Okay this is really post but I only now getting back to posting.
Near the end of last year I was
fortunate enough to find time to attend Pure Speculation and was able to
indulge my growing photography hobby. For
those people who are unaware of it Pure Speculations is the local Science fiction
and Fantasy Con in which focuses mainly on the genre of Sci-Fi and fantasy
wither they be literary for or illustrated.
As part of this event they old several seminars/panels covering a verity
of topic from self publishing, the history of cartoons and even the science
behind comic super powers. And as with
any convention focusing on pop culture there were chances to take a lot of
picture of people in costumer, merchant table as well as other fun things.
For me I went to the con with my
DSLR with the intention of practicing my photography and taking the opportunity
to try my hand in event photography.
This was something totally new to me since I never took it upon myself
to shoot with a specific goal in mind
before and neither do I have much experience in event photography and I learned
so much doing so.
When reviewing my photos I realized
I didn’t really capture the meaning or spirit of the event. Even
though I did get some great shot of people in costumes, I missed out of several
great chances to tell the story of Pure Speculations and the people that attended. I focused too much on the people in costumes
and not on other things, such as the new location, the merchant table and their
wares, how the other attendees were interacting with each other, or even how
they setup and tear down for the con would have showed more what Pure
Speculations was.
One of my best photos was a test
shot I took of one booth’s merchandise and it when I was looking at it I realized
I missed out telling a story. I didn’t even think about taking picture of
other things till it was too late.
There were other things I learned
while taking pictures such as the importance of light, having an external flash
and depth of field, all of which I never really thought to much about till
shooting at Pure Speculations. The light wasn’t the best specially for
someone, like myself, whose lenses didn’t have a low aperture so I was forced
to use my external flash and the modifiers I had on hand. Now luckily I had a
soft box that could easily go over my flash but at times it was too bright and
gave a burn out feeling to the picture. Now I learned the hard of using the
soft box and reflecting the lights of the walls and ceiling which did help but I
wished I didn’t have to use it. Having a
flash in your eye being near one is never nice.
Another thing I learned was depth of
field and focusing which is damn hard in low light and hand holding. As people know the lower your aperture the
shallower your depth of field, well I didn’t realize how much that can affect a
picture till trying to do a group photo at the contest. Because of the lighting and hand holding the
camera I couldn’t get my shutter speed as low as I wanted so I set the f stop
as low as it could go. The results were
photos that were mainly out of focus and poor quality. I should have use a tripod or my monopod for
those shots so I could have had a lower shutter and kept a good f stop for the
shot. Other possible solution to this
could have involved wireless flashes set up around the stage to add the
additional light or just gone with under exposure and then fixed that in lightroom
or photoshop.
What I do intend is take advantage
of lenses rental so I can have a good fast lenses and enjoy trying out a new
piece of glass. I also hope to take
advantage of off camera flash to see if I can better shape the light. Either I will need someone to hand hold the
flash or have a small tripod with me that I can easily use there.
Hopefully I will keep this all in
mind when next Pure Speculations 2012 comes along and have had additional
practice with my camera and simple photography skills.
