Alex Weatherston’s Photography Blog

So it’s been a while since I updated. As you probably have noticed, most of my Sakuracon 2008 photos have been uploaded to the gallery segment of my website. I am continuing to take photos locally when I have a spare minute or two, but time is very scarce at the moment as our final project industry presentation night is just over 3 weeks away. We also learned that Will Wright (of Sim City and The Sims fame) will be giving a lecture in Vancouver on the same night as our presentations. Hopefully they will be rescheduled or we’ll be presenting to an empty room.

Our game - Ajax and Argo - is coming alone quite well. We came in on our break to continue the work and made tons of progress. Right now a ton of work is going on on many different areas from art and textures to designing our intro cutscenes and level building to, of course, coding. Check out our game’s blog here.

I’ll finish with a brief description of the picture above. Yuna came back from trips to Disney land and Disney world, so she was gone for a good month. Luckily she had time over the weekend to have a quick photoshoot by the beach, though sand is more suitable for Gaara then Sasuke, so we stuck to the forest. More pictures will be up on my deviantart account so check there for more frequent updates.

Till next time~

Whew… long time no update. I have been keeping my deviantart up to date (somewhat), but a combination of school and… well yea pretty much fulltime classes spent shut away in the dungeon of the Vancouver film school have ate my time up.

I was able to escape for a day to take pictures of my group’s new cosplays - some of the characters from D.Grey Man. I’ve included one of the photos with this post.

Aside from that, It’s already time for Sakuracon, and so I shall be venturing down to seattle in 3 days to enjoy that - and by enjoy I mean dash around madly (sometimes in costume) taking pictures of people and events. Look for a massive update and influx of new photos on monday of next week.

I also won a new phone recently (Nokia N95) which has a blog feature, and now that I have a new memory card and everything has been figured out function wise, I’m going to try to make a post or two every week… something small with a photo or video. Man, I’m amazed at the people who do the “Photo a day for a year” challenges… what determination!

Merry Christmas! (Will post more later!)

Wow, it’s almost christmas… time flies when your week is populated with class. I look at my website and think I should update more, but I don’t have time for video games let alone writing a blog, but wait, I’m writing now… so that must mean i’m procrastonating and not doing work. Oh well, it’s 3am and I can’t stare at game interface designs anymore, and I don’t want to resume writing my 50 page design document - so i’ve taken a break, worked on an image and am posting here.

It was just the other friday that twin_fools was back in town and we were all standing infront of a huge waterfall near squamish freezing our butts off and slipping over icy rocks, but it seems like it was just yesterday. Everyone in our little group misses her, and as of this posting it’s only 17 more days till she’s back in town for good. We thought about planning secret airport pages, perhaps we could get roxas paged as she arrives, but apparently they don’t do that anymore. Drat.

It’s also nice to finally have a great group of cosplayers that continually have new costumes, but more importantly have kickass ones. But even more important than the costumes is their attitude and friendship. It’s only been half a year, but we’ve all grown close to eachother, and it’s kinda become a second family. Ramen, costume planning and mario party are weekly events (though nobody wants to play mario party with me anymore) and are a welcome break from the sometimes mundane school drudgery. It’s also the only time I seem to take photos, as doing walk around photography is not on the menu anymore.

I find myself envying my friend and his 2 brand new lenses, but then I think that I would not put them to good use and they would do what my 70-200 F4L is doing - sitting in my camera bag gathering a fine layer of dust. So much for the “must have” lens. Im hoping someone will trade me their 17-40 F4L for it, but so far craigslist hasn’t yeilded good results.

So yes, christmas is coming, twin is back, and there will be many photos taken before the year is over. Hit my deviantart account for updates, well at least more than this website for the time being.

Yaay, time for mini update. Term 3 has started, term 2 is over. Essays make me sad, as do last minute design documents. Classes seem more crammed than ever, with three 9am-9:30pm days a week. Sleep is at a premium, and it doesn’t help that my alarm clock doesn’t work. I haven’t been taking too many pictures since most people are away on vacation. Hopefully new photos will appear soon, for now I’m working on old ones I never got around to doing. I leave you with this remastered version of twin.fools asclassic naruto re-creating the “wind” ending.

