Manifest: The Photo Shoots

29th August, 2010 on Photography No Comments

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.

Manifest: the Dancing

28th August, 2010 on Photography No Comments

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!

Manifest: The Cosplay

on Crafts, Life, Photography 2 Comments

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).

Manifest 2010

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!

Manifest 2010

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!

Manifest: the Table

27th August, 2010 on Crafts, Life, Photography No Comments

Manifest is over for another year! As with SMASH a couple of weeks earlier, I shared a table with some fellow artists and sold my crafty things. I was a lot happier with my setup than I was with my SMASH table – having more space to work with, larger frames to display items in, extra bits that arrived (button badges and printed bookmarks), more appropriate packaging and generally being better organised definitely helped.

The ChiGarden table

In terms of sales… well I had a better idea of what to expect after SMASH. An anime convention is definitely not the ideal place to sell (relatively) expensive, original, handmade items. A reasonable amount of my stuff sold, if at a significantly lowered price, and in the end I made enough profit to pay for my trip over to Melbourne. I think I’ll be sticking to handmade markets from now on, but I’d say it was definitely a worthwhile experience. If nothing else, at least Sam and I managed to hand out the rest of my 250 pack of business cards!

What really had selling at Manifest fun was hanging with Sam, Lisa and Cathy at our table and our fabulous table neighbours! On one side we had the fabulous Adre-es (I’m sorry I’ve managed to forget your real name!) and her friend Clea.

Lolita table neighbours!

And on the other side we had the very talented Ms Rósek and her posse.

We are so high fashion.

Meeting new and interesting people and catching up with old friends is why people really go to events like this, and I feel like I really lucked out in that respect!

SMASH: the photoshoot

11th August, 2010 on Crafts, Photography, Travel 3 Comments

With a day free on Sunday, we managed to talk a big group of Hetalia cosplayers into doing a photo shoot, again at Sydney Town Hall.

I’ve only ever had the chance to take a few hurried photos of friends in cosplay before, and I like to think my photography skills have improved a little since then. This time we had four photographers and something like ten cosplayers for about 4 hours in a pretty cool location, and despite my lack of confidence I think we all worked off each other really well and came away with some pretty cool shots!

The cosplayers were absolutely fantastic – from my own dabbling with sewing and cosplay I have some idea of how much work goes into a costume, and these ones are pretty damn detailed with some really impressive craftsmanship. Everyone was also really patient with explaining their characters to me, as I’m not familiar with the series, and coming up with cool poses.

I think I’m getting better at overcoming my shyness and just chatting with people I’ve only just met. Not like we have nothing in common, we’re all geeks! It really helped to talk to the other photographers and draw from their ideas and experiences – I would probably have been a bit lost if I was working on my own.

I did make the mistake of not getting everyone’s contact details though, so I’m not really sure how I’m going to share these photos with them! I think some have my card, so maybe they’ll stumble across this site…

Hetalia cosplay shoot

A massive thanks to everyone involved, I had so much fun and learned so much! If anyone is interested, the rest of the photos can be viewed on Flickr and Facebook. If any cosplayers want higher res or non-watermarked versions of the photos, please get in touch, I’d be happy to supply them.

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