If you’re a cosplayer, I recommend reading the following post. It has some very useful info on how to improve your posing and tips on making photoshoots go more smoothly:

Sunday was a very short day for me at AX because we were being kicked out of our hotel room at noon. Theoretically, we could have left our luggage at the front desk for the day, but that was not practical for a number of reasons. The biggest was that since we had driven down, we had a lot of luggage with us. (We tend to pack a lot more for a road trip than a plane trip.) The other reason was that I’m reluctant to leave several thousand dollars worth of camera & computer equipment in the hotel’s care. The odds of having something happen is low, but why take unnecessary chances?

(Next year if we go to AX, we will stay until the following morning, eliminating the issue of trying to check out on the last day of con.)

Because of the tight time frame, Caroline stayed in the hotel room with Mai while I went over to the convention center for about 2 hours. First up was the dealers’ room, where I wanted to purchase a Photoshop plugin I had seen the day before. (Clever dealer, selling portrait-oriented PS plugins to cosplay photographers; I hadn’t seen that before.)

Next was my one and only shoot of the day — K Valentine cosplaying as Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop. I decided to do something different, and do the whole shoot with only natural light and using my Sigma 50/1.4 lens. I think the results came out very well:

You can see the rest of the photos from the shoot at Spike Spiegel (K Valentine) from Cowboy Bebop.

On Saturday, I had taken a lot of hallway cosplay photos:

You can see the rest at Hallway Costumes (Saturday @Anime Expo 2009).

On Sunday, I had only a little time for hallway photos. I used the Sigma 50/1.4 and natural light only for all the hallway photos on Sunday, same as the photoshoot, so they look somewhat different than my normal hallway photos:

You can see the rest at Hallway Costumes (Sunday @Anime Expo 2009).

Shortly after my one and only shoot on Sunday, I rushed back to the hotel to finish packing. We were able to check out (almost) on time, and hit the road at 1pm. It was probably just as well that we left early; between the traffic and stops (for lunch, to take care of Mai, etc), we didn’t make it home until about 9pm.

Caroline and I had a great time at AX, and we’re hoping we’ll be able to attend in 2010.

I’m sorry it’s taking so long to get all the SacAnime and Dragon*Con photos posted. Here’s what happened:

1. Three days after I got back from SacAnime, I flew out to Atlanta for Dragon*Con. In those three days I (barely) was able to get one photoshoot done & posted.
2. I got back from Atlanta late Wednesday evening, 2 days after Dragon*Con was over.  My first priority was to get the SacAnime & DragonCon videos posted. They are currently all up on my site, and are mostly up on YouTube.
3. Saturday evening (3 days after arriving home), I caught a nasty cold, and wasn’t in any shape to work on photos.

As of yesterday (Wednesday), I’m feeling much better, and have resumed work on convention photos. My first priority is the SacAnime hallway & masquerade photos. After that, I will work on Dragon*Con hallway photos. Once all of those are done, I will work on SacAnime photo shoots.

Providing time estimates is difficult, but my hope is to have SacAnime hallway photos done this weekend, SacAnime masquerade photos done by next weekend (9/27), and the first batch of Dragon*Con hallway photos by 10/5 or so. Ideally, I’d have all the Dragon*Con photos and the SacAnime photoshoots wrapped up before the NorCal Fall Cosplay photoshoot on 10/17, but I’m not sure if that’s an attainable goal.

Again, I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to get the photos posted.

9/20 Update: SacAnime hallway photos are up! Still on target for SacAnime masquerade photos by 9/27.

9/26 Update: SacAnime Cosplay Fashion Show photos are up!

10/4 Update: SacAnime Masquerade photos are up! Now, on to the Dragon*Con photos…

10/11 Update: Thursday Dragon*Con 2009 photos are up!

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.

With no shoots or panels I wanted to see Friday morning, I slept in, and didn’t make it to AX until early afternoon. This turned out to be fortunate; Caroline, Mai and I ended up staying at AX until 11pm that day without any breaks. This was probably one of the longest days without a nap ever for Mai, and as expected we paid for it on Saturday with a sleepy and grouchy toddler. It was also a long day shoot-wise — I had 6 shoots pretty much back-to-back.

My first shoot of the afternoon was with AngelKawaii:

You can see the rest at Yuuko Ichihara (AngelKawaii) from xxxHolic.

Next came KittyCatChi, dressed in a very sexy variant of Matsumoto from Bleach:

You can see the rest at Matsumoto (KittyCatChi) from Bleach (regular version).

After processing & posting KittyCatChi’s photos the first time, I decided to try out a Photoshop plugin I purchased at AX. I reprocessed her photos using this plugin and posted a second version of the gallery:

You can see the rest of the reprocessed photos at Matsumoto (KittyCatChi) from Bleach (stylized version).

