Cosplay

Studio experiments with Tara as Catwoman.

I have this love hate relationship when it comes to shooting in a studio environment. On one hand you have nothing but control when it comes to every aspect of the photos, the downside is that it really does limit your creativity when it comes to composition.

The entire shoot was done against a black backdrop using 2 1K Flouresent lights with softboxes with a 200 watt clamp light as a back light. Being from a video background I end up using continuous lighting over strobes just so I don’t have more gear than I need. While strobes do have some benefits over continuous lighting, for what I do this setup works perfectly.

Black backdrops have a great effect of creating a void that eliminates any kind of distractions allowing you just to focus on the subject. As a drawback, however, any kind black article of clothing that the subject might be wearing will be lost without a few tricks in post.

In order to make studio photography work you need to know how to light your subject. There really are about a million and one ways to light your subject. Going back to my video background, I go for a 3 point lighting approach. A “key” light as the main light, a fill light to lift any harsh shadows and a back light to create separation from the background. You can add and take away lights as you see fit but since I’m still learning studio I kept it very basic.

I think for future studio ventures I’ll try playing with different set ups to see what kind of looks I can create with different lighting . The next couple of shoots that I have in the pipeline are on location and not studio which is more my element but it’s a nice skill to have when it comes to photography.

Joy as Spider Gwen

When you spend some time specializing in a certain field of photography people start to come to you specifically for certain types of images. In this case Joy approached me about doing a photoshoot involving her new Spider Gwen suit.

When it comes to shooting any costume based set the first thing I always think of is “what location does this costume work in”. In the case of an urban super hero I wanted to keep it as urban as possible. Downtown Albuquerque provided plenty for the aesthetic that I was looking for. We shot at and around the civic plaza and found plenty of things to work with and even found a few hidden gems in the process.

The best part of shooting with Joy was how much of a trooper she was. I asked her to climb up to different ledges and railings while balance herself without any compliant and it added so much more to the shots.

The big thing I’m trying to be better at as a photographer is collaboration. Receiving input and ideas from different sources and putting it into use. In this case my part time assistant and full time girlfriend Emilie was much more involved in location scouting and posing and I gave her free reign to give suggestions to try out. This system works especially well because even if an idea doesn’t work you can easily say hey we tried and move on. But all of Emilie’s ideas worked perfectly so there was no need to worry.

During post processing the main challenge I faced was balancing out exposure and color. The white portions of the suit caused some major highlights and when getting them balanced out brought in a blue coloring which could be changed in white balance. Post is always a game of feeling out the image and experimenting with what works and what doesn’t.

The images came out extremely well and we got some very unique looks throughout the shoot. It’s always great to get to work with new talent . Joy lives up to her name by being a fun new model to shoot with and I look forward to more work in the future.

Gotham Girls in Downtown Albuquerque.

Concepts are not my strong suite, I primarily focus on shooting. My mind is always focused on what my setting are, is my compositions clean where are my highlights and what do I need to change in a given moment. That’s what I like about photography, that feeling of being in the moment and being able to adapt in any situation to get exactly what you want out of a given situation. Lucky enough for me I get to work with different people who can come up with concepts for me.

While scrolling through my various social interwebs areas I came across a post by Jenna Lay (scene here as Catwoman) asking if anyone would be interested in shooting a Catwoman and Poison Ivy themed shoot with fellow model Taylor Hayes (Poison Ivy). This being particularly up my alley in terms of things I like to shoot I volunteered. Summer was drawing to a close and I’m never one to turn down and opportunity to shoot.

I offered up a location in Downtown Albuquerque that I had previously shot with Tara (See those Photos here) that gave the perfect mix of urban concrete and green plant life which was perfect for the characters we would be representing. It allowed us to be relatively in the same space while at the same time we could get a variety of different looks without going too far which for costume based photo shoots in public areas is a good thing. The over all shoot took less than an hour and didn’t require much gear. Really it was just my standard body and lens set up and me just keeping and eye on my exposure the whole time.

