Candids

Get Your Geekon: Pinball, Beer and Charity

If I recall correctly I believe I was alive at the tail end of the arcade generation. A time where you would exchange all of your allowance into quarters and play games while your parent were out doing whatever at the mall. I remember dumping a lot of those quarters into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game and Time Crisis when I was a kid. While today arcades have become very obsolete with modern gaming platforms being the way they are there’s still something satisfying about setting up at a cabinet dumping all your quarters into it. That’s what made Get Your Geekon such a great event and you didn’t have to get a role of quarters.

Geekon, the company hosting the event at Sister Bar in Down Town Albuquerque, specializes in restoring, repairing and selling these old arcade cabinets and pinball machines. The endevor started as a simple pet project of restoring an old Ms. Pacman machine and it turned into a business that they are able to operate from their own home. It could almost be described as inspiring.

The event it’s self was put on to benefit Project Pinball which is a Charity group that raises money to put pinball machines in children’s hospitals. Proceeds from the event’s pinball and street fighter tournament went to Project Pinball as well as vendors that were selling prints and raffling off prizes.

The best thing about Get you Geekon without a doubt was the people. Not just the patrons who came out for a drink and a round of pinball but everyone who came out to contribute; Jon Sakura of Gamers Anonymous came out with his usual classic and fun loving flair and the Girls of Geek also came to sell prints and mingle with the crowd. It was easy to feel in place when you have people who you’ve gotten to know over the years be present at these sorts of events and want to just help out with a good cause and friends.

Daniel Reinhard. COO of Geekon LLC.

BTS Shooting Before the Shoot.

Candid Photo journalistic work is my jam, it’s more of what my background is and I feel like the photos just come out better when I take them in a much more natural setting.

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Portraiture, though, has a much bigger market and people enjoy being part of that process a lot more. So in my great big reunion with my friend Tara we came up with idea for her to get temporary corset piercings done by Scott Self of Evolution Body Piercing out in Albuquerque New Mexico.

What was so impressive about Scott was how professional he was about what he does and making sure he used a sanitary work environment. We even had a brief conversation about the States broken licencing practices and the issues he has seen with it. Needless to say if I ever decided to get a piercing one day I now know who to go to.

Tara of course being true to form was an absolute trooper and a joy to work with. She got through the piercing process in no time at all and with no complaints what so ever. You also have to appreciate that she had just gone through lasik eye surgery the day before, which was something I was concerned about going in and it turned out to be a complete non issue.

The resulting photos came out amazingly and the photos from the actual portrait shoot are some of my new favorite images in a long time. Stay tuned for those. AJA_0035

Albuquerque Comic Con 2015 in Photos.

Conventions are always long, exhausting and crowded; But that doesn’t change how fun they are to go to and how fun they are to shoot. Here’s to a great year of Albuquerque Comic Con hopes for more to come.

Albuquerque Comic Con 2015 Preview: (ReEdits from 2014)

It’s a new year and what better way is there to kick it off than going to a Comic Convention? If you’re a humongous nerd like myself, there really isn’t any. It’s always fun to go to these conventions and spend time around people with similar interests and just celebrate our enthusiasm for nerd culture. I only got to make it to one day last year but this year I plan on taking the whole weekend in and sharing with you the visual goodness that I capture.

Now last year was one of my first outings for using my d600 and I can tell you, having a full frame camera was a godsend with how little light I was dealing with. It was dark, crowded, and I had to literally had to shoot wide open just to get anything. This year however they have changed locations to the Albuquerque Convention Center which think is great because 1. I’m familiar with the layout of that building from all my outings at ACE (The Albuquerque Comic Expo) 2. Lighting is so much better and 3.Crowding shouldn’t be an issue like it was last year. This year I will pretty much have the same gear and I’m hoping that the photos I get will show a years worth of improvement in my photo skills.

As always I will be focusing on the people who are attending the event and the creative costumes that many of them have come up with. Some of the things I’m expecting to be popular are characters from Guardians of the Galaxy considering how popular that movie became, and probably a ton of Harley Quinn (because that’s just how it is.)

