that kind of thing) you’re going to see a large number of photographers and regular patrons out with their DSLR’s, Smart Phones and point and shoot cameras taking pictures of everyone in a costume. I’ve shot quite a few of these comic book/anime conventions like the Albuquerque Comic Expo (ACE) and smaller ones like Con Jikan, and have seen other peoples photos from said conventions and I have noticed some trends in the photos taken at these events. Some of them good some of them bad and others are in the grey area of photography that is personal preference and style. So here I want to give some tips on how to get some of the best images at these conventions. (Note: These are all personal opinions on what you should do. I am in no way an authority on Con photography nor do I claim to be and the thing about photography is that we all find our personal styles and vision in the craft. I’m just giving you guide in what I like seeing in my personal images when I cover events like this)

Tip #1 Shoot Candidly.

Candid photography at these kinds of events is one of the most underrated styles of photos and people miss out on the opportunity of capturing rare moments that you’ll never get to see in regular day to day life. Where else are you going to capture Members of the Justice League mingling with the Avengers, Joker and Harley Quinn going up an escalator dressed as Batman and Robin or Rick from the Waking Dead eating a cheeseburger in a dining hall? The answer is nowhere else.

If you aren’t looking for candid shots however I’m going to let you in on a little secret: You don’t necessarily have to pull the cosplayers over. In my experience if you go around shooting at a convention if a cosplayer sees you have a camera pointed at them they’ll stop and pose for you. I know, crazy right? It’s quite the change of pace from candid shooting in public where if someone sees a camera pointed at them they get skittish and shy or sometimes even paranoid. It’s actually rather gratifying to know they want to have their photos taken. If you choose to shoot this way I would recommend using a short telephoto like and 85mm lens of even a 70-200 so you don’t have to be getting in their faces. It’s not a nessesaty, just a suggestion.

Tip #2: You don’t have to get the whole costume in frame

This is just a personal pet peeve of mine and I realize that not everyone agrees with me but I get annoyed when I see people get a mediumly wide shots of a cosplayer to get the entire costume frame. It throws off the composition, You’re getting a lot of things going on in the background that are going to be distracting and over all you just don’t get a very good photo. I might be guilty of overusing tight shots I will admit but once again a tighter shot helps keep your composition clean and makes it easier to blow out the background. Now I know many cosplayers will spend weeks and sometimes even months putting their costumes together and they want to show off their work but if they really want to show off they’ll get a photographer to do more professional portraits in them as opposed to just getting images done on the convention floor.

Tip #3 Publish and Share

These days copyright and having images stolen or appropriated is a problem, and sharing them online on places like Flickr or Facebook can be a little risky but in my experience putting the images up and letting people find and tag themselves in their photos has been a huge help in getting my images out there and letting people see my work, and more often than not the response has been incredibly positive. Sure a lot of the times people will only praise the subject in the photo and not the person who took it but if you do quality work people will recognize that and appreciate that and that leads to networking and establishing credibility.

These have just been a couple of tips that you can take to heart if you ever find yourself shooting at a convention. Feel free to try them, or ignore them as you see fit but remember that the important thing is to go and shoot. These Conventions can be fun, exciting and even exhausting but you can get amazing images and meet unique people that you won’t find anywhere else. I look forward to seeing what ACC has in stores for me and am looking forward to getting more images to add to my portfolio. If you are attending I hope to see you there and if you ever get the chance to shoot at a convention I would encourage you to do so. It can be incredibly rewarding.

Family Photography: Patience is a Necessity.

Patience is one of the most underrated qualities a photographer can have when it comes to shooting. Especially when it comes to shooting some difficult subjects, in this case children. Children seem to have this unlimited tank of energy that is feeding into their motors at all time. A quality that I feel most adults still envy. But because of this constant energy it’s impossible to get them to hold still and keep them in one place long enough to get a shot.

This weekend I was asked to do a shoot with someone I’ve worked with before and get photos of her and her daughter. The little girl in this situation was a perfect example of the previously mentioned motor with an infinite fuel tank. To the mother in this situation it seemed like a lost cause getting her to hold still and get photos but I assured her that I could get in done. When I shoot photos I’m looking for moments as opposed to posses and this shoot was a great example of that. As opposed to getting the images you would see out of a sears portrait studio I want to capture the interaction between the subjects and try to bring out relationship between a mother and her young daughter.

