Photos: Dragon*Con 2015 – Friday Friends

Facts: man on left beat Edward Snowden in Tekken at an anime convention back in 2002.  Blonde girl is my first convention wife, blonde man is my identical twin brother, and the black guy introduced himself with a catchphrase about how his name was “easy to say, hard to spell.”  I have known all of these people for well over a decade.

I decided to do something different this year, as it pertains to sharing photos.  Now I like taking pictures of costumers, and I hope those costumers who ultimately visit my site hoping to find pictures of themselves are remotely satisfied with what they find here, but when the day is over, I still enjoy seeing the more personal pictures, of friends and acquaintances that are sporadically taken throughout the course of the convention.

And since I’m being all anal-retentive about my rules of three, or at least neatly-curated galleries, I decided to separate all the photos of my friends and people doing goofy stuff from the galleries of costumes.  I figure most people will come for costumes, but it’s the friends that might peruse the friends galleries.  That, and because I’m efficient (code for “lazy”), it’s easier on me, because I separate the photos prior to processing them, I spend less time color correcting these more candid pictures, nor do I watermark them.

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2015 – Friday Costumes

Since I’m the low man on the totem pole at my job, I had the unfortunate task of having had to work on the Friday of Dragon*Con.  That being said, I didn’t arrive to the convention until like 6 p.m., which certainly ate into the times of the day in which I simply like to wander around and take pictures of costumes that cater to my interests.

Needless to say, the total photo count isn’t really that high, but I still felt like I had a decent amount of time to wander and snap pictures.

My approach this year was that I wanted to snap shots in increments of three; mostly on account of the gallery settings I use in which I like knowing that every costume gets their own row, and there’s no odd-persons out with people having to be broken up in multiple rows.  So, it’s going to be very apparent that I’d been taking multiple photographs of everyone I chose to take pictures of.

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2015 – Thursday

COOL STORY, BRO

Anyway, despite the fact that I wasn’t originally anticipating on going on Thursday night due to needing to work the next day, I found myself sweating up a storm in the Marriott regardless, while wandering around and taking a few pictures.

Needless to say, there are not that many pictures from Thursday night, but there were some notable costumes that I enjoyed seeing.

The rest of the galleries will be broken up between costume, doofy friends pictures, and a photoshoot I did; and will unfortunately take substantially more time, as I have over 500 photos to sort and comb through, not to mention edit and process.

So hang tight, check back often, and hopefully enjoy your visits, there will be plenty of Dragon*Con 2015-related posts for a little while.

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Photos: Jinx/Fishbones photoshoot candids

Note: the following post is from approximately one year ago, held back as a courtesy.

Good things happen when involved parties collaborate.  I came along to help out where I could with a photoshoot that featured Jen’s Jinx costume, the finished Fishbones bazooka by Volpin Props, shot by Joseph Chi Lin.

Obviously, this is relevant to my interests as Jinx is one of my favorite LoL characters, and all involved parties are what I’d consider friendly, so I can say that in spite of poor weather and typical Georgia summer heat, I had a good time taking part, and making a directional suggestion or two in my own right.

I thought it would be a good idea to bring my own camera, because I thought I’d want to take pictures of the street graffiti of the Krog Street tunnel, but ultimately, nothing in particular in the caught my fancy, due to the incestual mishmash of tags upon tags upon tags creating a whole lot of artistic vomit.

But it was good that I did, because I was able to take some candids of the processes of setting up our area, a few shots in between poses, and just a behind-the-scenes feel of what turned out to be an awesome example of talented parties collaborating for the sake of good art.

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Photos: MomoCon 2015, Saturday

As is seemingly the norm when it comes to weekend conventions these days, more impressive costumes tend to emerge on the Saturday, and such was the case at MomoCon this year as well.

Again, I didn’t take nearly as many pictures as I know I’m capable of taking, but the fact of the matter is that frankly, there weren’t as many things I wanted to take pictures of as opposed to things I did. Perhaps I’m overly picky, or maybe my head wasn’t quite in the game this weekend, but these are all the pictures that I took on Saturday.

I went back to a more versatile 17-70 kit lens on this day, and ultimately, I feel that the results of some of the portrait shots are better. Ultimately, there’s still a galaxy-sized chasm room for improvement, but for what it’s worth, the space to operate in the GWCC and lots of natural lighting make it a preferable place for a novice like me to want to take pictures.

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Photos: MomoCon 2015, Friday

Without further ado, here are pictures I took from the Friday of this year’s MomoCon.

There aren’t a tremendous amount of pictures in general, because I’m a picky picture taker that gives favoritism towards friends, fandoms and nostalgia, and I have a tendency to pass over things I’ve seen before, unless I’m that enamored by them that much.

This particular day, I was using a wide-angle lens which is great at taking pictures at close range while still being able to get a wide expanse of view, but I’m an amateur that never practices, so the focusing on it was questionable sometimes.

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Thoughts on Disney World

During the brog’s layoff, one of the things that I did was what’s apparently been somewhat of an annual tradition in recent years, which was a trip down to Florida to visit Disney World as well as Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights.

It’s something I enjoy greatly, because I enjoy Halloween-themed events, roller coasters, and ultimately most of the evenings result being spent in Epcot’s annual Food and Wine Festival, which is pretty much one of the greatest events in the world to me, since by the time I’m done with it, I can typically claim that I’ve eaten the entire world, and lots of the countries’ kiosks brings out some excellent quality grub and booze to begin with.

Except for South Korea, which is pretty much the biggest disappointment since like the 2007 New England Patriots. Seriously, just about every booth in the park has people indigenous, or at least of the ethnicity of the country’s booth they’re working for, except for South Korea’s. Furthermore, the food is about as good as one might expect from a place that says “Korea” but has a bunch of white people working it. When your options are the disappointing “Asian” pork taco from last year, and a “Kimchi Dog,” it’s like offering a Mexican person visiting from Mexico, Taco Bell or Del Taco.

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