Normally I don’t much care for the celebrity guest that come to these things but there are some notable ones like Sean Patrick Flarney of the Boondock Saints cult classic and Fabian Nicieza who wrote one of my favorite comic book series, Cable and Deadpool. Whether or not I get permission to get photos of the guests is still up in the air, but if that’s a No-No I’m not going to be heart broken about it.

Another really exciting thing about Albuquerque Comic Con is getting to see some awesome people who I don’t get see on a regular basis like the members of the 501st Legion: Dewback Ridge Garrison, some of my cosplay friends who are always bugging me for photo shoots.

Speaking of photo-shoots, I’m probably going to be doing quiet of few of those while I’m there. I’d like to get some new people in on them but if that doesn’t happen it won’t be for lack of effort. Posed shoots are always fun to do at conventions and it’s always great to give cosplayers who have spent so much time and effort a chance to show off their work everywhere and not just at the convention.

So here’s to what hopes to be a spectacular Albuquerque Comic Con and I hope I get plenty of stellar images to share with all of you.

Albuquerque Comic Expo 2014: Street Photography on the Show Floor.

The Albuquerque Comic Expo has now came and went and there are a tone of photos to share from the show floor. Like Most Conventions I spent most of my time shooting in a candid fashion carrying myself as a photojournalist. ACE was so kind as to present me with a press pass for the event giving me free range to shoot where ever whenever (within reason.)

For this event I shot exclusively with my 85mm 1.8 on my D600 Shooting at f2.5 and 1/400 of second, changing my ISO depending on where I was and the lighting that was present. On the show floor my ISO was at about 3200 and in the lobby it was dropped to about 800.

My 85mm has always been my workhorse lens. I like having the short telephoto length to where I don’t have to be getting up in people’s faces but I can still be present in the scene. Many street photographers like using a more standard focal length like a 50mm or a 35mm. For me those angles are a little to much on the wide side. If I was confined to a tighter space I would probably use a 50mm but I didn’t want to be getting into peoples faces with my camera. I wanted them to act natural at the convention.

The greatest thing about these conventions is the visual variety. People will dress up as their favorite comicbook, video game, Anime or movie characters, They’ll wander around the show and look at all the artist and vendors selling their merchandise and they’ll interact with each other in unique ways giving interesting Juxtaposition.

I always leave conventions 1. exhausted but 2. pleased with the experience. I always leave making a couple of friends, taken tons of good images that seem to get a lot of people’s attention. And that alone makes the exhausting 3 day work weekend all the more worth it.

Photos from Denver Comic Con

For just over a year now I’ve covered Convention that have graced the fair city of Albuquerque and I have enjoyed quite a bit of success at photographing the show floors of the conventions. Through my work at convention I’ve made friends, connections, and even a small following. However over the weekend I stepped out of the pond that is Albuquerque to shoot at the biggest convention I’ve ever had the privilege to covering at Denver Comic Con.

I got the opportunity to go to Denver when my buddy Seth M Beyers (@ThatSethMBeyers) got us approved for Media Badges for the Podcast/ soon to be media company Nerdout Hangout (Nerdout Entertainment) The essential plan was to drive up to denver with all my gear film, interview, photograph repeat through the whole weekend. Needless to say I’ve done that an now I need to sort through everything and make it into respectable content. All the photos have been taken care of but the footage may take quite a bit of time to get turned over. But without further wait here are the best of the best photos from Denver Comic Con

Taking Photos with Minimal Equipment.

As you dive deeply into the craft of photography and accumulate thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment, you start to over analyse your needs when you go out shooting. Often times you might end up packing your entire lens collection when you really only end up using one or two; you may pack a tripod even though you’re not sure if you’ll need it for any long exposures. This typically leads up with you carrying loads of equipment strapped to your back weighing you down when you really could have just gone with the bare essentials.

This Memorial Day, I went on a hike with my girlfriend up in the Sandia Mountains of Albuquerque, New Mexico and I decided to only take my D600 with the 28mm 1.8g lens attached along with a strap and a 32 gig card with me. What I wanted to accomplish with this was to work with what I was given on the trail and not get caught up in what lens I should have on the camera. It also made things much easier traveling light, considering how treacherous the terrain would turn the further up the trail we got.