The more and more I shoot the more I can see some of my personal style points becoming drastically prevalent. Especially when I shoot models I want my subject to fill the frame. Props and backdrops should be exactly that back drops. Having the subjects as a the main focus makes it easier for the audience know what they’re supposed to be seeing and not getting distracted by something that draws the eye away. Visually I’m trying to get the sharp areas sharp and the areas that don’t matter soft and bokeh-ee. It’s primarily the reason why I’ve gotten away from using the skin softening brush, I’ve fallen in love with getting a rich level of detail in people’s faces and all that the skin softening tool really does is dull out yours images and make them look like those terrifying dolls your sister had as a kid.

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In editing (where the photos come together) I have also come up with a certain style. If anything it amounts to fine tuning of images in lightroom. Adding contrast, pulling shadows, dropping highlights getting exposure balanced out and doing very little to almost no changes to the physical image. I come from a photojournalist background and I refuse to mess with the physical elements of an image. For portraiture I will make some compromises like healing out obvious blemishes and making some changes on request to color especially when wardrobe doesn’t match. But other than that I try to keep the physical space untouched but that’s just me. Some people may not share my same sentiment when it comes to editing and think that’s okay but that’s not what I want to do to my images and I think they are better off that way.

Denver Comic Con 2015: Lessons From a Large Convention

Denver Comic Con 2015 by a landslide was the largest pop culture convention that I have ever attended. With over 100,000 people in attendance over the Memorial weekend, the challenges that I thought I knew about candid photography in a convention environment couldn’t have been more frustrating.

At any kind of comic convention crowds are a given. No matter how large the space is, no matter how well designed the flooring is, there is always going to be an issue with crowding. What I wasn’t expecting with how dense the crowding was going to be at just about every turn. Many of the shots I had taken were lost or ruined by the amount of people blocking subjects or intruding in parts of the frame. The only real solution to this problem goes back to the age old saying- if the shots not good enough, you’re not close enough.

I found myself being uncharacteristically timid during my time in Denver. Maybe it’s because I hadn’t been in one of these candid environments in a long while but I found myself being further away from my subjects and not being in the scene that I was shooting. As time went on I got better about it and just needed to kick off the rust but a lot of my work suffered because of it.

Another tenant I forgot when shooting in Denver was patience. While going through my edits when I finally got home to Albuquerque I noticed that large sum of my photos were severely out of focus. I had forgotten that when shooting in continuous auto focus you need to give the camera time to lock focus and not just start shooting the moment you point the camera. Even when I was on the floor shooting I knew that I had hit the shutter too early. Some photos had more obvious flaws then others but none the less many were lost because of a itchy trigger finger.

A big thing that could have helped me in my photos would have been to slow down. Today’s camera technology has conditioned many to adopt a spray and pray technique that may yield some lucky grabs but it doesn’t replace good technique when it comes to getting a high percentage of keepers. Often I set myself up with gear like Prime lenses to make sure I take my time but I noticed on many of my snap shots that I had issues with composition and camera shack that wouldn’t have been there if I had just slowed down a bit.

One thing that could have helped me was actually bring my desktop to edit at the hotel every night so I could see my work from the past day and see what I was getting. Having the opportunity to reflect on my work and see what was working and what wasn’t could have helped improve my shooting that weekend. It’s like going back and watching tape the day after the game. But of course hindsight is 20/20 and you can’t don’t get any extra lives.

Though there are plenty of frustration that came out of shooting this convention there are still some stellar diamonds in the rough in this take. Any photo outing you can be expected to take hundreds of images expecting that maybe only 10% of them survive the gauntlet of editing. I left Denver Comic Con with almost 900 images on an hard drive and by the time I had it widdeled down there were about 268 left on the block that got toned and exported. So over all I can’t say the entire outing was a failure. I just believe I could have done better.

Once I had made it down from Albuquerque, kicked a stomach bug, and found time between errands and my day job, I got to editing the photos and the trend began… So much black and white. I’ve recently had complaints that I do it too much but quite frankly photography and photo editing like any art form is subjective. My decision to make photos colored or black and white comes out of a feel for the images and if I feel like that image works better in black and white that’s what I’m going to do to it. If a client was paying me for a shoot and specifically asked for all photos in color I would, but in my own creative freedom I’m going to do what works best for me and my sensibilities.

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There are certain set of instances where black and white has advantages over color; such as low light situations using higher ISO’s. The noise looks more like film grain in black and white and you don’t have to worry about lost color detail because you’ve thrown the color out the window; also busier backgrounds aren’t as distracting which befits candid shots well. Color can still work in these situations but you never really know how it’s going to work out until you spend some time toning the images.

