Whenever I wasn’t doing a photoshoot at Fanime, I was usually walking around the convention center, talking photos. Hallway cosplay photography is challenging for many reasons.

The biggest challenge is time. Because a hallway photo interrupts whatever the cosplayer is doing at the time, the photography has to be quick — a minute or two at most. There is very little time to adjust camera settings or pose the cosplayer.

The second biggest challenge is location. Because of the limited amount of time, the photo usually needs to be taken at or near where the cosplay is standing, so there is relatively little control of background or setting.

The third challenge is portability — the picture has to be taken with whatever you can carry around the convention. This usually means on-camera or on-bracket flash and a small flash modifier. Most convention centers have wierd lighting, wide open spaces, and high ceilings. Most on-camera-flash modifiers work best with a ceiling or, worst case, some walls to bounce some of the light off of. Deprived of bounce surfaces, you’re stuck with a modified direct flash, which is never the most flattering of lighting.

Because of these issues, many convention photographers don’t do hallway photography. I do for several reasons. First, I like taking pictures of a variety of costumes. In the time it takes to do one photoshoot, I can photograph thirty excellent hallway costumes. Second, many excellent cosplayers never sign up for photoshoots with anyone, perhaps because they don’t know any photographers, or are too shy, or mistakenly believe their costume isn’t worth a formal shoot. If I only did formal shoots I would miss out on a lot of top-notch costumes. Finally, many up and coming cosplayers are still learning their craft. They worked hard on their costumes, and enjoy getting their picture taken & posted. They deserve to have a few good shots of their cosplay even if they are not in the top 1% of costumes.

Thursday hallway photos:

See the rest at Thursday Fanime 2009 Hallway Costumes.

Friday hallway photos:

See the rest at Friday Fanime 2009 Hallway Photos.

Saturday hallway photos:

You can see the rest at Saturday Fanime 2009 Hallway Photos.

Sunday hallway photos:

You can see the rest at Sunday Fanime 2009 Hallway Photos.

Monday hallway photos:

You can see the rest at Monday Fanime 2009 Hallway Photos.

As I alluded to in the previous two posts, Caroline, Mai, and  I went to Angel’s Camp for our summer vacation. In between the big trips (Calaveras Big Trees State Park, Six Flags Discovery Kingdom) and the various photoshoots, we had a fun time in and around Calaveras County. We walked around our resort to see the gorgeous views:

played in the playground:

went wine tasting:

went swimming:

and many other fun things. After ten days at Angel’s Camp, we drove over to Windsor, where we had fun walking around downtown Healdsburg:

After two days at Windsor, it was time to come home, and finally sleep in our own beds.

You can see the rest of the photos from our vacation at Angels Camp & Windsor Summer Vacation 2009.

One of the places we visited during our vacation with the Holmes family was Calaveras Big Trees State Park. Located in the mountains about 30 minutes away from Angels Camp, it is a beautiful place to go hiking. Walking between the enourmous trees is awe-inspiring. We had a wonderful time until it started raining, and we had to go running for the cars.

Here are some of my favorite photos from there:

You can see the rest of the photos in the Calaveras Big Trees State Park album.

During our recent vacation at Angel’s Camp, we met up with some friends visiting from Missouri. The resort we all were staying at was quite scenic, and I didn’t have many good photos of them, so I was eager to do some photoshoots. They obliged, and I was very happy with the results:

You can see the rest of the photos from these shoots in the Holmes Family Photoshoot gallery.

In addition to doing photoshoots with Richard, I scheduled a number of solo photoshoots at Fanime 2009. These were my first solo photoshoots; they were also the first time I used my new PocketWizards “for real”. At first I was a bit nervous, but after the first few it got much easier.

Than, towards the end of the convention I ran into a new challenge: finding locales. There are a finite number of good photoshoot locations around the San Jose Convention Center, and after four days of shooting I had used most of them. I wanted to avoid shooting two photoshoots with similarly-styled cosplays in the same location, to avoid a “cookie-cutter” feel.

When I scheduled the shoots I had many questions in my mind: Was I scheduling too many shoots, or too few? Was I leaving enough time between shoots? Would I be any good at the more formal costume photography? However, when the convention was over and the photoshoot pictures were posted, I looked back at the wonderful time I had, and am now looking forward to doing it again at AX.