Now it should be known that I’m not a landscape guy when it comes to photography. I often times prefer working with people as subjects, whether that be a model or a pedestrian that I happen to get a candid of, so I don’t always know what to look for in a nature situation. I knew I wanted to capture intricate details, so I knew I wasn’t going to be working with shallow depths of field. I kept my aperture set at f8 and change my shutter speed and ISO accordingly for what the situation was. It was a bright sunny day and around noon so I was able to keep my ISO below 400 and my shutter never dropped bellow 1/125 of second.

The biggest difference I noticed between shooting portraits and shooting nature is that background had become the foreground and how I composed images had changed from finding what angles work to to finding how all the elements in the frame worked together.

Overall it was an enjoyable experience only working with the basic materials of a body, lens and a memory card and the results were pleasing enough, even though I don’t have much experience in landscape photography. I encourage anyone that the next time you go on a leisurely shoot to leave the big bag of equipment at home and just go with a body and lens and see what you can do with just that, and not to worry so much about being prepared for every situation.

Photographing Albuquerque Comic Con: The Challenges of Low Light and Crowded Spaces

This past weekend was Albuquerque Comic Con (ACC) and as previously mention I went to to cover the event in a photographic fashion. This year the event was being held at Hotel Albuquerque down in Old Town and while it was a great venue it came with some of the hardest conditions to shoot in. 2 factors played into making this assignment challenging .1) The lighting was awful. It was a dimly lit hotel all over the show floor using mainly tungsten light bulbs with some areas letting natural light in through windows. 2) Incredibly tight spaces with a large turnout made crowding and moving about the area difficult. Both situations were manageable however with just a little know how, patience and letting go of some nit picky things.

The main thing I needed to figure out was how I was going to deal with the low lighting. Being that the light was so low I pushed the ISO to 6400 on my D600 and was shooting at a wide open aperture. The workhorse lense I was using all day was my 85mm f1.8g and it pretty much never came off the camera body. Ideally I would have liked to stop down to f2.8 or f3.2 to get some added sharpness and depth of field but I needed all the light I could get so wide open at 6400 was where I had to go.

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As a result I had to sacrifice keeping slight amount of grain out of the images and the risk of missing focus on the subjects in order to get properly exposed images and cut down on motion blur. As an added bonus for shooting at f1.8 I created some excellent Bokeh (out of focus areas) to cause awesome subject isolation. Now a lot of other photographers that were there covering the event were handling the low light differently by using a flash. There is nothing wrong with using a flash but I personally don’t like using an on camera flash that is going to cause some awkward shadows in the background and not to mention being that I wasn’t there shooting in an official capacity I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself while I was on the floor. (Note: I was aloud to shoot this event I just wasn’t there for a publication or affiliated with the con itself.)

So the main thing I did to handle the crowded spaces was to stick with my already tried and true style of shooting candidly/journalistically. As previously mentioned in a past article on convention photography you see that a lot of people will stop the cosplayers in the hall and ask them to pose or take a photo with someone else. At this event especially it caused some problems with blocking traffic and resulted in some missed opportunities to capture moments as opposed to posses. So by shooting in aperture priority and high ISO and keeping tabs on what shutter speeds I was getting I just kept shooting on the go. There were times when I would miss focus or get some annoying backlighting messing up my exposure but for the most part this style served me well. I couldn’t quite nail focus on every shot I took but being that I was shooting candidly and not posed portraits I didn’t lose much sleep over not having the sharpest image possible.

Now it wouldn’t have been a convention if my cosplay friends hadn’t asked me to take some portraits of their cosplays. This is how the final challenge of the con took place, finding a secluded area to shoot that has useable lighting. Long story short I was able to find a place outside with no people around to get some portraits of my friends. Now I could lower my ISO to low and noise free levels and stop down my aperture to f3.5 and f4 to get that added sharpness.

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Overall it was a great event and I got some stellar images out of the whole thing. So far I’ve been getting incredible feedback and it’s always great to shoot cosplay.

TCK-Media

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