Comicon
Les photos sont prêtes! Je poste toutes les photos sur Dropbox, mais pas toutes les photos sur Facebook – sinon il y en aurait trop.
DROPBOX
Pour les photos avec les vedettes, si vous aviez demandé un courriel photo et que vous ne l’avez pas reçu, indiquez-le moi en me contactant par courriel ou par message sur Facebook. Pour vous indentifier, veuillez attacher une photo de l’image.
Si vous voulez recevoir votre photo en plus haute résolution, contactez moi et je vous l’enverrai. Pour vous indentifier, veuillez attacher une photo de l’image.
Si vous n’avez pas pris l’option de la copie électronique, vous pouvez envoyer un paiement de 5$ par PayPal ou virement électronique et je vous enverrai ça. Pour vous indentifier, veuillez attacher une photo de l’image.
Merci à tous pour une belle fin de semaine! On se revoit à l’Otakuthon au mois d’août!
Click on the links below to access the photos taken at 2017 MCC.
Cliquez sur les liens ci-dessous pour accéder aux photos prises au MCC 2017.
DROPBOX
Les forfaits pour 2017:
Une photo traitée 20$
Trois photos traitées 40$
Une de vos photos imprimée en 4×6 10$
Un shoot de 30 minutes, avec 20 photos traitées 100$
Effets spéciaux additionnels 10$ par photo
Toutes vos photos seront traitées avec effets spéciaux de base, et téléchargées en haute resolution sur Dropbox et sur Facebook en 7 à 10 jours.
On prend plusieurs photos, qui sont affichées sur un grand écran au fur et à mesure; vous choisissez sur place les photos qui vous conviennent. Les photos sont à vous; cependant si vous voulez les vendre, à discuter un prix avec moi avant de le faire.
Prices for 2017:
One edited photo $20
Three edited photos $40
One of your images printed as a 4×6 $10
30 minute shoot, with 20 edited photos $100
Additional special effects $10 per photo
All of your images will be edited with basic special effects, and uploaded to Dropbox in high res and on Facebook, all with 7-10 days.
We take several photos, which are displayed on a large screen as we shoot. You choose the images on the spot. The photos are for you to use and share; if you want to sell them, we’ll need to discuss profit-sharing before you do so.
Bonjour à tout le monde!
Les photos du Comiccon de Montréal se retrouvent ici! Si vos photos ne sont pas encore là, veuillez patienter… elles sont traitées en ordre de capture, et le tout pourrait prendre une semaine à finaliser. En passant, si vous avec des craintes, des questions, ou des demandes spéciales… n’hésitez pas de me contacter.
Vous avez le droit d’utiliser les photos
pour usage personnel, pour vous promouvoir, et pour vous aider à vendre votre marque – mais SVP ne modifiez pas les images sans ma permission, et n’enlevez ou ne coupez pas ma signature qui se retrouve d’habitude en bas à droite. Si vous utilisez mes images, SVP veuillez me donner crédit.
Howdy all.
Montreal Comiccon photos are HERE! If you your photos aren’t up yet, please don’t fret. They will be posted in order of capture, and it might take me a week to get them all up here. Thanks for your patience! And by the way, if you have any issues, questions, or special requests… please don’t hesitate to contact me.
You are allowed to use these photos for personal use,
to promote yourself, and to help sell your brand – but please do not modify the images without my permission, and do not remove or cut out my watermark, which can usually be found at bottom right. If you use my images, please give me credit.
DROPBOX FOLDER
FACEBOOK PHOTOS
CAPE – Cornwall and Area Pop Event
CAPE was awesome. Kudos to Carol and Randy for putting together a first class event. See you next year!
CAPE Photos on Dropbox
CAPE Photos on Facebook
Cosplayers, if you are going to Ottawa Comiccon, and you want some free photos… drop me a line.
We noticed that our business is much, much better when cosplayers actively seek out customers and direct them to our booth for a photoshoot. I’m going to reach out to some cosplayers that I know to see if they would like to exchange free photo shoots for a little help handing out flyers at OCC, but if you are going to OCC, have a nice cosplay, and want to work something out with me… drop me a line! And of course, I’m always offering revenue sharing if you get pics taken in my booth with members of the general public.
If you’re looking for you photos from 2014 Pop Expo – this is the right place! Click on the Dropbox link below to get access to the folder.
I’m all done.
Let me know if your photos aren’t up, or if you want any more work to be done on them. Thanks for your patronage!
DROPBOX FOLDER (All the photos!)
FACEBOOK ALBUM (At least one from each customer)
Some housekeeping rules: These are cosplayer photos, so the assumption is that folks want to be seen, posted and shared. If your photos are on here, and you don’t want them share, posted or even seen, just ask and I’ll remove them to a folder only you can access. I’ll need some sort of compelling proof that you’re the person in the photos.