Here are the photos from my solo photoshoots:

Samurai Deeper Kyo (KittyCatChi and Wren):

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8291095_Fnj4L

Final Form Xemnas from Kingdom Hearts II (Kaname_Tousen)

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8335525_7waAr

Kureha from Shining Wind (AngelKawaii)

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8369829_W8azi

Heero Yuy from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (orchestrafro)

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8369958_rqQnv

Lupin (K Valentine) and Lady Clarisse from Lupin III

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8374223_WdMcD

Lady (KittyCatChi) and Dante (Vasher) from Devil May Cry

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8395382_AzVdx

KittyCatChi, Shinobi Yukari, Vasher Mixed-Series Photoshoot

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8396181_NdE9e

Sephiroth (Duo Monkey) from Final Fantasy

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8415787_N6SQu

Orihime (Riby-san) and Ulquiorra (Shinobi Yukari) from Bleach

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8415511_CaCtM

Sister Kaya/Gypsy Queen (myalchod) and Abel Nightroad (kimu) from Trinity Blood

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8419188_2XT3x

Hina Ichigo (Kimiko) from Rozen Maiden, Sakura from Cardcaptor Sakura, Chibichibi from Sailormoon

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8426837_rxhoc

Versailles photoshoot (BonjourHoney)

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8446756_qUWvz

Hetalia Photoshoot (hanhan2413)

More at: http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8447008_HWCtw

For the first day of Fanime, fellow cosplay photographer and friend Richard Bui invited me to shoot with him. This sounded like a lot of fun; I’d never shot at a convention with anyone before, and I could learn a lot by watching how someone else does it. We met up around noon, walked around a bit, and then met up with the cosplayer for the first scheduled shoot of the day.

Watching Richard set up each shoot was very educational. Having started out in photography (any photography, not just cosplay) doing convention hallway photos, and having never worked with film, I have a very fast-paced, trial-and-error-driven style: quick pose from the cosplayer, take some pictures, adjust if needed, and repeat. Hallway photography, by its nature, tends to be very time-sensitive, especially at huge conventions like Dragon*Con or Anime Expo. Even now, when doing photoshoots with a light stand and umbrella, I tend to position the umbrella and cosplayers fairly quickly, take a guess at the settings, and experiment a bit until the shot is perfect. It helps having the newer PocketWizards with ETTL; this makes getting the correct flash exposure much easier.

Richard, on the other hand, has a very methodical method. Generally, he will first envision the shot he wants. After setting up the lighting & umbrella, he will use a light meter to determine the proper exposure, and then a grey card to set custom white balance. Only then will he begin shooting. Each time the umbrella or model is repositioned, he will re-meter and re-white-balance. This leads to a much slower-paced shoot, where planning shots out carefully in advance is required. The big advantage to this method is that the resulting photos rarely need any touchup — they can usually be posted straight off the camera. The time I spent editing the photos from the shoots with Richard was amazingly low compared to my solo photoshoots. It also produces a higher ratio of “keepers’, since much less experimentation is required.

We had so much fun together on Friday that we met up again on Sunday and did a few shoots together. I learned a lot about portrait photography both days.

On to the photos…

KittyCatChi had a lot of photos of herself in costume, but she was lacking photos of herself in street clothes, so we did a plain-clothes shoot:

You can see the rest of my photos from this shoot at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8335738_6geUA, and Richard’s photos at http://buiphotography.com/gallery/8300027_ySF2t.

Miss Nintendo as Rise from Shin Megami Tensei:Persona 4:

You can see the rest of my photos from this shoot at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8335990_dkBgN, and Richard’s photos at http://buiphotography.com/gallery/8306510_oPNzJ.

CherryTeaGirl5 as Talim from Soul Caliber 2:

You can see the rest of my photos from shoot at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8336151_8YbUr, and Richard’s photos at http://buiphotography.com/gallery/8310366_fEoHv.

Hikaru-Jan cosplaying as Needa Shuetlitch from Shuraki Trinity and Rena-Girl as Chrome Dokuro from Katekyo Hitman Reborn:

You can see the rest of my photos at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8369548_2BWwF, and Richard’s photos at http://buiphotography.com/gallery/8310569_iyRBq.

LauraC as Lady Gundam Deathscythe:

You can see the rest of my photos at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8430569_xBCR4, and Richard’s photos at http://buiphotography.com/gallery/8358748_qExPf.

KittyCatChi and Shinobi Yukari cosplaying as custom Arrancar Bleach characters of Matsumoto Rangiku and Renji Abarai:

You can see the rest of my photos at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8440063_VW49i, and Richard’s photos at http://buiphotography.com/gallery/8338402_xm5YL.

The LunarLoop cosplay group wearing costumes from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles:

You can see the rest of my photos at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/8447146_jWR3u, and Richard’s photos at http://buiphotography.com/gallery/8348006_53gB7.