Tag: conventions

Photos: A Day at MegaCon 2014

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

At long last, the MegaCon pictures have been finished.  I’d say it took longer than I had expected, but considering the seemingly endless quest to try to find a happy medium in which I like to display pictures I take, I guess it’s no surprise that it took a full week after all.

In a single day, I managed to take well over 200 pictures, and because I have little idea what I’m doing with a camera, turns out that quite a few were unusable and blown out, because I foolishly keep shooting into the sun, and combined with my determination to competently shoot in full manual mode, mistakes occur.  Regardless, when the smoke cleared, I still had right about 200 photos to share with the world.

Continue reading “Photos: A Day at MegaCon 2014” →

Thoughts on MegaCon

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
Preview image: I think this Kayle costumer is beautiful.

No, this isn’t the post with all the pictures; I’m still working on them. I took over 200 pictures in the one day that I went to MegaCon, so it’s taking me a little bit of time to review and process them. I’ll admit that it’s times like this that I miss when the editing process was sizing down a bunch of jpegs that took substantially less time, but at the same time, even though I’m a noob amateur with a camera, the quality of pictures that I’m taking now are substantially superior. I’ll take that trade off, even if it leads to being more time consuming.

Anyway, I’ve got a little bit of time to write, so I felt like jotting down some words about the MegaCon experience, in general, before they vanish from mind, and I’ll feel dumb if I blab on about it way later.

Continue reading “Thoughts on MegaCon” →

Filling up the proverbial plate

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Preview image from MegaCon – these guys were my favorites

I just got back home after spending the last few days down in Florida, for a fairly loosely planned trip, basically to get out into the world and do things.  Needless to say, I do not sleep well in random two-star hotels, so I’m a little bit weary having going straight back to work after flying back.

But before I put myself back into a self-imposed mountain of personal tasks of writing things, processing and editing a ton of pictures to share with the rest of the internets, I will say that it was a very good trip, that I have no regrets about (actually, there is one trite regret, but it’ll be brought up later).

Continue reading “Filling up the proverbial plate” →

Thoughts about Vegas and Otakon Vegas

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but somewhere along the line, I caught something and I’ve been home sick for the last two days.  I do not get sick very often, so needless to say this doesn’t please me in the least bit, but there’s nothing I can really do about it.  However, it’s given me a little bit of extra time to catch up on processing some of the photos I took while out in Vegas, as well as some time to do some writing.

It’s been like two years since I was in Vegas last, and it’s safe to say that there have been quite some numerous changes since then.  One of the conversations had during the trip was about how Vegas was obviously one of the larger casualties of the last economic massacre, and it’s in little things that I think I notice that such an assessment is true.  A few years ago, casinos were extremely generous with coupon books boasting all sorts of match-play tickets, buy-one-get-one tickets, and other offers to stimulate parting money from your hand to the hands of the casinos.  Typically, these were given upon check in to hotels, or upon registering with a different player’s reward program.

Two years of inactivity and returning to Vegas used to warrant some sort of offers to help make up for money of mine they haven’t been getting but neither redeeming new cards, or checking into the hotel prompted any sort of offers of sort.  To me, it’s not a big deal, since I hardly used anything other than BOGO drinks, but the lack of offers wasn’t lost on me either.

Continue reading “Thoughts about Vegas and Otakon Vegas” →

I love goodbyes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Now despite the fact that I like a good weekend every now and then where I literally do nothing but stay at home and play League, watch college football, sleep in until the dog starts barking his need to go pee and living off of whatever’s left over in the refrigerator and pantry, there’s no doubt that it can sometimes be pretty lonely doing such. Not necessarily in the “oh noes, Danny is making another ‘I wish I had a girlfriend’ post” kind of way, but really just being around other people in a fun social engagement in general kind of way, because when the day is over, I’d rather be in good company, chilling out in a relaxed setting.

Such does not occur as often as I’d admittedly like it to occur, but most of that falls on me. I live out in the sticks that are often as surprised as I am to be considered part of the Metro Atlanta area, and it’s a pain to get to anywhere without having to think about niggling details like traffic, time, and fuel consumption in the back of your head sometimes. Also, it’s not that I’m a raging alcoholic by any means necessary, but I do like to drink in social settings, and I’m always paranoid that there’ll be another sobriety checkpoint near my house again, but it’ll fall on a date where I’ve had one or two beers and no designated driver; my dad got a DUI a few years ago, and he’s living proof that no number of decades of safe, immaculate driving record is impervious to the damages a DUI can do, which scares the shit out of me sometimes.

Continue reading “I love goodbyes” →

Photos: Anime Weekend Atlanta 2013

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Since I’ve been on my picture-taking kick, I decided to hit up AWA for just the Saturday. This is first anime convention I’ve paid to get into in quite some time, and I’ve typically had my reluctance with them, since they usually just make me feel really old. But I really wanted the opportunity to work things out and take pictures with my camera, so I figured why the hell not?

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the costumers I saw in general. Fewer memes and more actual characters, with decent effort put into them. Lots of League of Legends costumers too. And not nearly as many spastic retards running around either. Much to my surprise, I ended up taking over 100 pictures in the one day I was there; I’ve gotten in the habit of doubling up on most people, more if I really like them, so that tends to skew the numbers. I’ve also realized that I actually really dislike taking group shots, and prefer to take pictures of solos or pairs.

Continue reading “Photos: Anime Weekend Atlanta 2013” →

I don’t have enough pictures of myself

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes, I stare at myself in the mirror.  There’s a small percentage of that time when I’m carefully inspecting my face, because I’m paranoid that there’s a blemish that I’m unaware of, or trying to see if there’s like an unruly nose hair or something that’s been agitating the shit out of me for the last random denomination of time that needs to be plucked.  But the vast majority of the time, I’m looking, with a combination of disdain, acceptance and sadness, and the ever-growing number of white hairs that are sprouting all over my head.

Especially at the very front of the sides, like right above my temples.  They’re particularly going white right around there, and I’m beginning to feel like I’m turning into an Asian Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four except I’m not a super genius, nor can my entire anatomy including my clothing stretch like impervious rubber.

But it’s times like this when I kind of wish I could look back to as early as just like two years ago when I didn’t have so much white hair to see what I looked like.  Sure, my weight has fluctuated over the last 5-6 years due to not having a gym to go to on account of inconsistent finances, but at least my hair was almost entire still black, and not full of wispy defiant white hairs as it is now.

The thing is, it’s difficult to do that, because as it turns out, I don’t really have a whole lot of pictures of myself, and in a way that kind of makes me a little bit sad.  Often times I’m the guy taking the pictures, and that’s somewhat of a reputation I’ve developed, so whenever I’m around in occasions where a camera might be nice to have, it’s often me the guy with it, and nobody else.  Sure I could always have people take the occasional picture for me, but frankly it always seems a little awkward to me, and I find that social occasion photos feel the most genuine when they kind of happen organically, instead of carefully planned.

I don’t even have a decent picture of myself to use in conjunction with this post.

Continue reading “I don’t have enough pictures of myself” →