Containing a child’s personality is like trying to catch a bullet with your bare hands. The best you can do is get the child to feel like they’re playing along. While at a local park it can be very easy for a child to get distracted but instead of looking at this as a frustrating situation you should look at it as an opportunity to capture a great moment. There is nothing more nostalgic than a child treating the whole world as it’s playground.

I’ve always had more fun with photography by keeping it organic. Let things happen in front of you and you can capture things that are unique and different as opposed to something that feels staged and orchestrated. Why should shooting portraits be made to feel like your trying to make a family look happy. If you can get the right kind of interaction you will just naturally bring out that happiness by just letting them be themselves. To them mother it can be frustrating to handle a hyperactive child but it is still plain to see the love and care she has for her daughter.

There is nothing wrong with trying to get the perfect image but sometimes if you try to force it you’ll never get that image. If you show some patience and look for the right moment the perfect image will come to you. That being said you should also still go out and shoot. If you constantly sit there and wait for it to happen you’ll miss out on opportunity elsewhere. Sometimes you won’t even know you’ve captured a moment till after you got it. Sometimes you just need to dive in but you don’t have to do it with guns blazing.

Taking the New Camera for a Spin

As I had previously mentioned in my last post I have recently upgraded to a full frame DSLR. There are a lot of advantages of having a full frame camera such as High ISO performance, getting the true focal length out of your lenses and just better overall image quality. I’ve yet to use it for a shoot but I took it to Old Town to just feel around with the functionality of the camera.

The first thing I instantly noticed was the focal length of my lenses. When I originally shot on my D5100 which was a DX sensor, meaning that it had a 1.5 crop factor on every lens I used. This means my 50 F1.8g worked like a 75mm lens my 85 F1.8g was closed to being a 130mm lens and my 70-200 2.8 worked more like a 105-300mm lens. On this new full frame camera all these lenses look a lot wider to me. Now My 85 looks a lot closer to what my 50 used to be on my old camera. This is really forcing me to get closer to my subjects and thinking more carefully about my composition. Now this acquisition has encouraged me into looking at getting a wide angle lens and I am currently looking at the 28 F1.8g to give me the wide angle on this camera but that might be later down the line.

another benefit I’ve seen in the full frameness of this camera is how the Raw files turn out. I do all my post processing in Lightroom and the high ISO performance on top of getting all the information off the sensors has been great during post processing. Some files that go in a little over or underexposed are easily tweaked and the color tones I’m able to get is far superior that I ever got out of my DX camera.

Going forward I’m looking forward to things I can do with this camera in portraits and shooting the candid/journalistic situation that I like throwing myself into. The other features of the camera work up to satisfaction for me as far as frames per second in continuous burst, the build of the camera and the focusing system is quicker than anything I had in my last camera so all is well in photography land with my new camera.

Last Shoot with my First DSLR

Almost a year ago I got myself a Nikon D5100. I had originally gotten the camera for video purposes so that I could film better quality YouTube videos but through associations and professional opportunities I learned to use it as a proper camera and learned the ins and outs of the camera settings, Manual operations and the rules to follow (and break) in photography in the Year that I had the camera I also invested in full frame, Wide aperture lenses and other pieces of equipment thinking that they will be good now and great when I choose to upgrade. Well I’ve officially upgraded and gotten myself a refurbished D600, full frame DSLR.

The day before the new camera was delivered I decided that I was going to send it off with shooting a random set with my close friend Yasamin.

Yasmine does not have any real modeling experience to speak of and as such is a very shy person when the camera pointed at her. That being said she is one of the more energetic people I’ve ever worked and this was an excellent opportunity to work on my directing skills which is one of my weakest tools in my photography utility belt.

Being that she is such a high wired individual I had to approach this as not so much as telling her what to do but more along the lines of how I wanted her to behave. When I’m shooting portraiture I don’t like to spend and extensive amount of time positioning the subject into exactly where I want them to be. Instead I like to have them just flow freely and position themselves while I look for the best spot and the best moment to get the shot I want. Does it work every time: No but it’s more enjoyable way to shoot in my mind. This method has been great when I’ve worked with models who have been doing this line of work for quite a long time and know how to control their body language and expressions well in front of the camera. However this method isn’t nearly as effective when working with a more inexperienced model and proved to be a challenge. However after some trial and error I started to get the best out of the subject by just harnessing her personality.

