Hello all!

It’s Kimberley from A Shot in the Dark here J
As most of you know I’m fresh back from Alcon, which was loads of fun, mostly for the people we met. I love going to conventions to meet new cosplayers and work with new people, sometimes leading to full shoots with people outside conventions.

Leading up to the con I knew I would be doing a panel along with the ever elegant Lady Fancy Pants, as well as having a hallway table with her. Which mostly proved hilarious.

Shortly before the convention I noticed that our panel had been put down as half an hour instead of the hour we had written the panel for. I sent an email asking if this was a typo or mistake and was told that was all they could allocate to us. At this point it was too late for us to go through the whole presentation and cut it down to half an hour after we’d already written so we figured we’d see how it went on the day!
A couple of days before the convention the final timetable came out and they had renamed our panel from ‘Cosplay Photography and Modelling’ to ‘Cosplay Posing 101’. We were understandably quite upset about this because that was not at all what the panel was about, and the name now sounded very…childish. I can only assume it was renamed because there was not space on the timetable, but if asked I could have provided a more suitable name.

Well, moaning aside, we arrived to our hotel late Thursday night so missed the first day. On the Friday we wandered around, looking at the cosplays and getting to know where things were. I took some photos but many cosplayers were indoors and I don’t enjoy taking photos with so many people in the background! So I must admit this convention I didn’t take many. We did notice some dealers had set up their stalls on the Friday, we weren’t aware you could do this and may have done so ourselves if we’d known, but I don’t think it impacted that much.
On the Saturday we came in early to set up our table. I had bought plenty of things to sell as well as chat about photography, as had The Lady.

We had our panel at 4pm and had many more people than we expected for such a niche panel! After getting through 3 slides we were given our five minute warning from our friend, much to our horror! So we sped through the rest and managed to squeeze all the slides in and only went slightly over our time.  After the panel, and through the rest of the con, we had so many people come to our table and give us lovely feedback, a lot of it was that they wished it had been longer, but everyone said they had learnt a lot! That made me both happy and sad because I wished I could have said all the things I wanted to say and elaborate on. But I’m so happy it was well received and so many people came and asked me and LFP more questions! Special mention to the guy who listened to me talk about DSLR’s for a ridiculous amount of time, and still asked questions! <3

We got talking to so many amazing people who came by to our table and that was probably my highlight of the convention. I’d really love to hear from people who spoke to us at the convention and whether there are any more questions we can answer!

In terms of photography, I didn’t really do much over the weekend as our table proved more popular than I thought, and I wanted to be available for any questions. The sun was very bright through the weekend too, which made things harder! There weren’t any locations which appealed to me too and that can make me not want to take photographs as I probably wouldn’t have been very happy with them. It’s helped me realise I’ve become a very picky photographer haha! It’s also helped me realise conventions don’t much suit my photography style.

All in all it won’t stop me taking photos at conventions, I just much prefer full shoots with people! It helps me get to know the person a little better and feel more comfortable asking for more poses, which often results in better photos.

So here's a few photos I took at Alcon :) 

 These first two were taken of the same cosplayer who I have currently misplaced the business card of, which is rubbish of me, but I WILL find it!
As soon as I saw her I HAD to have a picture of her, loving Watchmen as I do. She turned out to be incredibly photogenic, which I didn't doubt anyway haha. I have a few more of her but this one in particular I took in quite a dark area and had to lighten in photoshop but it was worth it!
She mentioned that the next day she would be doing a Steampunk white rabbit, and having wanted to get a tattoo of the white rabbit myself I said if she was interested in a shoot the next day she could pop by my table, which she did!
I really wanted to try and get more full length shots as well as close ups (which is kinda my thing) so this is one of the ones I took. I liked this area because the colours matched her outfit quite well and the stairs allowed for a dynamic stance.

These two were of two cosplayers from the Arkham Asylum group which I took photos with and were happy to do a couple more after. For Poison Ivy I figured grass would be a good place, there weren't any decent places with flowers or woodland other than this grass area so I figure, work with what you've got and location is important to me! For Penguin, it's such a creepy character already and the make-up was done really well I wanted to have a close up shot and have it fill the frame so you aren't distracted by anything other than the look. 

 With Lady Fancy pants I did a quick shoot because a) I didn't have many location shots with her, b) I wanted to try out some more full length stuff and c) because she's super photogenic tbh. It was a lovely casual Ariel theme and the colours were always going to photograph well. It was good for me to work with someone I knew to try more full length stuff. Here's a case of getting to know someone well enough to then ask them to 'GET ON THE FLOOR! DO IT NOW!' or something. It had also been a while since we'd done pictures. I also got a shot of her smiling, which she hates, so I hope she likes it haha.

This lady I met the day before in cosplay and didn't even recognise it was the same person I'd done a shoot with! :O So that was pretty cool. I also love Phoenix like crazy, so wanted to get a cool shot with plenty of depth and a trademark pose. She looked so amazing, I'd have loved to work with her more. 

 Me and LFP called this cosplayer over because omg her wig and cosplay and bodypaint were all amazing! We ended up chatting with her for about an hour surely and she was SO NICE! LOOK AT THE WIG, it was truly stunning, so much so I will be bugging her about doing a commission. The background here is rubbish, ignore it, I failed, but she looks amazing!