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Annie’s Red Dress

Regular readers may remember a photo I did last year for a competition called Aspiring Angel. The model for that shoot was my good friend Annie. At the time, Annie created the outfit she wore specifically for the shoot, however due to concentrating on getting the shot that I needed for the competition, I wasn’t able to get the photos of the outfit she wanted for her design folio. I told her I’d reshoot whenever she wanted.

Last week Annie collected on the favour I owed her. Rather than shoot the angel outfit, she asked me to photograph a gorgeous and stylish red evening dress that she designed and made for a design assigment. Battling a cold, I met her in the Manchester Unity building arcade in the city, to photograph the vintage style dress in the stunning art-deco era building. Below are a few of my favourite photos from the shoot. If you would like to read Annie’s journal entry on the dress, you can find that here.

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Supanova 2009 Pop Culture Expo

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Last weekend was the Supanova Pop Culture Expo for 2009 in Melbourne. This is a travelling cultural expo similar to Manifest, but run by a professional organisation and with a broader focus on pop culture, including science fiction, fantasy, comics and more. Supanova differs from Manifest in a number of ways , including the focus on international guests, speaking panels and perhaps a more commercial atmosphere, but with fewer events, cultural attractions and less of an emphasis on cosplay (making and wearing costumes of your favourite fictional characters). Cosplay, however, does seem to be becoming a more significant part of the expo, and it was the major event this year. Perhaps it is to be expected that the majority of cosplayers were dressed in anime costumes, but it was a refreshing change, for me, to see characters from many other genres represented.

Photographing the cosplay is the main focus of conventions, and as such most of my time at Supanova was spent waiting for the cosplay comp, reserving my seat, or shooting the cosplay competition. I had a brief look around the traders hall, and around the venue, but spent most of my time in the main hall. One point of import is that Manifest will be moving to the showgrounds as well for its tenth year, so I was interested to scout out the venue as well.

Below are a selection of my favourite photos from the event, specifically of cosplayers in the comp and elsewhere. In the past, readers have expressed an interest in seeing what the costumes are based on, so I have included below each photo, where applicable, an image of the character being cosplayed. I hope this will deepen your appreciation for the hard work and dedication that these wonderfully talented people put into their costumes! At the bottom of this post you will find a couple of videos and a link to my full gallery of more than 270 photographs from the event. I hope you enjoy them!

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Erin as Princess Tutu


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Siera as Lal Mirch from Hitman Reborn


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Imperial Stormtroopers Patrol Supanova 2009

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Lime from Saber Marionette JtoX


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Sailor Mars from Sailor Moon


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Miimoko as Hatsune Miku from Vocaloid


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An Original Catgirl Character

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Giorgia and Lexis as Euphemia and Suzaku from Code Geass


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Jodie as Gaara from Naruto


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Shi as Helga von Vogelweide from Trinity Blood

Videos From Supanova

See the Full Gallery

Photo5 Crayon: Aspiring Angel

This is my submission for the Canon Photo5 competition, using the crayon:

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A girl aspires to become an angel. With a crayon she draws herself a pair of wings, but it’s futile for her wings are forever pinned to the bleak urban landscape that is her home.

I’m very excited about this photo. It’s one of those ideas that popped into my head, and all the way through, from organising to shooting, to the final result, everything pretty much ended up how I originally imagined it. Everything just went right!

Once I had my idea of a girl with angel wings drawn on a brick wall, I had to find my angel. If you’ve seen some of my previous shoots, you wouldn’t be surprised when I thought of Annie. I was thinking of the dress she wore in the “Gentleman Discovers a Doll” shoot, or something like it. When I asked her, Annie guessed what I was thinking, but alas had recently sold that dress. She was not worried though, as she thought this would be a great excuse to make a new outfit, especially for the shoot! Needless to say I was thrilled, and I think in the end, the outfit was perfect! Especially impressive was that she completed it in about a week!

I had a brick wall in mind from a previous shoot with Darren, though I was a little concerned that passing authorities might think we were vandalising the wall. Darren and Colin had a more appropriate wall near where they live, in an alley away from the public eye. They also generously offered their house as somewhere Annie could change, as well as assisting on the shoot with lights and ideas. They were also good bodyguards :)

They also helped us clean up afterwards :)

These are some of the other photos from the shoot that didn’t make the cut:

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Here are some behind the scenes and setup photos taken by our wondeful assistant Colin:

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Rachel & Marty’s Wedding

This weekend was my sister-in-law’s wedding. I was asked to do the wedding photography. It was an extremely difficult shoot and the conditions were very challenging, but I’m relieved and happy with the result. I plan to write a detailed post about the shoot soon, about improvising solutions to challenges and problems on location, but for now, please enjoy a selection of the photos.

You can see a gallery of the whole shoot here. This is the same gallery presented to the bride and groom.

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