From there I had to rush to a shoot with Liberi Fatali

and Jirotaka

You can see all the photos from the shoot at Axel (Liberi Fatali) and Roxas (Jirotaka) from Kingdom Hearts.

Next came a shoot with Shinobi Yukari:

The rest of the photos are at Findor Carias (Shinobi Yukari) from Bleach.

After that I did a shoot with a group of Street Fighter cosplayers, including orchestrafro and LauraC. I deliberately heavily stylized most of the photos in this shoot to give them a very video game effect.

You can see the rest at Chun-Li (LauraC), Guile (orchestrafro), Balrog, M. Bison from Street Fighter.

Next I had a quick shoot with inuashely, who was cosplaying Lelouch from Code Geass. She had ran into someone cosplaying CC and brought her along to the shoot. Unfortunately, the person cosplaying CC didn’t speak much English, and neither of us learned her name before she had to leave.

You can see the rest of the photos from this shoot at Lelouch (inuashley) and CC from Code Geass.

Once all these shoots were finished, I spent the rest of the evening helping with part one of a Transformers shoot, but that is a topic for my next post. Stay tuned!

Caroline, Mai, and I got late start on Wednesday afternoon, so we didn’t arrive at our hotel until around 3am. My first shoot on Thursday was scheduled for 9am, leaving me with about 4 hours to sleep. Needless to say, I was fairly blurry-eyed when I met up with AntiAiChan. I hadn’t had time to scout for location, so we did the shoot in a corner in the lobby. Despite these handicaps, I think the shoot turned out pretty well:

You can see the rest at Valentine (AntiAiChan) and Lucifero from Guilty Gear 2.

Next came a Spike Speigal shoot with orchestrafro:

You can see the rest at Spike Speigal (orchestrafro) from Cowboy Bebop.

After a break for lunch, I caught up with Miss Nintendo and Naxul for a shoot:

The rest are at Chie Satonaka (Naxul) from Persona 4 and Micaiah (Miss Nintendo) from Fire Emblem.

The final session of the day was a late-evening shoot with Hellangel and Aitsuito:

You can see the rest at Sho Minamimoto (Hellangel) from The World Ends With You and Mukuro (Aitsuito) from Hitman Reborn.

In between photoshoots, I did my usual hallway cosplay photography:

You can see all my hallway photos at Hallway Costumes (Thursday @Anime Expo 2009).

Caroline, Mai, and I got back from Los Angeles late Sunday night from four extremely fun days at Anime Expo.  Not surprisingly, I took a lot of photos — over 3000 — and am still sorting through them. I’ve already finished processing one photoshoot (Valentine and Lucifero from Guilty Gear 2), but it will probably take me another two or three weeks before all the hallway and scheduled-shoot photos are up.

Here are some random thoughts about this year’s AX:

• While I wasn’t surprised about the number of cameras, I was surprised at the range. On the very low end, I saw quite a number of people using their Nintendo DSi’s camera or their phone’s camera.
• On the high end, I was expecting the large number of DSLRs, but I thought almost all of them would be low-end (Digital Rebel / D40 range) DSLRs with kit lenses. I was surprised by the number of high-end lenses and mid to high end DSLRs.
• On the very high end, I was very shocked that there were a non-trivial number of hallway photographers with off-camera flashes. One person I saw carried his camera in one hand and a softbox in the other. Another person was carrying around a small tripod and umbrella setup. Quite a number of photographers set up light stands in the various large open areas. None of these would be unusual for scheduled shoots, but I had never seen this level of lighting sophistication at a convention for hallway cosplay photography.
• Overall the convention was very well organized, but there were a number of weak spots. The shuttle buses were a little chaotic, especially on the first day. Security won’t let people congregate at night in the West Hall lobby even though there it was practically empty. (They didn’t have any problems with the same behavior in the same spot during the day, even though it was much, much more congested.)
• The LA Convention center is very beautiful, inside and out. It makes the Santa Clara Convention Center look very plain.
• The quality of the cosplay was amazing. I thought Fanime had some really great costumes, but AX topped it.
• It was big, and the convention space was vast, with long walks through very crowded hallways between various rooms. I don’t know why I was so surprised by this; Dragon*Con is even bigger and even more crowded. Perhaps I’ve been there so many times I’ve gotten used to the crowds and the venue at Dragon*Con?
• Having to take a shuttle bus to/from your hotel is a major pain, especially when you have a toddler. Dragon*Con is much nicer in this respect – leave your room, get in the elevator, and you’re at the convention.
• The Canon 24-105 lens is perfect for hallway photography on a full-frame camera.
• The LA Convention Center Staff were very friendly and helpful — McEnry staff, please take notes.
• If we go next year, we definitely want to arrive early afternoon on day 0, and leave the day after the convention ends.

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.

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