Photography at the Fan Expo 2012

Can you say "hurray for short weeks"? I love 4-day weeks; its already Thursday, can you believe it? If you feel like you're not accomplishing much, try writing down the tasks you want to accomplish the night before. Having a list of *ahem* 'quests' will result in you accomplishing them, rather than trying to remember while, say, trying to fend off the urge to play Guild Wars 2.

What did I learn (photography-wise) this year at Toronto's Fan Expo?

Beautiful gamer women are there. Tear yourself away from the pc and get a girlfriend like this! Wait, that doesn't have anything to do with photography... Ok. Its not ideal photography conditions in a convention centre, so you must take care and preferably test shots before you waste shots on say.. beautiful women! 

In these two photos, the background was heavily darkened from the flash I had attached to my camera. While it gave me sharp pictures, the black background wasn't necessarily desired; I like the brighter background. Its not that the background was dark, but the flash makes everything close very bright and the background very dark.

 

I decided that I didn't like the super dark background (but liking it more now that I look at it more) and had to take photos without a flash. That meant using my 50mm lens. The only way I could have an acceptable shutter speed of 1/80, I reduced my f stop to 1.8 . Its actually what you should do because it will blur the background the most, except you have to be very careful to ensure the focus point is on the subject's eyes, otherwise it will look weird looking at your photo, thus ruining it.

I've found that when taking portraits, to be extra careful when framing the subject. Yes, you have to be quick and not make the model wait too long, but framing is still important. I found alot of shots, there was alot of empty space at the top of the photo, requiring me to crop it out. I'm the type that prefers to do as little editting as needed and to make the photo as best as possible the first time.

In a perfect world, we'd like to get almost the whole person in costume, but it might result in alot of ugly background.. not that i'm saying my friend who jumped into the background is ugly (its actually funny), but there are other distracting things (faces and movement)in a busy anime convention which may ruin a photo.