My watermark automatically goes on every image. It’s small and out of the way. I use a watermark because I want to make sure everyone who sees my pictures can easily find me in case they want to hire me. If you use my photos for self-promotion, I would appreciate credit. And of course if you cut the watermark off, that raises questions.
Remember: even though you paid me to take the images, I own the copyright on each and every one. You are allowed to use the images for personal use, self-promotion and any other non-paid activity – but if you want to sell them, or use them in any way that generates direct revenue, we need to have a conversation about profit sharing. I reserve the right to use any or all of these images in a similar fashion – and if I decide I want to sell some of them, I will absolutely not do so without your permission, and an agreement for profit-sharing.
Open Shutter photos from Montreal Comiccon 2014
Photos d’Open Shutter de Comiccon de Montréal 2014
All of the photos taken at the convention are done, edited, and uploaded to Dropbox. Please let me know if you can’t find your photos – because of the way I processed the photos, I skipped over some series of images to keep returning customers together as much as possible, and I also prioritized the small kid photos – going back to catch all ones I skipped over, I may have missed some. Like the Zorro pictures. Sorry, Zorro.
The photos are free for you to use and print for personal use and self-promotion. Please credit me if you share the images. If you don’t like the placement of the watermark on any images, let me know and I’ll redo it with the watermark in a different place. If you click on the links below and there are no photos in the folders, something is either terribly wrong, or it’s not September 12 yet.
CLICK HERE FOR DROPBOX
Dropbox is mobile-friendly, allows downloads, and works on all platforms. The files are large but not huge. If you want larger files for any reason, drop me a line and I’ll go back to the RAW files and upload a larger version for you.
CLICK HERE FOR FACEBOOK
Facebook is Facebook, no surprises there. The files are not as large, but you can tag yourself in them. Note that not all of the photos will be uploaded to Facebook – I tend to pick only the best from each client for my Facebook albums to avoid repetition.
(Post-convention update: It’s Monday night and I am almost through the first pass on the Sunday images. In case you want to know, my workflow is this: I do a triage of the images in Photoshop Bridge; then I open the CR2 files in Raw Editor, and do a first cleanup pass – fixing lens aberrations and distortion, white balance, cropping, basic blemish and spot removal. Then I export the images to JPG. Then I open each series in Photoshop, and do the detail work of removing objects (usually because the 10′ wide backdrop is too narrow), adding special effects, fixing light on teeth, more blemish removal, etc. The files are saved as JPG again, then brought into Lightroom to add the watermark and final file size in a batch, saving the files direct to a Dropbox folder on my Mac, which immediately uploads at a snail’s pace because Bell likes to throttle my high speed service any time I try to upload anything. Once they are in the Dropbox folder, they get renamed one more time to make them all go in the right order, and that’s it. The photos are there for you. Then I pick one or two photos from each set to go onto Facebook.)
(The photos will all be up by the end of the night Tuesday. Thank you for your patience. By the way if any of you out there want changes to your images, or want some removed, or anything else, just contact me and I’ll help you out.)
We have come full circle. Just one year ago, I asked myself – is it possible to make a go of it, shooting cosplay portraits at a major pop culture convention?
The goal was twofold: First, to create a service where cosplayers could drop in, get their photos taken, and have rapid access to their images through file sharing. Second, make we needed to make money doing it. If we were going to run this like a business, we had to make money doing it.
We considered various options. We decided we needed a booth to call home. This way, our customers would come to us. In a booth, we could control the light and the background, and offer a tethered computer/monitor experience. We decided not to offer prints onsite. The cost of producing high quality prints at a convention just didn’t make any sense to us. Also, we didn’t want to try to compete with the prints that the photo op people produced on their commercial machines. Besides, I think the last thing a cosplayer wants to do is carry a print around all day. We considered different file sharing methods (like CDs and USB keys) – and decided that since we are in the 21st century, and everyone uses mobile technology and file sharing… we would use an online solution: upload to Dropbox!
I booked a double booth at 2013 Montreal Comiccon, got my gear all lined up, got business cards and flyers, and went for it. So how did it go over?
The initial reaction from most cosplayers was surprise.
It wasn’t free? There were no prints? You see, there were vendors with booths at that con offering free photos with a 4×6 print – I think one was a local radio station. Some vendors offered a very low price but asked for more money for high res photos after the fact. That’s all fine – there are many different business models in photography: for example most commercial outfits charge a sitting fee, then charge for the choice of images, then charge for individual prints, etc. I just decided I was going to charge cosplayers one time for the initial point of contact – for which they got my skill, my booth set-up, and high-resolution images, all paid for up front. No surprises, no upsell, just nice images. Don’t get me wrong: I am not judging how other photographers do it; there is no right way or wrong way to do convention photography – I just wanted to offer a cost-up-front kind of deal.
