Last Sunday Yukari and Kitty organized a cosplayer get together at the Christmas in the Park festival in downtown San Jose. I decided to attend because it sounded like a lot of fun, and it was an opportunity for me to do cosplay photography outside of a convention. I was planning on putting together a Kohei cosplay from Tsukuyomi (Moon Phase). It would have been perfect, because not only is Kohei a rare adult male anime main character, he’s also a photographer. Unfortunately, the week leading up to the event was super extra crazy, and I ran out of time.

I took my Canon 40D with battery grip, 580EXII flash with a LumiQuest BigBounce, flash bracket, and the Sigma 50-150 f/2.8 lens. I would come to regret my lens choice; I didn’t end up needing most of the zoom range, while a wider angle would have come in handy many, many times throughout the night. For the next event I attend I plan on taking my Sigma 17-50 f/2.8 instead. Also, this was my first event with the BigBounce; it worked well, but it lost more light than I expected.

We were going to meet up by the big Christmas tree at 4pm, and then wander around. The first person arrived around 3:30pm. I arrived at 4:10pm and was worried I was going to miss everyone, but this turned out to be unfounded. Due to traffic issues and confusion as to where we are meeting (the tree was big enough you could only see about 1/3 of the way around from any one spot), the group wasn’t really assembled until around 4:40pm.

As people I arrived I tried to take a picture or two of everyone:

Of course, everyone had to pose at the Christmas tree photo spot:

I got a chance to practice balancing my flash with the ambiant light:

Once everyone was assembled we purchased ride tickets and walked over to the carousel

and the Arabian Nights ride. 

After a quick group pose at the snake sculpture (where I once again wished I had taken my 17-50)

we went over to the San Jose Convention Center, where we were the first cosplayers to wait outside for the start of Fanime 2009.

Eventually, we started getting hungry so we walked over to Smile Sushi on First Street. They were able to seat us quickly, despite being such a large group, by splitting us across two large tables. The food was excellent, and it was nice to socialize with other anime fans.

After dinner, we walked around some more,

rode the other carousel

saw a cute dog

and decided not to go ice skating. The ice was in such bad condition, it really was more like snow skating.

At that point everyone was getting tired from walking, so we sat down at some tables and chairs left outside for festival goers.

By around 11:15pm everyone was getting tired, and the gathering broke up. I had a very fun time, and look forward to the next event.

In the end, I took about 450 photos. After editing, about 160 of them were good enough to post. They are available at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/6887154_WQK89. Overall, I think they are not too bad. My two biggest mistakes were bringing the wrong lens, and underestimating how much light I was losing because of the BigBounce, both of which I know I will be able to fix next time.