Monday, May 20, 2013

ACEN 2013


So it was my second year at Anime Central; I had such a fun time last year I decided to come back. I drove up on thursday, started at 6 am, then arrived at my friends house at around 4:30 pm.

For this trip I had rented a Gopro camcorder and strapped it to my DSLR. I thought I could maybe make a movie out of the footage. I don't know what went wrong most of the footage is just unusable, and the video does not look as polished as the videos on Gopro's youtube channel. First I had the camera mounted on the back to shoot James Nachtwey style, but since I shoot mostly verticals, this did not work out. Then I mounted the camera on the front to be out of the way but lost the sense of it mounted on another camera. There were other problems too, I was using a very cheap bracket and it kept moving around on me. It was strange though, everyone I talked to never heard of a gopro before, and no one I was shooting said anything about it. There was one photographer who mentioned it, but he had to quickly talk to someone else, so I didn't talk with him for long.

About the actual convention,

The convention was great, great weather it was overcast most of the time which made it great for photos. The world is one big soft-light, and there are lots of places outside since the convention is held in two different buildings; There are lots of people walking in between the two.

When walking around I did try to be more sociable. I took photos of more cosplayers than I usually do. I even just went up to a non-cosplaying guy and talked to him for a few minutes. Using the gopro did help me study how I interacted with people. I found out I normally asked for a photo then immediately walk away right after quickly saying "Thanks" or something. Now my goal will be to kinda stay and talk for a few more seconds.


I love using polaroid, for this convention I did use it twice. Once on a JSRF cosplayer and again on 3 really great Digimon cosplayers. Using the Polaroid is a lot different than using a digital camera. You have to be careful that you followed all the steps for setting up and shooting the camera, and only use it on good cosplayers. The advantage is it really makes the sitter connect with you since they think the camera is really cool and unique.

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