At last an update to my poor neglected blog. I hope to update a bit more often.

It was about a year ago that I stated attending cons trying to improve my photography a bit. I was totally terrified of asking people for a photo. Also, my skills where still not quite there yet. Supanova 2009 was the first con I actually went to, looking back through that gallery there’s a lot of familiar faces.

Supanova 2010 was far more enjoyable for me. I’m less afraid to ask people for photos, I’ve made lots of new friends and I’m confident in my abilities as a photographer, competent enough to capture something worthy of their costumes.

I was still a little quiet as I usually am, I always have trouble finding the right words and never end up saying anything.

Lighting was not optimal (though better than usual) so I borrowed space on Neil’s light stands for my flashes 🙂

Siera’s very fast moving performance was a challenge, though I did a lot better keeping up than at last year’s finals. Waited till the right moment then went into bursts of 5fps motordrive, the little portable flashes somehow managed to keep up.

Christine, was one of the judges for the competition. She looked so wonderful, I had to take a photo. Light was terribly low, as the spotlights were aimed at the stage not the judges. So I used crazy high ISO and slow shutter and hoped for the best, it worked 🙂

Having shot quite a few cosplay competitions by now, I’ve gotten the hang of when to, and when not to, change lenses. I managed to get this awesome shot of Portalman’s Halo Armour with my telephoto.

It’s always a bit easier to take photos outside, rather than the indoor always crowded areas.  Unfortunately I didn’t really get a lot of time for this since we wanted to “camp” for prime shooting positions for the competition.

I was fortunate to get some shots with Kara and Sarah as Princess Peach and Princess Rosalina before it was too dark outside. If I didn’t have to rush off, I’d have pulled out my lightstands and brollys.

Edit: added the “gun” picture by special request. It has been deemed too funny to not be here.

See the full set on Flickr. Full resolution photos of your costumes available at my site.

Stuff I Want.

• Full Frame camera, with Grip. Probably a Sony A850 + a Type-M focusing screen.
• Studio lights, at least one. Probably an Elinchrom D’Lite 4 or an Alien Bee Einstein (if they ever come out)
• Big soft box with grid.
• Industar 50mm pancake lens. I just think think Cyrillic looks cool.
• Other lenses I’ll want for for Full Frame: Zenitar 16mm, Minolta or Carl Zeiss 85mm 1.4, Minolta/Sony 135 F2.8 [T4.5] (this is a very very special lens, follow the link), Carl Zeiss 135 1.8
• Develop my own black and white film, at least once.
• 6×6 Medium Format camera (see above). Probably a Bronica SQ-Ai, since ‘Blads are too expensive.
• More Alternative fashion (ie Vintage/Retro, EGL) photography.

Stuff I actually Need.

• Memory cards

Stuff that might actually improve my photography.

• Zack Arias’ OneLight Workshop DVD
• Joey Lawrence’s Sesssions with Joey DVD
• Practice

I tried but I just couldn’t keep up after only a week. Full time work, a large backlog of photos to process, blog post ideas bouncing in my head and various other things made my P365 not a chore, but an unwelcome pressure that I set for myself.

Can’t Sleep 5/365

A big part is that I’m a bit of a perfectionist. If I don’t see a good photo, I don’t take one. I’ll tweak photos endlessly, and I make fairly brutal culls when I’m editing down my selects from a shoot. I’m not satisfied just taking a quick iPhone picture of the dog just to satisfy the “one photo a day” requirement, I need to try and make it something interesting.

Happy, Well trained dog. 3/365

In the end all the above stuff put together just got to me and I stopped, and I lost a lot of motivation to even just pick up the camera considering the number of really great P365 projects on flickr.

Its been almost a month since I’ve taken any photos.

Writing the previous blog post has been a big help reminding me of what I can achieve and the great people I’ve met doing photography.