This shoot proved to be a very fun way to send off a camera that has served me well over the last year and we’re both ready to move on to bigger and better things. Although it can be a smart idea to keep your older bodies as back ups I’m selling my D5100 to a friend of mine who actually owns and operates a local magazine out here in the land of enchantment and has some big plans for the camera. Me on the other hand will begin adjusting to shooting on a full frame camera where my focal lengths are going to start looking quite a bit wider and the noise in the photos are going to be a lot less noticeable. I’ve enjoyed growing as a photographer over this last year and I’m looking forward to what this next year brings me and my new camera.

Photo Shoot at the Bosque

To kick off this holiday weekend I ended up doing a photo shoot. This time it was with a friend of mine who goes buy the name of Kenya who I’ve done work with in the past, specifically on the cosplay side but this time we ended up doing a more casual kind of shoot at the bosque down in Albuquerque.

Kenya Chan on a log in the Albuquerque Bosque

I’ve used the Bosque before on several occasions in the past specifically for the nature element of it which is a nice change of scenery from the often gritty city environments you find around albuquerque. Don’t get me wrong I like gritty but you got to change it up every once in a while. In fact there was an overpass bridge that went over the Rio Grande which gave a good urban piece with some juxtaposition next to nature. To add to that there was a bridge under that bridge which I really got a kick out of.

One thing that I love about shooting outside of a studio environment is the opportunity to capture something organic. I’ve done some studio photography in the past and though I did enjoy it, I felt limited in what I could capture in such a small place. Granted studios have their advantages such as being a controlled environment where you know what you can expect and they afford you the ability to get away from prying eyes for the more risque photo shoots. But being that I come from a more journalistic side of photography when I do the more commercial work I like to be able to move around and use scenery to my advantage.

Kenya by the Rio Grand

Now shooting at a location as opposed to a studio does have it’s share of difficulties. Specifically with lighting. Sometimes there’s not enough, Sometimes it’s too harsh and sometimes something is casting some kind of shadow making the light uneven. There are several things can do about this, 1) is be aware of the light you have and where it’s coming from and 2) is editing the RAW Files in Lightroom. You shouldn’t rely on editing to fix your exposures but there is no harm in tweeking your files in post to get then to look the way you want. There are times where an image can look lost but some simple edits can bring it back. There are other things you can do with reflectors and supplemental lighting but that wasn’t readily available to me for this shoot (Once again a benefit to studio and haveing an assistant.).

Kenya and light through the trees.

Overall this was a really fun shoot and I’m looking forward to hopefully having some more over the holiday break since i will have more time on my hands than I will know what to do with.

If you want to see more of Kenya (Specifically in cosplay) You can like her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/KenyaChanCosplay

Watch “Running Wild: The Wild Horses of Placitas” on YouTube

This a documentary I filmed for my multi media communications class. It has to do with the wild horses of Placitas New Mexico.

Weekend at the First Ever Con jikan.

When you think of convention you think about large convention centers filled wall to wall with nerd oriented merchandise and cosplayers dressed in your favorite or sometime even unknown anime characters running around getting stopped every 5 seconds to get their pictures taken. Now imagine all of that shrunken down to at least a 1/4 of the size. That is the experience felt in the first year of Con Jikan.

Attendees of Con Jikan prepare to play a round of cosplay chess

Conjikan behaved like any other local convention I’ve attended over the last year. There were a handful of panels for those interested, a local maid cafe for people looking to be entertained, a gaming room to get the competitive juices flowing, a vendors hall for anyone looking to add to their already impressive collection of god knows what, and of course the one thing every convention needs, cosplayers.

One thing that really worked to Con Jikans benifit was the familiarity to the space and how everything was laid out. Being a student at UNM where the convention was being held made it a lot easier to know where everything is and where I would be able to find it if I needed to ask. Now I can’t speak personally for anyone who may not be familiar with the UNM Sub but the organization for the event felt fairly tight which is impressive when you consider how many things can go wrong at conventions.