Cosplayers put a lot of work into their outfits (some more than others) and they want the pictures taken of them to show of as much of the costume and details as possible. My shooting style doesn’t really do that very well. I am much more concerned with getting a good image than I am showing off a good cosplay. Elements like interaction, juxtaposition, action, and raw emotion are more of what I’m looking for in a shot. Not how well made the costume is. A good costume can go a long way in catching my eye and dragging my lens to it but if that photo doesn’t come out that way I want it to I’m not going to share it with the world.

What I love about these conventions is their diversity. People from all walks of life, backgrounds and mentalities come to these things for one purpose and that is to just have a good time and celebrate the things they are unironically enthusiastic about. It can be done in almost a million different ways, dressing up, meeting people who have worked on some of your favorite pieces of entertainment, or just buying new things to add to their nerd collections. You definitely run into some interesting characters at these things.

However after several years of attending these events and shooting them the way I do, I seem to be developing a since of Convention Fatigue. I maybe end up attending 3-5 different conventions a year and the more and more I attend them the more I feel like I’m just going through the motions. Last year Denver Comic Con was my favorite convention I had ever gone to. This year it just felt like another convention just this time with 100,000 people crowding around.

Denver Comic Con didn’t particularly do anything wrong this year. They just didn’t offer anything new for me. Perhaps I just need to take a hiatus from conventions for a while. Albuquerque doesn’t have a Summer con this year so that gives me an opportunity to get some distance from the nerd circus and be able to come back to it with a fresh take.

But who knows, maybe that’s just the nerd flu talking. Knowing me I’ll end up caving and submitting for another press pass for the closest convention before anyone knows it. But for now I think I deserve a rest.

Denver Comic Con 2015 Preview

Con Season is now upon us and to kick the epic summer off, I’m making the trip up to Denver for the second year in a row. Last year DCC was the biggest convention I had ever attended and this year I’m expecting it to be even bigger and better than ever.

Denver Comic Con was the text book definition of comic book conventions; with amazing and weird panels, Cosplays ranging to a intricate Galactus and a closet made Silent bob, and vendors selling all the nerdy goodies that you can find.

Again like last year I’ll be covering the event in coordination with Nerdout Entertainment and Catamelt.com as the designated camera man. Hopefully this year I can improve the production quality (and apply some color grading to the video).

Major change ups from last years Con include the amount of man power that I have available to me and the ideas my partners and I have cooked up. I normally go into conventions blind but this year Nerdout Entertainment and I have a clearer game plan on how we want to tackle the event.

Polish will be key for content this year. Last year I put so much emphasis on just getting the content out that some things (like the video productions) suffered and I plan to rectify that this year.

Another exciting thing about this years event is the amount of people I know that are going to be at the conventions including some of my favorite cosplay type people Like Cheesecake Panda and ChayAra.

Excited for this year and I hope to get all the great images for everyone.

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.

Albuquerque Comic Expo 2014: Preview

We are now officially a week away from the Albuquerque Comic Expo (ACE) and just like last year I will be there all three days with my camera equipment on the show floor documenting everything the show has to offer.

Last year ACE was my introduction to shooting not only conventions but doing photography in a candid and unique way. One thing that I do differently from most photographers at conventions is that I take a run and gun approach. I move around, I don’t stop my subjects and I try to capture moments as opposed just posed portraits. It’s a fairly unconventional style of photography when it comes to comic conventions but people seem to always enjoy the results.

Though I enjoying shooting in a candid style at conventions it’s not uncommon for people to stop and pose when they see the camera pointed at them. I don’t mind this in the slightest. I try to take more of the street photographer mentality of capturing candid moments but obliging people who want to pose in their cosplays that they’ve worked so hard on.

On top of covering the show floor I also take posed portraits of my lovely cosplay friends. Most of them have worked very hard to put multiple outfits together for the convention and I’m always happy to oblige.

This year I’m hoping to show off how much I’ve improved as a photographer in the last year. I’ve learned a lot of different techniques, rules and concepts that I didn’t know a year ago. So if you thought the pictures from a year ago were good get ready. Because shit is about to get awesome.

See you all at ACE.

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