Back to the conventions, Covid may have stopped the international stars of screens big and small but it didn’t seem to put a dent in the imaginative cosplay that always makes these events for me, even the quiet Sunday morning slot I had yielded a few hundred snaps.
Thanks to Oz Comic Con for inviting me to take up the official cosplay photography booth, it’s always great to give back to such an awesome community in the little way I know how.
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Fun at this years Supanova, saw some familiar faces (well, familiar voices, totally didn’t recognise the faces!). Managed to find a good spot for taking pictures, end of an aisle with a nice black backdrop and bit of carpet (maybe it was supposed to be a stall and they cancelled late?), quickly snowballed as people started asking me to take their picture, even had a queue at one point!
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Been down in Melbourne a fair bit lately with the day job so took the opportunity to delay my return flight and enjoy Oz Comic Con down south for a change (though, still quite likely go to Sydney come September too!).
Lot of fun, people just as friendly and some truly awesome cosplay on display as always. Having done a few of these things though I’m starting to form the opinion that shooting cons should be classed as an endurance sport! I do long distance running, 100+ km’s cycles and triathlon’s and generally feel pretty fine afterwards, my wristwatch clocked about 6km walking on Sunday and I was a physical wreck, glad for the cradle of the seat on the flight back (and the extra leg room afford by the exit row).
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Given how much fun last year’s “Trashion” shoot was I had to get down and shoot at the Summerama Festival when I saw Marina DeBris would be showcasing her unique style of work again.
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BTW the close ups of the models is for the Hair & Makeup artists to use for promotion, if you were thinking it odd there’s a fair few portraits that don’t include much of the outfits = )
Spent the afternoon with the talented Roxy, Ivy & Pearl doing some web-promo shots for them, had a lot fun with these absolute pleasures to work with.
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I realised what I love about convention photography this weekend, it’s the five second portraits. As that’s the time you have after asking someone if they don’t mind a picture to thanking them and letting them go, five seconds, tops. The flow of people, the rest of the day they have and the fact you’re probably the hundred and nth person to have asked for a picture that day means you can’t really take much of their time (well, to me), so all these shots are done in very little time, camera settings are set for the day at the start and hope they work best for the various lighting challenges that come up in the day.
Cosplay was as fun as ever, some great efforts made by many, including the 3D printed Batman armour that took 6 months, or the guy who spent four hours painting himself to look like Darth Maul, my highlight though was the portrait shot of a Harley Quinn, the eyes are so emotive, I feel it’s the best photo I’ve ever taken
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So this was a fun morning out at Tamarama beach shooting a show put on by Marina DeBris (quite possibly a pseudonym ; p ) who creates these beautiful works of art from detritus that turns up on beaches!
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Lots of fun running around the beach trying to get these, swapping lenses and hoping to not get sand/grit on them! Challenging but rewarding, especially the early shots where I got to work closer with the models, they seem to come out best and are my favorite of the shoot – if I were to do this again I’d try to get more like that..
“Love to Read”
Nikon D5100
35mm Prime Lens
ISO100
f/1.8
SS 1/20
Heart shape camera filter to shape the bokeh, two images double exposed over each – one with a red filter to colour the bokeh the other using a speedlite flash to pick up the comic book in better detail.
When thinking of what to do with this a technique I’d seen on a website recently came to mind: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/make-your-own-bokeh-effects-filter-for-your-dslr-168271
So I nipped to the local craft shop opposite work at lunch and grabbed some black card and a heart shaped punch, spent the afternoon at my desk being crafty and I had a lens cover to shape the bokeh.
Effect works quite well, have shot a fair few of the christmas lights out of focus in the background there so I can overlay these into other pictures in the future.
Personally I’m not happy with the halo’ing around the book at is draws attention to the ‘shopping, even though they’re there in the original. I think in future any such work I’ll either tether directly to my computer so can review instantly (so spot the halo’ing sooner) or at least review the images before packing the gear away.
Behind the scenes – though you can’t see the back of the table jacked up on WiiU game boxes so the angle of view lines the comic book up with the lights behind.
Link to the original Facebook thread here.
The warmth of a hug from a loved one..
The warmth of the morning cuppa to wake you..
The warmth of a sunset celebrating the days end..
OR a self portrait, sparkle/shine macro, dreamy sunset all set in a triptych about warmth. That wraps January in a bow 🙂
Self Portrait:
Nikon D5100
18-55mm DX Kit Lens @ 18mm
ISO 100
f/3.5
SS 1/15 sec
Speedlight on body, set to bounce at an angle.
