Hey friends! Throwback Thursday! Welcome back! Since KatsuCon 2014 is right around the corner, I felt it was highly appropriate for me to send Throwback Thursday to KatsuCon 2013 (My first one)! We were fortunate enough to land an Artist Alley booth where we ran Elysia’s “Cosplay Couture Photobooth” under Fenyx Design. Unfortunately, that meant we were stuck in Artist Alley for the majority of the convention. Despite that, KatsuCon was still quite fun. Hit the jump to see what we did. :]
Being at a booth at a convention is a totally different experience from being able to walk around the convention. KatsuCon was the biggest convention thus far that we were given a booth. The thing about a photobooth is you need a background, and the background we had planned had to be a wall and not fabric. Let me tell you that transporting 10 foot tall styrofoam boards is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do for photography. When we got to DC we had to buy the boards from Home Depot, 3 of which didn’t have them. We had to paint them at my friend Cindy and Eric’s apartment building. Cindy and Eric who were kind enough to house us and hang out with us the couple days before the convention are absolute saviors. The car that we rented specifically for moving these things was still too small for them and they were kind enough to rent a moving van to get them to the con. I don’t know how we could have done it without you, Cindy and Eric. I owe a thousand debts to you guys.
Once we got the boards to the con though, everything was a slide downhill from there. Foam boards are great to shoot on since they don’t get wrinkly like fabric or paper backgrounds. Light hits it nice and cleanly and editing any problems with the background is a snap. It was such a pleasure to shoot all these cosplayers in our booth. An even bigger pleasure meeting everyone. We shot all day at the booth. Quite a grueling experience if you ask me. Just as grueling as running around and shooting minus the waiting for a location to open up anxiety.
We also had our wonderful make-up artist Heather Toyoko come with us and do make up for many of our guests! Not to mention we had a couple effects make-up artists in the booth next to us run by Brianna Richardson! :]
While one of us was shooting in the booth the other was shooting passerbys. We saw some amazing cosplayers strolling through Artist Alley. I’m really excited to see what we’ll find at this year’s KatsuCon. I can only imagine what we missed by being in Artist Alley.
When Artist Alley finally closed we usually just sulked around the convention, got food, shot at the mythical Gaylord Gazebo, and hung out at photographer meetups. Overall we had a good time meeting all the new people and seeing the friends we don’t normally get to see as far south as Florida. I’m really looking forward to seeing all the costumes this year at KatsuCon 2014.
Thanks for reading this ThrowBack Thursday! I keep reiterating it, but I’m really excited about this year’s KatsuCon! We’ll be there once again with MUA Heather Toyoko, who will be doing make-up in and around the convention, as well as ZipperTan and PaperLab Studios (be sure to see their booth in Artist Alley)!
See you at KatsuCon 2014!
<3 imPhotography
