Photo
Went to the Geek Market at the Nepean Sportsplex, and shot a few quick snaps in the aisles. It was dark in there, and I wanted to give my 14mm wide lens a workout. So enjoy the particular wide quality of the shots. Click on the link below to get to the album on Facebook. Reminder: I will be at Ottawa Comic-con in May, so come to my booth to get some good photos of your cosplay!
My daughter Catherine recommended for me to check out G-Anime, a smallish anime con in Gatineau, QC, at the Palais des Congrès. It was a good opportunity to do some walking around, shooting some candids, and handing out business cards. Anyone in this photo series gets a discount if they come to see me at Ottawa Comiccon in May.
Click on the link below to see all of the photos from G-Anime on my Facebook page.
Click on the link below to get access to your Pop Expo photos.
As mentioned onsite, let me know if you have any issues with your images, or if you want them moved to a private folder or simply emailed to you.
QUICK EDIT – SUNDAY NIGHT – All of the photos should be up EXCEPT for a few Star Wars ones because lightsabers. If your photos are NOT on the Dropbox folder, don’t fret. But do let me know and I’ll hunt them down for you.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xp6iicon1ptl84u/HdSpE1UKDP
I was pleased to spend a day shooting the very lovely Rita, Bridget and Haley, who portrayed Cat Woman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn on this day. If you’re a cosplayer and you’ve spent hundreds of hours and dollars on your cosplay, you owe it to yourself to get some good pictures of all that hard work. Give me a shout and we’ll book a shoot.
UPDATE, November 25, 2013
Sharemycosplay has upped photos of Hailey: http://sharemycosplay.tumblr.com/post/68019447593/cosplayer-bettynukem-with-a-totally-awesome
Something new for me – friends of mine are selling their house, and they asked me if I would shoot the images that will go on the listing. What an opportunity! They spent months renovating and prepping the house, and in my opinion – it’s awesome.
Here is their listing in case you’re interested: 122 Pinetrail Cr, Nepean, ON
There are technical challenges when you’re shooting private residences for resale. I didn’t have to deal with some, like messy homes, or homes with serious problems, because this home is move-in renovated, and there’s no junk or other stuff that I had to work around.
- Small rooms – this is not a small house, but unlike shooting sitcoms, the fourth wall kind of gets in the way when you’re trying to shoot a room. So you need a wide lens to do it. But wide lenses generate pictures with hefty barrel distortion which has to be corrected in Photoshop afterwards.
- The rule of parallel walls – this is hard to stick to when you’re trying to get 3 walls into the shot from an upper corner. I settled for making at least two walls parallel in each shot where possible – again with Photoshop.
- Light – I was happy to shoot in the morning, with natural light boosting the electric lights. A tripod is a must for this sort of thing because you have to shoot with a small aperture to get everything in focus, and small aperture plus no flash – i did ot use flash – means slow shutter speed.
- Reflections – man, I’m in a lot of the photos. Mirrors, chrome, glass, everything conspires to make me famous. I deleted myself out in Photoshop.
So you want to see the whole series (including some that did not get listed)? Click here.
So… if you want me to shoot your house, give me a shout. It just might be worth a couple hundred bucks to you to get good shots of your abode.
Pop Expo is in Ottawa on December 7 and 8. It’s a smaller con than Comiccon but brought to you by the same awesome team – it’s going to be a good time.
I’m doing the photo booth again, with adjustments on pricing and offering. I’m going to price the service more along the lines of time spent rather than on number of people. The base price will be higher, frankly because I wasn’t charging enough in Montreal for what my customers were getting, but you’ll get more pictures.
For the base price, which I have not yet figured out, you’ll get a full body shot, a closer shot and a nice portrait. The price will increase if you want a mini-session, or if you have a large group and you want individual shots to go along with the group shots. Probably $20.00 as a base price. Your photos get uploaded to Dropbox, and you just have to go to my site to get the link to the files on Dropbox.
I edit ALL of the photos that go to Dropbox, and I add light and lightsaber effects as required.
If you are looking to do an engagement shoot you can book a time slot with me at this convention – it’s going to be awesome. You WANT to do a cosplay engagement shoot, admit it.
If you belong to a group or club and you want at bulk price for all your people, talk to me. You people work very hard on your costumes, and you absolutely deserve to have good photos of yourself to remember the convention.
I’m freely posting my business model and my prices here. If you are a photographer and you want to go to this con to try to undercut me, bring it. I welcome it. My pictures are AWESOME. All of the feedback is good. Know also that there are booths at these cons that do FREE photos with printouts, and people still come to me.
Here are photos taken at Montreal Comiccon in September 2013. See you in December.
If you’re looking for 2013 Montreal Comiccon photos, you have come to the right place.
The photos taken in my booth are here:
Facebook (selected images)
Youtube
This was A BLAST to attend.
So what did I learn from this experience?
1) I didn’t charge enough. I was constantly busy shooting and editing and shmoozing, and I did not turn a profit. Even though some people were shocked that I wanted money to take a photo… by the end of the con people were ready to pay because they saw the results of previous shoots. For those of you who trusted me to take their pictures, thank you.
2) My booth was too plain – in particular, I didn’t have prices posted, and I didn’t have a second screen to show images continually. We’ll fix this for next time.
3) I went to Montreal on Thursday – We could have saved a night’s expense by going to Montreal on Friday morning. My booth doesn’t have a lot of stuff so we would not have had loading dock issues. But my wife was very happy to have me to herself on Thursday afternoon and evening. So it worked out for us.
4) I was the only shooter/editor. I could have used some help to process images, or shoot. This is a tough one, because frankly I would need to build up trust before giving up all of the creative control.
5) Shooting tethered to my Mac Mini, using my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 phone for internet, and editing the images as they came in, worked like a dream. For simple shoots, the images were up on Dropbox 2 minutes after the shoot.
6) People like having a shooter who directs them, and who knows the subject material related to their costumes (Or a shooter who has a teenage daughter in the booth who can fill in the gaps in his anime knowledge).
7) So… should I go to Pop Expo in December in Ottawa? (update – I’m going.)
Getting ready for Montreal Comiccon, I asked my lovely friend Rita to bring her best costume to a test shoot – just to see how I would set up my booth at the con.
Here are a few of the shots we ended up with.
Rita is even more lovely in person, in case you were wondering.