Sparkle/shine Macro:
Nikon D5100
50mm FX prime lens with +4 macro filter
ISO 100
f/1.8
SS 1/60 sec
Off camera speedlite remotely triggered with fairy lights in the background to twinkle in the bokeh.
Dreamy Sunset:
Nikon D5100
35mm DX prime lens with a +9 ND filter
ISO 100
f/22
SS 30 sec
No additional lighting.
This shoot was basically “Use ALL the toys” as it’s the first time I’ve broken out the remote speedlite controller, the macro lens, used Pam‘s nifty fifty and the ND filter. Along with all the gear I usually use (such as my tripods, remote shutter controller, pad controller software).
Out of all the images I feel I rushed the portrait a bit (especially in adding the fake bokeh background I’ve accidentally given myself a much needed haircut, but missed a chunk at the front) and I struggled to find a good spot in Pyrmont for the sunset, but given the time I got out of work it’s all I could get (and at least we had a sunset today as it’d stopped raining finally!).
I’d’ve liked some ‘wisps’ from the cuppa too but I think they bokeh’d out as they were definitely there when shooting.
Oh well, just glad I managed to get all five themes into one picture (this is going to get more difficult as time goes on 😉 ).
A little behind the scenes, top image is the selfie set-up and the bottom is the cuppa – I figure a camera on a tripod for the sunset is fairly standard and folk know what that looks like :p
Link to the original Facebook thread here.
So this is probably the most photoshopping I’ve ever done, the floating Pam I’m still not 100% happy with but I’ve done as much as I can.
So, first picture:
Nikon D5100
18-55mm Kit Lens @ 20mm
ISO 100
f/3.8
SS 5 sec
This was Pam on the bed (the Dreamer), layer duplicated, blurred and then a layer mask with reflected gradient pulled in the Pam in focus from the original layer to give a false depth of field I couldn’t get with the lens.
Lighting her was difficult as both my speedlite and ring flash were too bright and harsh, so I ended up using a bicycle light, through a popup flash diffuser and a toilet roll tube to shape the light, all covered in a carrier bag to stop too much light getting out.
Gradient layer mask used to blend the night sky in:
D5100
35mm Prime Lens
ISO 100
f/1.8
SS 10 sec
Lots of exposure correction in ‘shop to get the detail, the original image was pretty much black – the 10 second exposure gives a little nice movement to the stars to give them an extra ‘odd’ quality to detract from reality.
D5100
18-55mm Kit Lens @ 22mm
ISO 100
f/4
SS 1/6 sec
Final ‘foaty Pam’ (the Dream) was shot on my TV stand (having cleared it of the Amp, speakers, WiiU control bar and my Lego Star Wars spaceships), I threw a sheet over the back to help separate her in photoshop later and some Christmas tree lights to add some extra odd lighting to her body (as well as full illumination with my ring flash to contrast the sleeping lighting below).
In photoshop I duplicated her layer and added a lot of diffuse glow (like, a lot) and then did a gradient layer mask to pull through only a little on the top half of the image. Magnetic selection tool to pick out around the body, feathered 20 pixels to give them a see through quality (to make her a little otherworldly) and then when I pasted the layer into the final image I drop the layer opacity 10% to help. Pam helped out with some directions on getting the image to match in better (colour adjustments and cloning some of the hair out).
Overall desaturated the image (as Iron Maiden said, “You only dream in black and white“) and then resized down from 4464 pixels square to best with the internet.
Originally I wanted to shoot ‘the Dream’ underwater but that didn’t work out well, only waterproof camera I had was my mobile and it was terrible – plus our apartments pool is quite murky with chlorine (well, I hope it’s because of the chlorine) and to top it all off I think I nearly drowned her, so thought best to take a different stab at the floating image..
In hindsight I’d’ve probably tried to reproduce the camera settings and use a custom white balance for the two pictures to try and better merge them. I thought using bold light on the dream vs the dreamer would be a good effect but now looking at it the harsh light just extenuates the fact she’s pasted in.
Now I’m not normally one to shoot in black and white; there’s just something about b+w shots that look pretentious in the modern age, it’s like “ooh, look, I’m an artist as I shoot in black and white” – now don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of great artists shooting predominately in black and white and their pictures look awesome, but us enthusiasts? So unless the brief fits it, or it improves what I’m trying to do with the picture, it’s going to be in colour.
Even for this shot, personally I prefer the one on the left here as it looks closer to what I had in my mind when I pictured it, again though, for the brief I thought B&W would make more sense.
So some behind the scenes shots:
Link to the original Facebook thread here.
