PhotographyBanzai.com

A friend is writing up an English composition paper about photographers. She wanted people to answer a list of questions related to that. I decided to write up responses for her instead of doing an interview. That should be easier for her and it gave me something to post on here. Here are the questions and my responses. Reflection photo at an Anime Central convention. Question: How many years have you been a photographer (or counted yourself as one)? Around 2002, so approximately 18 years. Question: Would you call yourself an amateur, a hobbyist, or a professional photographer? Hobbyist Question: Are you self-taught or do you have school/formal training? How long did it take before you were confident in your skill? Self-taught, mostly from online sources and learning by doing. I’d say it took around 7 years to have a solid foundation of knowledge and practice. Question: What do you feel makes a professional photographer? Someone that can financially support the majority of their life w...

My friend James Dewitz was in Thailand for many years, but recently returned to my area for a short time. I’ve been wanting to feature photographers on this channel for a while now and I didn’t want to pass up this opportunity. In this first of two videos we will take a look at part of his camera gear kit interspersed with information about his photography as well as tips he has based on his experience. He has a focus on oral history, photo journalism, and street photography. He also does other types of photography, but we only focused on the street photography work. See his work here: https://www.instagram.com/j.dewitz/ https://www.facebook.com/jdewitzphoto/ You can find a list of all equipment here: Camera kit on Kit.co I also have the full kit on Amazon.com with newer equivalent items: Camera Kit on Amazon.com Let’s go into more detail… Most of the information here is provided by James.  Olympus O-MD E-M5 Mark I If you don’t want to spring for a better or newer camera, the EM5/1 is...

We recently had a moderately sized meetup at a local garden. One of the photographers there also does videography and decided to put together a video featuring all of the photographers at the event.  The videographer is Charles R. and he goes by the handle “Hikikomorisama.” You can see more of his video work here .  EDIT: On the off chance cosplayers or photographers see this... know that you need permission, likely in the form of paid access to the garden. Especially true with a group. Over the years they had issues with this, so please respect the garden and its staff if you consider visiting with the intent of photography.  I was interviewed in the video.  Video created by Hikikomorisama. I’m featured around the 1 minute mark ( direct link to that time here ). Well done! I’ve tried a few convention scene related interviews in the past, but nothing with that level of production quality.  Here is the photographer interview on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19nHd-NCtlQ

I edited and uploaded the video that Mixed Visuals and I collaborated on for Anime World Chicago 2012. This video consists of 13 interviews with mostly cosplayers, but there are a few extras in there. The video will be cross posted on both Youtube channels and I plan on writing unique articles for each site (this site for the technical, and the other for a convention focus). You can see a more general article on the video at cvfta.blogspot.com located here . With 13 interviews of varying length, the video ended up pretty long at over 18 minutes. The CVFTA Youtube channel is new, so it had a 15 minute cap on it, but Google has an option to verify the account with a cellphone to allow for longer length content. Sound: I brought along the Zoom H1 Handy Recorder to act as a secondary separate source of audio. I’ve never tried recording interviews before, so I thought it would be a good idea to cover all bases. In retrospect, my method of holding out the recorder and recording the vi...