Two weeks ago I participated in the Second Annual Worldwide Photo Walk, where photographers got together in groups of up to 50 in cities around the world for street photography and socializing. Instead of going to a nearby photo walk in San Jose or Morgan Hill, I decided to drive up to San Francisco for the Crissy Field walk. San Francisco has no shortage of great places for photography, but the Crissy Field area is one of the best, with beaches, the Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the Palace of Fine Arts, and the Marina District all within photo range.

I left home at 9am to make the 10am meet up time. After a quick group shot, and we went off for two hours of walking & photography before meeting up for lunch. My friend and fellow photographer Richard Bui was also at this photo walk, and so we walked around together. I had a wide-to-mid-range lens on my camera, while his two bodies had more tele lenses, so we ended up taking fairly different photos even though we were together most of the time.

We first walked along the beach:

The Golden Gate Bridge made a nice backdrop for some shots, though the fog sometimes made it hard to see:

We then turned inland to meet up with everyone for lunch.

After lunch, Richard and I decided to take a different route back to our cars so that we could photograph the Palace of Fine Arts on the way.

Here’s a shot of Richard posing for me, with the Palace of Fine Arts in the background:

The Palace of Fine Arts is also a great subject for trying out different post-processing techniques, including HDR

and various Photoshop plugins.

Finally, as I was almost back to my car, I couldn’t resist taking a few more shots with Alcatraz in the background:

You can see all my photos from the photo walk at Scott Kelby’s Second Annual Worldwide Photo Walk.

Richard also got many excellent photos, including this nice shot of me:

You can see the rest of Richard’s photos from the walk at 2009 Scott Kelby 2nd Annual World Wide Photo Walk.

Saturday had fewer shoots scheduled than Thursday or Friday because I wanted to see Kari Wahlgren‘s voice acting panel and to allow time for us to see the Exhibit Hall. Also, Caroline needed me to watch Mai so she could spend some time in the video rooms.

I’m very glad I made time to see Ms. Wahlgren because her panel was a lot of fun. She had many interesting stories to tell, and handled even the most bizarre or silly audience questions well. It was also fun to hear her do various character voices; hearing a variety of very different voices coming from the same person always amazes me. If you missed the panel, fortunately someone recorded it and put it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXTUFNvCWp4. It’s a fun watch, but not quite the same thing as being there in person.

The first photoshoot of the day was with Naxul:

You can see the rest at Nia Teppelin (Naxul) from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

Later that afternoon, I did a shoot with SuperSaki

and Ichigo-Chan7:

You can see all the photos from this shoot at Sakura (SuperSaki) and Touya (Ichigo-Chan7) from Cardcaptor Sakura.

After a quick snack came a shoot with orchestrafro. I decided to do this shoot without any lighting gear, using only natural ambiant lighting, which I think turned out very well.

The rest of the photos are at Syaoran Li (orchestrafro) from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles.

After this shoot, Mai was getting very tired, so Caroline and Mai headed back to our hotel room. I wandered around a bit, and then, because of some cancellations, I was able to an ad-hoc shoot with hellangel

and Aitsuito:

You can see all the photos from this shoot at Sebastian (hellangel) and Ciel (Aitsuito) from Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji).

Afterwards, Hellangel, Aitsuito, and I went to Katsuya for dinner. The food there was delicious and reasonably priced, and I ended up getting some to-go for Caroline, since she was still stuck in our hotel room with Mai. After she ate, I went to the roof of our hotel to take some pictures of Los Angeles at night. The only really fast lens I had was the Sigma 50/1.4, so even though I would have preferred something a little wider that’s what I ended up using:

You can see the rest at Downtown Los Angeles At Night.

On Day 2 of Anime Expo, LauraC let me know that she and two of her friends were going to cosplay Transformers, and invited me to meet up with them. The plan was to first go out in costume on Day 2 late in the evening, as a dry run to get familiar with the costumes without the huge daytime crowds, and then again during the day on Day 3.

On Day 2, I arrived before they started putting on the cosplays. The first step was to lay out all the pieces on the ground, which I got a video of:

Next, with a lot of help, they started putting on the costume, one piece at a time:

Once all the pieces were put on, it was showtime. We walked over to a nearby lobby, and they started posing for photos:

Other cosplayers wanted to pose with them:

The next day, we assembled again in the parking lot, and watched as the costumes were donned once more:

and then again, off into the crowds for photos:

They attracted quite the crowd:

Being a part of both shoots was great fun. I’m happy that LauraC invited me, and I hope to be a part of future shoots.

To see all my photos from the two shoots, please go to Bumblebee, Jazz (LauraC), and Frenzy from Transformers.