The one disappointing thing I would say about Con Jikan is the lack of a unique factor that grabs my attention. Being that I’ve only been working the convention circuit for less than a year now I’m already aching for some kind of variety. As a photographer I feel like I’m constantly seeing the same faces in the same outfits at every convention and I wish there was something different that I haven’t seen before. It also doesn’t help that this was an anime and video game convention when I find that my paradigm of nerdom falls in line with more of the western comics and film. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with this it’s just incredibly limiting to the opportunities of what can be seen at the convention.

Some may be concerned with the overall size of the event, however I don’t believe that being a small convention should be held against it. 1) Because it’s the first year of the convention that is being run by a small group of enthusiast and 2) there is certain level of intimacy when you have a much smaller group. Suddenly it doesn’t feel like the guest are being put behind a glass wall between them and their fans and you get to interact with them more closely.

Jon Sakura, President of gamers anonymous during his Cyber Zone panel.

Over all Con Jikan can be considered a success being that it is such a small convention and has such a small but dedicated crew behind it. As it continues to grow in the future the changes I would like to see is more outreach to sponsors, fans and other parts of the community of Albuquerque. Having a small local convention is great but you have to be diverse in order to set yourself apart from being just another convention and that’s something that I feel a young convention can accomplish.

Craziest Photography Weekend Ever.

This last weekend I had one of the most hectic weekends photography wise that I’ve ever had to endure. To give a little context to this story we have to go over why I was shooting. My tattoo artist had came to me earlier in the month of October asking if I would do photos for a costume contest he was hosting asking people (females particularly) to submit photos that he would do sketches of, and was offering free ink and piercings to the best ones. Being that many of the submissions were mainly going to be iphone selfies he wanted to contract a guy who could do quality photos and since he had seen my work he offered to do some free ink in return for my services. I’d done other shoots in previous weeks but this weekend is where it got crazy.; luckily a good friend of mine had a warehouse space that she was willing to loan out in return for some photos of herself.

Francesca Hone in catsuit. The owner of the warehouse that let me borrow the space.

Normally I would like to do photos at more candid locations to give a different graphic quality to the images- however some of the girls outfits weren’t necessarily appropriate to have out in public. For example one of the girls came dressed as a Playboy Bunny. Not quite something you want to be wearing downtown in the middle of the afternoon.

She was a bit frosty in the personality coming into it but she had been on camera before and so she knew how to do simple posing. The bunny ears proved to be a bit problematic when it came to compositions but over all I think I did a good job with them.

The second girl on Friday arguably had the more creative outfit. She had put together a peacock costume that was extraordinarily colorful and extravagant which opened up a lot of fun opportunities for what I could do in Lightroom when I started editing.

Other than the two girls that came in that day I also did a shoot with Francesca’s friend Monica who never been on camera before, but her significant other was going out of town and wanted some nice photos to remember her by.

Being that she had never done photos before it was nice having Francesca there to direct. Because god knows that directing models is not my strong suit.

So upon wrapping up the busy Friday I just went back to my place and dumped all the Raw files off the card so I could get editing in Lightroom. I like to get all my editing done very quickly and efficiently. It’s something I picked up in photojournalism. Get em’ in, get em’ toned and get em’ out.

On Saturday my friend Tyler (Who is one of the awful people responsible for me being a photographer) asked me to do some promo pictures for her cosplay group. I of course obliged and went with her up to a village in Placitas by a church to get some shots of her in her cute witch outfit.

Tyler is arguably my favorite person to work with. She’ll never admit it but her photos always come out amazing and she is incredibly good on camera. Also what she does with putting costumes together is nothing short of mind blowing. Once again got them done got home and got editing. I’m gaining a reputation of having incredibly quick turn around times on my work.

Now Sunday is when shit got real. Random shoots kept coming up and I didn’t know what to do or where I was going to take them but luckily Francesca came to the rescue. Now I originally didn’t want to ask her to use her space again mainly because I didn’t want her to feel like I was abusing her. But she had messaged me saying that she was having a photographer with a full lighting set up come in and do photos of her and some other girls who have never done modeling before and asked if I would tag along I said of course and asked if I could use the opportunity to get the other girl who needed photos done in on the same day.

