I've been putting posting this recap for so long now I feel like this is going to be one of those rushed entries just to get it done before I put it off longer and just oforeget everything and I just end up going noooo LOL so I guess bare with me?! I pretty sure the last post I did was just me whining about AX and just having it be over with. Let me say though, this AX was.....busy. LOL. Exciting, exilerating and tiring. I liked to think we were prepared but you can never be prepared for the madness that is AX ):
and of course, like with any con, who needs sleep? Whos got time to eat? I can def say this was one of the cons that really whipped me out.
We started out this con thinking we're gonna be badasses and jsut book ourselves shoot after shoot, coz hey, better be busy than not right? Since we didn't buy badges figured we'd make the trip worth it and just book book and book! Which is amazing, fun, exciting, you get to meet new people and whatnot. But man, like I said, you can just never prepare for the unexpected! LOL If you followed me on IG and FB you can probably see us spazzing about the end if near, and working relentlessly on last minute projects and props and charging up all your gear coz you're gonna hit this con full scale. Wow, it was not what I was expecting.
The photo above pretty much captures how me and Anh felt on tackling AX lol....I dont have alot of behind the scene photos at all during AX since I was just so busy shooting and running from one shoot to another to really have any downtime at all ): so you probably just gotta wait and see when I finish all the sets and do some major photo dumping. Till then you guys can already view quite a few of them on the following sites:
So I guess I should go and back track to the Day -1/Day0
Day -1 / 0 was mostly spent not sleeping from Monday night till Wednesday working on League of Legends, props and other items that needed to be addressed, I was pretty fail and completely forgot to order new cards so it was a trip to kinkos x__X to print some ghetto ones. Now I need to make it a point to order a new set before the next con (I say that now, watch me go to J Expo with still the same set of ghetto cards lawls)
Originally planned on leaving SD noon-ish probably at 1 at the latest to give us enough time to get into LINE CON and pick up badges, get checked into hotel, hit up LilTokyo to get some provisions for the weekend then pick up sister and roomates from LAX.....
yeah that didn't quite happen as planned and we ended up leaving a little later than we had expected, thankfully traffic was a little forgiving till we got to LAX ):
but of course no trip to LA is ever complete without stopping by 85C bakery and Lollicup!
Had a few hiccups on the road to getting everything in order but at that point I don't even remember what happened next, all we knew was, we needed to prepare for the up coming busy weekend.
Woke up fairly early day 1 and got to work on slapping our faces on, heres some selcas LOOO coz. Why not?!
With Anh from Angels Instead Photography :D follow her, shes awesome :D
(I stole some photos from her too lol so yes you should follow her. She has funny updates)
On my face, because, why not, I'm sure some people would ask or if they dont, lets just pretend I'm a multipurpose blog LOL and pretend were one of those cool kids who talks about how awesome their face shit is...
Because we all know the next few days we just crawled out of bed in a rush looking ratchet as ever to make our shoots orz so no more selcas after Day1 lol....no OOTD either....
After slapping our faces on it was breakfast time~ it the only meal of the day we've really had that was on-time, the rest of the weekend we didn't get any proper meals till really late into the night...orz
Iced Carmel Machiatto | TOASTED roast beef sandwhich
We didn't have a toaster with us at the hotel but a little creativity you can make anything happen.
Some foil, some bread, some cheese and an iron.
Day 1 started off with a morning shoot with Panty & Stocking and I believe Card Captor Sakura shortly after. I don't have any photos or behind the scene ones from those shoots so I think I'm just going to do some photo dumping from here orz...
we also tried to shoot Magi in the Figueroa hotel which was suppose to only be a smaller group but it somehow turned into 20+ people and 3-4+ photographers ): which turned rather problematic as we were frantically trying to get through everyone there to get them their photos but we eventually got kicked out by the ladies there =_=l despite reassuring them we had a room booked there...
Had a few more shoots to run to and we eventually had dinner at a 24/hr Korean BBQ place in Ktown at around 2-3am in the morning which spewed the idea for us to throw together a last minute FREE! Photoshoot in celebrating of the anime launching its first episode during AX weekend oAo
Day 2 was madnessss we had anticipated on getting up a little earlier to give us enough time to get ready (that didn't quite happen) and we ended up scrambling to get our gears in check and run to Little Tokyo to meet up with group we were shooting~ Day 2I feel was the busiest out of all the days we had, I don't even remember doing anything other than running from one shoot to another, barely having enough down time to back up my files on a laptop, recharge really quickly and off we go again.
One of the highlights of the weekend was definitely trying out a 5D from a friend who so generously lent it to me along with some of the equipment that came with it and being snuck into the cosplay photography room where we abused the crap out of the little sets they had there. Which is def. genius and I hope more and more cons do that!
Working with the 5D I admit had a bit of a learning curve as I was working with a different lens than I was use to, not to mentin homeboy had some lights with him! woah. I'm so used to being so old school and 35mm everything, external flash and reflector lol that this was a bit of a learning curve and I felt quite a bit out of my element when we tried shooting outside but again that didn't last long as we were ushered to basically gtfo the area by the staples center since there was a concert happening ):
The Gintama shoot was def one of the funner ones and most comfortable one as well. We shot it in the hotel room, LOVELY A/C room. With yards of fabric to use as a back drop and my good ol' flash and reflector. I can def. say I'm quite happy with the results considering we were trying to find where to shoot this since theres no place in LAX Con center that would be friendly to eastern style costumes and we barely got away with shooting in Little Tokyo as well haha....
I feel that I am definitely missing quite a bit of stuff from this posts but hopefully the photos will fill in the gaps that I am missing on my AX timeline....
I guess in a sense to sum up my AX weekend was: late night shoots, getting kicked out of venues, shooting, shooting some more, late night eats, what is sleep? Shooting FREE! at the last minute. Abs. Abs. Abs.
looking for dry-ice, ended up not using it D8 coz afraid to get kicked out again.
broken GPS sending us everywhere but where we needed to go orz
Meeting and shooting lovely people
Deliciously expensive creme brulee was one of the best things I've had all weekend - other than bacon wrapped hot dogs for dinner LOL at one point in time....yeah, this is basically what you shoot when you're working with a 5D ಠ__ಠ
Yep, I think that pretty much summed up my AX weekend and I feel like I am missing quite abit of stuff but again, I didn't really get to go to any panels, or stalk the exhibit hall ):
Lesson learned, as much as I like to stay busy. AX just isn't the right place to be /that/ busy LOL that you tend to miss out on quite a few things. I don't regret any of it, it was fun but wow that heat though.
I guess to wrap it all up my biggest peeve about AX and honestly I dont know why I keep coming back every year is the lack of photoshoot places, you thought we'd all get rather creative on where to shoot or simply abuse all the hotels in the surrounding area or the urban scene? Looking back at it when I was going through my photoshoot sets I just recalled just how many times I got kicked out of places simply for shooting. it might be because we were using strobes or simply had profesh looking camera and gear but even when just durping around for photos we pretty much got the boot. =__=
Thoughts on J-Expo? Possibly tentatively still gauging if I'm going or not (´−｀) ﾝｰ
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