Even so, many cosplayers just wouldn’t go for it.
Others thought about it, and still others told us it was a great idea! Cosplayers spend a lot of time, money and effort getting ready for the cons. They walk the halls, attend panels, and get asked, every ten feet or so, if someone can take their picture. But they rarely end up with good, studio-quality images they can use for themselves. Sure, sometimes they do – there are some great photographers walking the halls, taking photos just because they love to do it – but why take a chance? Our set-up includes controlled studio lighting and a dark backdrop to put the focus squarely on the subject. We shoot tethered to a Mac, which means you see a jpg. preview of the final image right after the shot. No blinking or derp faces – unless that’s what you’re going for.
Some background on why people were so surprised at being asked to pay for photos:
Historically, pop culture conventions like Comiccon, Pop Expo, Fan Expo, et al. attract photographers like no other kind of activity. There are so many shooters at these conventions that it sometimes looks like a paparazzi shooting gallery at the Cannes film festival. There is no typical shooter – the gamut ranges from curious con-goers holding up iPads and mobile phones to grizzled veterans wielding tens of thousands of dollars in photo gear. Some take pics and walk away. Others hand out business cards. Some try to set up small shoots along the walls to try to cut out the crowds in the back, while others just blast away, hoping for the best.
Cosplayers LOVE the attention they get from photographers. It’s a form of recognition when people ask for a photo of your awesome cosplay, and it feels good. So why on Earth would these people want to pay us for photos they can get for free? Well – we control the light, and the background, and we pose you to look as good as possible. We show you your images. We upload them for you to retrieve later. We’ve built up a bit of a reputation as well for quality, and that can only improve as time goes by.
We process the images using Lightroom, and upload them to Dropbox right from the convention floor (in some cases, you might have access to your images as quickly as half an hour) but when it gets busy on Saturday, expect a delay until the next morning!
- The basic fee of $20.00 gets you a couple of images – a wide shot and a closeup. that includes basic special effects and processing.
- For $10.00 extra, I’ll put you into a magazine, comic, game box or movie poster.
- If you want a longer session, with dozens of images, the price is $40.00.
- A week-end pass is $60.00 – change cosplays and come back on all three days. You’ll have LOTS of photos with this package.
- We also offer off-site photo sessions with our mobile studio lights after hours – it’s $100.00 for a hour shoot outside of the exhibitors’ hall.
- Groups are the same price, but if you want individual closeups, it’s going to go to the $20.00 per person pricing scheme.
So how did we do at that first convention?
It depends on how you gauge success. No, we did not recoup our expenses. Not even close. But then again the goal for that first con was to try to figure out the business model, and to see if people would go for it. So we got noticed, shot some great images, and got the ball rolling. By Sunday, people were looking for us based on the images we had posted on Dropbox, and from word of mouth. One lady told us it was the best $20.00 she had ever spent at a con. That meant a lot to us.
We decided that the first attempt was encouraging. We knew we had to build up our client list, build up the trust, and get people to start looking for us. We booked a double booth at Pop Expo in Ottawa a few months later. We upped our prices, and got ready for the show. The first day went like gangbusters. We were busy, we took in money, people were looking for us… and then Sunday didn’t go so well. Long story short: we didn’t recoup our money there either, but we did better than at the previous con.
We are returning to Pop Expo again this fall, so look for us there!
We went to Comiccon this May in Ottawa. We adjusted the pricing, adjusted the offering, and went for it. We were extremely busy, lots of people were looking for us, and guess what – we actually turned a profit. Not a huge profit, but there it was. The light at the end of the tunnel. Also, we started realizing ancillary benefits – I started to get bookings for photo shoots outside of the cons, for cosplay, glamour and (possibly) a wedding or two!
In the meantime, we took a booth at CoTiCon (Cornwall Tiny Convention) to give our new smaller studio lights and backdrop a shake. I am happy to report that my new gear works REALLY well. The lights are so nice to work with, and give us that mobility we lacked at previous cons. The small cons are so much fun, partly because we don’t have that pressure to recoup high booth costs. So we do much lower prices, and just enjoy the day. CoTiCon was fun too because it was just two weeks before Montreal Comiccon… a good trial run for our new gear.
So now we’ve come full circle: We are all set to go back to Montreal. We’re hyped. Our new studio lights and backdrop are tested and true. So all we need is you to come in great numbers to make my dream a reality. Bring it!