Now before I did that I had already scheduled a shoot earlier that morning with a girl dressed as Rosie the Riveter. I took her down to the abandoned rail yard out in Albuquerque. If you ever look up photographers from Albuquerque you know the one. The shoot was very short and sweet. I didn’t want to spend too much time in a condemned building but the location did offer a lot of personality.

The later shoot at the warehouse where things got a little intimidating. Being that the other photographer that Francesca had over had a more complicated set up it didn’t give me a whole lot of room to work with. Especially when you consider that I shoot with prime lenses. None the less, it was kind of fun to get play with studio lighting and professional flashes. Granted flashes are a bit overwhelming at times but it gave me a few new challenges that I was happy to overcome.

The first girl Francesca had was quite the firecracker. She had a lot of energy and even though she had never done photos before she took direction very well and wasn’t afraid to play around.

Now when the last of the girls who did photos for my tattoo artist came in things got a little more difficult to work with. She was very stiff and didn’t emote very well. It was really just one of those situations where we just had to persist till she warmed up and we could get something out of her. Not every model is going to be easy to work with but you do what you can.

However the last of Francescas friends didn’t have this problem. In fact she had a very warm smile as was able to take direction quite well and it resulted in some very impressive photos.

This was indeed a crazy weekend of photography but it was a great experience and I got to deal with a handful of new and sometimes frustrating situations that photographers have to deal with all in the course of one weekend. That being said, I could use a vacation.

Weekend at ACE.

Kenya Chan, Trudi Devoted, Cheese Cake Panda, Kongumi Cosplay

Two weeks ago I attended that Albuquerque Comic Expo (ACE) in an amature photo grapher doing posed photos for my cosplay friends as well as playing photojournalist on the convention floor with all the random cosplayers. The experience was nothing short of incredible and I was really impressed with my own work. It’s the first time I’ve looked at the photos I’ve taken and thought to myself that I’m good at this. The photo of my friends here links to my Flickr with many of the photos I had taken. I hope you enjoy.

Microsoft’s PR is hurting the Xbox One’s chances

If you follow the gaming industry or tech media you may have noticed that the next generations of consoles are coming out.

Sony announced the PS4 in February with a press conference that had a focus squarely on what it offers in a gaming context. It showed off the PC architecture that was appealing to developers who had numbers of problems developing for the PS3, as well as some gaming titles that showed off what the console is capable of visually. All of the features that were discussed with the console were in some way connected to gaming which should come as no surprise when you consider that they are trying to sell a gaming console.

Microsoft on the other hand is taking a much different approach with the Xbox One by selling the console as an “All in one home entertainment system.” In their press conference they kept referring to how the new console would be integrated with all your entertainment devices and how the console will respond to you. The games appealed to a casual audience and the technical specs we glossed over.
The issue with this messaging is that the people watching the Xbox One announcement were not the casual gamer and household owner shopping for an all in one entertainment device, they were the hardcore gamers and the tech geeks looking at the new Xbox as a gaming console and not a complexed DVR.
When the press conference ended Journalist flooded to get ahold of representatives from Microsoft to straighten out details in regards to used games, backwards compatibility, DRM, always on (the fact that the console is always on at some level) and always online (on the internet.) When this happened the public was given different reports on each topic coming from a different Microsoft employee that all seemed to conflict and contradict each other. Now Sony wasn’t much more clear on the subject but they decided not to comment on the subject which seems to be paying off for them in the PR department.

Now E3 is around the corner and Microsoft is expected to have a stronger conference in regards to games and what they will be offering to the market that they need to hit in order to look good out the gate if they want the xbox one to work.
Bickering about the details aside all of microsofts issues come straight from bad PR. People weren’t on the same page in regards to information, they were unorganized in dealing with the press after the announcement and they misread who their audience was going to be and the results show in the reactions of outrage and confusion.

A lot can happen at E3 and the in the months leading up to the consoles launch dates but from what it’s starting to look like is that the PS4 is going to be the popular console coming right out the gate and consumers are going to look at the Xbox One wearily. I personally think if Microsoft had their PR together they could have avoided a lot of these problems.

TCK-Media

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