After a few crazy years it’s good to see things returning to somewhat semblance of normality, Oz Comic Con being packed is one of those normal things = )
Was on the late shift this Saturday so not as many people as previous years, but that means less time photoshopping, so, you win some, you lose some ; )
click the above to view the album
Covid still lingering on but not dampening the enthusiasm for cosplay at the second Oz Comic Con of the year here in Sydney, some great work on display and I fortunately got to capture some of it.
Feel I’ve upped my game this year, breaking out of my comfort zone of natural light and shooting with flash has made a noticeable improvement, though still more work and testing needed I feel!
First 24 are shown below, click the title to go through the album on Flickr!
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Last time I went to Melbourne’s Oz Comic-con I was mistaken for a professional photographer, this year, I was.
Quite different approach, I shot for two hours Saturday morning and have twenty eight more pictures than the two days of floor walking last time I was here with people queuing up for a picture.
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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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Good fun night, the girls were amazing and super nice, I’ve still got to finish this album but never seem to find the time (have the crowning, some post show pics and some from the awesome live band they had on between the last two heats to do). Will update once they’re done – was a tricky shoot, the location is amazing to enjoy the show and a drink but terrible for shooting in as it’s so dark!
Done my best to compensate, I’ll let you judge the results!
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Challenging shoot, models moving up and down a catwalk in a dark bar, the speedlight wasn’t an option, it was a necessity, even with my dislike for the harsh light it casts (even bounced and diffused). So there’s not a particular picture in the set that stands out that I’m proud of, usually in every shoot there’s one, one you look at and go, that one, that’s the one I’m most proud of here, these are just, generic.
Added challenge of about fifteen photographers on the night (and their helpers) even though it was supposed to be a group of ten so ended up with a lot of people getting in the back of shots, beating you to the angle you want or simply not paying attention to other togs and getting in the edge of shots, which annoyed me quite a bit, as a bit of consideration for others should be basic, though, the one who pissed me off the most was the one who in his rush to get in the way of about six other peoples shots walked into my gear and didn’t even apologise, I hope to not come across the dickhead in any future shoots (shouldn’t’ve been there in the first place, doesn’t even know how to use the camera – which is not an exaggeration, he’d spent about an hour at the start complaining he couldn’t get a sharp shot, bugging everyone for advice on settings, when it transpired he had the lens set to manual focus, not auto).
Anyway, enough bitching, if I keep up these fashion shoots I’m going to have to add a new category to the site!
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Panel’s weren’t as great as last year – but really, they’d be hard pushed to beat Shatner! Feel a little let down that Brisbane got Kevin Smith though and Mark Sheppard was at one of the other city’s too as his panel last year was hilarious. That said Richard Dean Anderson was entertaining enough but let’s face it, the day’s about all the glorious cosplaying and there were so many I didn’t get chance to ask (either space wasn’t available or they looked already inundated!).
As last year, had a lot of fun, great atmosphere and everyone was so happy and friendly when asked by a stranger if they could take their picture!
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Nikon D5100
35mm Prime Lens
ISO100
f/8
SS 1 sec
I’ll be honest, I had to google the meaning of this weeks challenge and wasn’t massively happy with what I saw. It was simultaneously full of potential but also seemed so boring, I couldn’t really think of what to do so I googled some popular images and came up with the top left of the one below:
I had a quick practice, broke out the speedlights and triggered them from the body flash to try and capture the water in motion being poured from a bottle and quickly realized this isn’t how they achieved that image due to how the water behaves when it’s poured.
With this I went back to thinking, it must be poured, also, all the flash reflections (even with a polarizing filter and flash diffusers) in the glass must mean it’s ether back or top lit.
So, come Thursday night and it being (a conservative estimate) around a billion degrees I couldn’t sleep so figured I’d have another go and broke out all the gear (the fun part of breaking out is all the gear, the downside is having to put away all the gear when done).
I stripped the reflector off my giant diffuser and set-up both speedlights on remotes behind it to back light on full power, lined this up behind the sink and set the camera up at the far end of the counter on the tripod so I could capture the water being poured (I’d actually picked up some cheap raspberry cordial as I thought the undiluted mixture would be a little more syrupy and give it a little more body to its movement).
The results weren’t too bad – with a couple of obvious flaws:
The big flaw being fingers. We don’t drink so we don’t have any stemmed wine glasses which I could’ve then cut off with the fake reflection/table.
Also, I shot this a little late, the timing between tipping and using a wired remote to fire the camera (I figured wired would be a little more reliable than the cordless as the infrared one doesn’t always shoot when you ask it). This has led to it looking a little obvious that it’s being poured out, I guess instead of going all the way pouring I could’ve just jolted the glass to get the liquid to escape too.
I also didn’t do the reflection as well as I could, it looks quite obvious but, to be honest, I couldn’t really care, it could be it was two in the morning but mostly it’s the fingers – there’s no way around that it’s going to look fake.
Now, I could’ve gone out and bought some stemmed glasses for this and re-setup and re-done the shoot but my curiosity was sated. I’d worked out how to get the image I didn’t really want to go through all the hassle to actually get the image. If I need a shot like this, I know how to go about it, but right now, can’t be arsed.
So, this moved us on to having to do another shot and I was a bit of a loss until I saw some glasses lined up at work and each looked to have a smaller version inside it due to how the glass warped the view behind it.
I thought I’d isolate off some we have at home and grabbed some black paper from the local craft store and made a mini-studio drop but the black in the card was a bit reflective and bright (if you can say black is bright?) so this meant I struggled more with the lighting as I couldn’t have the aperture/iso/exposure (take your pic) too long otherwise you’d start to see the shoddy card box.
So using the flash on a remote held above to bounce off the ceiling to diffuse and soften the flash I went through and tried several setting before getting what I thought was a good enough mix – using helicon remote to set the focus (with a bike light to see what I was doing). The end result I’m thoroughly ‘meh’ about, it’s not what I had in my head, the glasses we have at home warp and distort unlike those I’d seen at work and having to make the image dark enough to not see the framing means the edges of the glass just disappear into the background.
I guess there was going to come a week when I didn’t enjoy the challenge so much, my inspiration was off and I’m not happy with the result – but that was bound to happen sooner or later and at least now it’s over with, roll on next week, hopefully we can get back to something that’ll spark the ol’ grey cells and light up the imagination.
Maybe I should’ve just recreated my “Han Shot First” picture I put on Instagram a few month back…
“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.
