Impromptu photographer’s gathering
We just got back home this past Saturday night from a quick trip to Los Angeles to attend Anime Los Angeles (ALA) at the Marriott LAX. This was our first time ever at ALA as well as our first time to a SoCal Anime convention and it definitely didn’t disappoint!
We had a great time seeing all our good friends such as Eric Ng aka The BigWhiteBazooka, Abbott Wang, Tony Quan, the cosplay photographers of Manual Shoot (Michael Cabusi, Martin Wong and Ken Eden), Andy Rak, Joseph Chi Lin, Kris Ling, Ben Lam, Jan Pesino Illenberger, Crystal Likes, Trevor Scott, Yosidha Itsumo, James Giovanni Pan, Chloe Doan (The Sushi Monster), Luke, Nadia Swan, Alicia Dang, Castor Lai, Erskine Noel, Vincent Milum Jr. (Darkain), Ejen Chuang, Yoko, Setsu, Ming Wang, as well as meeting new friends (in person for the first time) such as Tim Vo, Aileen Luib, Tram Dinh, Tiffany Jing Crawford, Crystal Graziano, Dale Oshima. Apologies in advance if we missed anyone as it was a whirlwind trip!
We were also honored to meet and spend a considerable amount of time with the super talented Aileen Luib, a SoCal fashion/commercial photographer who is also doing cosplay photography in her spare time. We had a great time talking shop together. You can see more of her amazing work on her website: http://aileenluibphotography.com as well as on her Facebook page. If you ever get a chance to meet and chat with her, we definitely suggest you do! We also met up with New York Times published photographer and Cosplay Photographer’s January 2012 Featured Photographer of the Month Joseph Chi Lin who flew in for the weekend to attend ALA. Great guy, easy going, and fun to hang out with and we can’t wait to hang out more at a future cosplay convention. Definitely browse his amazing work on his website and Facebook page.
And as many of you may know, our very own Richard Bui took part in a cosplay panel with fellow cosplay photographer Tim Vo (and his assistant Hall) of FiveRings and cosplayer Chloe Doan aka The Sushi Monster titled “Cosplay Photography at Hotel and Convention Centers”. We had a great turnout with lots of useful takeaway information. We were also very fortunate to get some items for giveaways. TotallyCostumes.com provided us with a cool panda head gear as well as a 10% off discount code that is good until January 31st. Also Ejen Chuang the man behind the amazing Cosplay in America provided us with an autographed copy of his book for giveaway. If you haven’t ordered your copy of the book yet, you should before he runs out! Order now. Over 270-pages of absolutely beautiful cosplayers beautifully photographed by Ejen. For those who weren’t able to make our panel discussion, you can see our PowerPoint presentation here:
Here’s a great video put together by James Patterson, be sure to checkout his killer photos on his Flickr site:
[UPDATE (2012-01-18)]: Here’s what some people have been saying about our panel:
All-in-all, we had an amazing time despite being there on Saturday only. We did manage to do two photo shoots: Nier (with Castor Lai and Alicia Dang) and Cowboy Bebop (with Ken Eden, Pho3nix, Hikaru-Jan, and Trevor Scott). Some teasers below and all the photos in our ALA 2012 gallery.
Here are links to other cosplay photographer’s ALA 2012 photos and blog entries, if you have a gallery and wish to be included, leave us a comment with a link and we’ll include it in this list:
