Cosplay

May the Fourth Be With You

Growing up the one piece of pop culture was always Star Wars. As a small child whenever me and my sister were bored we would pop in the original trillogy into the VCR and just marathon through them. I was also at a very tender age when the prequel trilogy was being released where my critical understanding were less that stellar and the entire universe captured my young imagination. I remember swinging around toy light sabers in the back yard and playing the video games like Knights of the Old Republic and Battle Front all through out the summer.

Now as an adult the universe is very much still present not only in the public consciousness but in the world that I live in. Since I started doing cosplay photography you see many individuals in Star Wars attire. Madalorians, Storm Toopers, Jedi Seth. If it’s in the Star Wars Universe it’s been don in cosplay. There is even a faction of the 501st legion present in my home town.

Regardless of where the Universe is now and where it will be in the foreseeable future Star Wars is important to the shaping of my life and it’s still a very big part of the passions I find myself in.

To all my other Star Wars fans out there all I can say to you all if May the Force be with you. and Happy Star Wars day.

The Most Physically Challenging Photo Shoot Ever.

I don’t own a studio space making one of the biggest challenges of doing photo shoots is finding a place to do it. There are so many factors to consider from time of day, the weather conditions, how populated the area is and does it work for the images you want to take. On average I enjoy doing these shoots on location outdoors. It gives you a more unique look that you can’t get from a back drop in a studio. However you get less control and in case of this shoot that I did with my friend CheeseCakePanda in her Smaug cosplay from the Hobbit, was fairly dangerous.

We shot up at the base of the Sandia Mountains at a trail that went through very rocky terrain. I wanted to use this location to reflect the nature of the cosplay. The trail goes down quite a ways to the base of the mountain and then goes strait up in almost a rock climbing fashion. The higher up we got it became rockier and more cave like which was perfect. The issues became the amount of space I have to shoot and getting the model who is in full costume up the mountain.

I felt terrible about how difficult the terrain was to work with. Lucky enough the model came with a set of shoes and was a great sport about the whole thing. When I had chosen the location I didn’t plan for spaces being so tight and and the vegetation (like cactus) to be so abundant. I put me and the model in harms way and I felt so guilty about it. It also didn’t help that there were numerous amounts of issues that I was having with light and getting at the right angles.

I was very proud of the way photos come out but it came at the cost of a lot of trial and error. If I could do it over again I would say I should have done better scouting and made life easier on the model. I appreciate CheeseCakePanda’s effort and being such a great friend through the whole process. Hopefully I’ve learned from my mistakes but knowing me I haven’t and will do another adventuress shoot. But at least next time the model will be prepared.

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.

OnTheFloor-7

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.

OnTheFloor-3

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.

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.

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

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.

TCK-Media

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