Week 27 – DragonCon 2015 and Team Tank – Cinestill 50D

October 02, 2015

Ok, so after much deliberation I figured out how to best display all of the photos I took at DragonCon. Instead of subjecting you to 9 weeks of updates for the 9 rolls that went through my camera over Labor Day weekend...I'll condense it into 4 weeks. And since Dragoncon is very much a cosplayer driven convention I'll devote most of October to the photos I took (even though relatively few of them are of people in costume).

2 weeks of updates will be single rolls of film, for the two new ones I tried. Then I will have a "mega update" containing all the color photos, and all the black and white photos.

This entry will cover the second half of the parade from Saturday, and the mini-shoot I did with Team Tank, a wonderful TankGirl cosplay group from here in Atlanta.

And now a few from the TeamTank shoot:

Development Notes:
Standard Processing using Fresh Unicolor C41 Kit

The DIY Backdrop Test 2 (and Build) – Justin – 2015

October 01, 2015

I'm going to take a few moments and walk through the construction of the DIY backdrop project (It's really a lot more simple than you would think). I believe total cost for me was around $22.00, but that included two backdrop stands that I already had.

It all started with this video:

In it there is a section where it mentions the IKEA Tupplur blind.

Originally I wanted to go with a grey one instead, but since there was an open box deal on the large black, I got it instead. I'll probably go back in the near future and pick up the grey one.
After I got it home I removed the spring driven auto-winder (I guess that's the best way to describe the part) and found that there was a 3/4" tube running down the center. That tube just so happened to be the same diameter as my backdrop stand, so I had to run down to home depot and grab some 1/2" electrical conduit (about $2.30 for a 10' section).

They cut it down to size for me, and helped me find some screw on ends that formed an L shape (about another $1.50 each) that I used to mount on top of my backdrop stand.

Short of using a little black spray paint to dull down the silver, the final product looks like this. The diagram approximately (and totally not to scale) looked very similar to the one below.

Using an LED Panel that I borrowed from a friend of mine (and totally need to return, sorry Vivi) to provide a back light to the background, and my studio strobes (modeling light on, with a closed umbrella since the camera I am working with has a different flash mount than I am used to) as my main light. I was able to get some pretty interesting lighting situations. I probably need to look into some various gels to take some of the blue LED tint out, but other than that I am pretty happy.

Justin stepped up to help me out with some more testing of the background, and using what I learned from shooting Stan yesterday, this is what we were able to achieve.

The DIY Backdrop Test 1 – Stan – 2015

September 30, 2015

So I forgot how I met Stan. More than likely probably through another mutual friend. But I could have run into him on the street for all I remember. But we have kept in touch through social media since. During part of my 52 rolls project, while I was looking for people to shoot, Stan stepped up and said that he would be interested in getting some band photos taken.

If you remember from the post about Finite Automata on the Extra blog, I didn't really consider myself a "band photographer" so initially I kinda pushed things off a little more than I normally would. But after the success I found with those, I figured I'd move forward with more.

I put out a call on my social media pages for someone to test an idea I had (found honestly) for a DIY backdrop. Stan was one of the few people that stepped up to the challenge and we decided to snap a few shots.

I still have a few tweaks I'd like to do to the lighting, but overall I was very happy with the results. Let me know what you all think!

Blix (In Color) – 2015

September 29, 2015

As promised, here are the color shots of the lovely model Blix.

I couldn't decide whether or not I liked them better in color, or black and white. Luckily we live in a world that you can see both! We don't get to work together often, but hopefully it'll be sooner than a few years until we can meet up and work again.

Blix (In Black and White) – 2015

September 27, 2015

You wouldn't know it by looking at her, but Blix and I have worked together before at an event here in Atlanta a few years ago. However back then she looked completely different (not that that's a bad thing!). When I heard she was coming into town for a few days, I wanted to make sure that we had time to shoot together...even if it meant that I would be tired the next day.

We originally planned to meet around 8:00, but got pushed back to almost midnight. I wish we had time to shoot more, but luckily we found a somewhat quiet spot by an elevator and were able to snap off a few quick shots.

I couldn't decide which versions I liked better, these or the color versions, so I decided to post both. Check out the Extra blog in a few days to see these in a completely different way.

It was great catching up, and having a good laugh about a mutual "friend" of ours. I hope to do it again real soon.