I think the photo shoots I did at Manifest really made the trip for me, despite conditions not really being ideal!

Vocaloid: Alice Human Sacrifice

The Melbourne Showgrounds where the convention was held was great in terms of being able to handle the masses of people, but not so good for photogenic locations. The best we were able to fine was small patches of grass where if you point your camera just so you can sort of avoid getting ugly sheds, tents and tarmac in the background.

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles shoot

As a result most of my photos are mostly quite closely cropped and in very similar environments. The weather was also only partly on our side – being extremely windy made for some dramatic shots, but it was also pretty damn cold!

Slayers

I also made the unwise decision to wear a lolita inspired outfit – that is, one involving a pretty dress and petticoat – which is really not ideal for rolling around in the dirt trying to get low angle shots, nor for windy days. From now on I’m sticking to jeans for photo shoot attire.

Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan

The cosplayers were all fabulous to work with and very patient with me as an inexperienced photographer. I think I’m slowly getting better at directing people, composing photos and editing them to suit the mood of the character or series. Still a long way to go!

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Huge thanks to everyone who participated in the shoots! I hope to do more in future.

The full sets of photos can be seen on Flickr and Facebook – if you are in the photos and would like high res or unwatermarked versions of the images, please contact me and I’d be happy to send them through.

If you were at Manifest, you may have seen me running around with a ridiculously tiny camera making people dance and capturing video. I honestly wasn’t sure I was going to do anything with the footage since I haven’t done any video editing since highschool, but there was so much interest and badass dancing skills from the con goers I filmed I felt I owed it to everyone to put something together. And here it is.

Okay, yes, my music cutting and video skills leave a lot to be desired. And I really could have used at least couple more minutes of footage to work with. And a Japanese pop song may have been a more appropriate song choice than a cover of the disco classic ‘September’. And yeah, the convention wasn’t even in September. But I love that everyone put aside maturity, dignity and self-consciousness for a few seconds of pure dorky fun, and together created something that’s a celebration of awesome geekery and camaraderie. I loved shooting the bits for this video – if you could hear the sound recorded it would mostly be me cracking at the dances people came up with.

Thanks so much to everyone who participated!

I’m not even into anime, manga and games enough to have much idea of what most of the people at Manifest were dressing up as… but from my own dabbling with cosplay I know to some extent how much time, effort and money goes into these costumes. There’s so much creativity involved – not only are you sewing something for which a pattern mostly likely doesn’t exist, but often translating something impossible into reality (think Super Saiyan hair, or Cloud’s Buster sword).

I actually pulled off a cosplay of my own, though nothing as sophisticated as some of the ones I got to take photos of! I was Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender on Friday and Saturday, and wore a lolita inspired outfit on Sunday.

We had a bit of a group going, although by that time we were running out of light and it was difficult to take many decent photos!

I have so much to learn about sewing and pattern making – this is the first time I drafted my own patterns, and although I’m pretty happy with the results it took a LONG time altogether. I really don’t know how people manage to put together those hardcore outfits!