PhotographyBanzai.com

Thanks to the motivation and transportation from a local friend, I was able to attend the c2e2 convention on that Saturday for 2023. Day trips are pretty viable and at least for that convention it’s the only way I’ve experienced it (2011 and 2018 articles are on this website) Here’s the Facebook image gallery. I’ve been trying to think of options to host cosplay photos on other sites besides Facebook. I would be nice if there were backups online so if FB has issues my cosplay photo work would still be available. A while back I cleared my Zenfolio connection on Facebook and it ended up deleting a bunch of photosets. So at the very least I need to re-process and upload those (EDIT: These photos magically showed back up at one point which is good! Saves a lot of time and effort, but I'm still on only the one platform). With the passing of Kevin Lillard  I have definitely been thinking about making sure my cosplay photo work is as accessible as possible. The problem is time and indirec...

I was able to attend c2e2 (Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo) on 4/7/2018 thanks to my friend Kale. My two other friends Nick and Roger also went. It’s around a two hour drive, so carpooling is a great help as I’m not a big fan of driving around downtown Chicago alone.  Me at c2e2 (thanks to a friend for taking the photo) That gave me the opportunity to do some convention and cosplay photography. In this case I went with as little equipment as possible so that I wasn’t bogged down. Thanks to Roger also taking photos and being enthusiastic about asking cosplayers for pictures, a lot of the effort I have to usually put in was handled! A few highlight images from the convention: I ended up only bringing the Fujifilm X100F camera. No lighting or modifiers (see the linked Youtube video for details on that) . That basically meant being at the mercy of the convention hall’s lighting. I had gone there in 2011 and knew about the carpets, but I didn’t expect it to be as bad this year. I w...

I finally got around to editing a 5 minute clip of the last convention I went to (the 2011 c2e2 Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo). My intent here was to make something high-energy, so I found a fun high BPM song on ccmixter.org called Feeling Dark (Behind The Mask) by 7OOP3D. The final video ended up being only around 1 minute 30 seconds because I sped up the footage quite a bit. The software I used was a NLE called Kdenlive. I removed all of my music videos from the photo/video channel and created a complication. Some of the videos are not the same due to music changes.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH8CkEjKDTA The blur was somewhat intentional, or at least I expected to get a result like that. I was using the 31mm f1.8 at a large aperture and I guessed as to the focus.  Eventually, I’d like to make my own music to go along with the videos I take, but that is way off in the future most likely. I tried making a “beat” today with some Linux software (Rosegarden) and a ...

I attended C2E2 on Saturday the 19th. Of course, I spent most of the 8 hours there photographing cosplayers and walking around. As this was my first Sci-Fi convention, I wasn’t sure how things would work. It’s pretty similar to an Anime convention, but the guests who attend are even more diverse than most anime conventions. I was really impressed by the costumes, as you could tell, a lot of them required some top-notch skills. The convention had an overall different feel than an Anime convention, but with many positive aspects. My setup consisted of the Pentax K-5, battery grip, and FA 31mm f1.8 Limited. I initially was shooting in what I like to call the built-in “bokeh mode” that keeps the camera set at max aperture, but I eventually moved to aperture priority and set to a fixed f2.0 for most of the convention. You can see EXIF data on my photo site if you are interested.   I had my first outing with the Kata 3N1-22 backpack/sling bag and it worked quite well. It was ...