Anime Evolution 2007 ended a week ago and I’ve had the week to relax, look at photos and enjoy some time with friends. Conventions do take quite a bit out of you, physically and mentally. Add to that the photographers task of taking hundreds (or thousands) of photos and then sorting through them all to find the best. This year attendance was a large 4,200 people - quite a lot of pictures were necissary. Total number of shots for the convention is 3,423 which includes events, the concerts and cosplay photos from around the convention grounds. I don’t have a button made up yet, but if you click gallery you’ll be able to find the 2007 photos quite easily. I did however enjoy the convention thoroughly until my camera decided to die on the 3rd day. It’s been sent to canon and I’m still waiting for word back.

In other news, tomorrow is monday, and the start of term 2 at VFS. Courses will be many and long, and should eat up most of my time. Horray for 9 classes a week! As usual, I’ll try to keep this updated, and also check my deviantart account because I tend to alternate updates.

For now I leave you with a photo of Kate, AE 2007’s (official) Naruto:

I’ve uploaded a couple photos to my deviantart account from the naruto beach photoshoot on the weekend. Please take look and leave a comment. Here’s a preview:

Life it seems is returning to it’s normal pace. I’m looking forward to actually being able to put my time to good use at class and not let it waste. For the most part my website overhaul is done. I may end up adding a few extra navigation buttons, but I believe it’s as easy as it’s going to get. Now that school is in place, I’ll be able to get back to planning which conventions I can attend. As long as it doesn’t interfere with class, I will be on staff at Anime Evolution 2007 here in Vancouver (well in Burnaby but close enough) and I also plan on attending Sakuracon 08 - again class permitting. I’m hoping I will have the privilege of being a staff photographer for a 3rd year, but this remains to be seen.

In local happenings, several movie theatres are showing the first naruto movie - dubbed. While I am old fashioned and prefer subtitles, a bunch of friends are going so I’m sure we can enjoy the movie even if naruto does say his annoying “Believe it!” every 2 seconds. Perhaps put the movie on my cell phone and listen to the Japanese voices while I watch. No doubt there will be some cosplayers, and I’ll be bringing my camera. Perhaps one or two of them will be “high quality” - here’s hoping.

Yes yes, far too long again. But there is good news, as I will be going back to college at Vancouver Film School. Only took 4 months to get the confirmation, but the wait was well worth it.

As for the website, I’m going to spend some time and revamp the blog section to be more photo-heavy. I think I might change to a black / grey theme, but that remains to be seen. I’ve been keeping my deviantart updated with a few new photos, and should have some more come saturday as I’m attending a friends birthday where cosplay is encouraged. In the meantime, here’s one of my more recent photos. I tried recreating the first ending from Naruto, even though my cosplay model is wearing naruto’s time jump outfit. We are both happy with how it turned out.

Aah, another year, another con. I had a great time this year at Sakuracon, and took lots of pictures - just under 3000 to be exact. The next few days will be spent sitting infront of my computer sorting through them all. You may have seen me walking around the convention area… I wasn’t hard to miss as I was the 6′7″ tall Pence from kingdom hearts 2 (Big red jersey with a dog and white lettering, and usually a popsicle or two sticking out of my headband). You may also have seen me at the larger events near the stage taking photos. It was my first year cosplaying, and I was amazed how many people took MY photo (I’m usually the one taking them) or commented on my cosplay. Thanks!

Final registration numbers are well over 10,000 and with most people switching costumes at least once, that’s a ton of cosplayers! If I did indeed miss you in your costume, I do appologize in advance. While I would love to be able to get pictures of everyone, I don’t think it’s humanly possible. If I did get your picture though, I do hope you like it. If you require a larger copy, some touch-ups done, or perhaps removal of a photo for whatever reason, simply send me a email (alex*@*aweatherston.com - remove stars) and I’ll be sure to answer it.

Here’s the link:
http://www.aweatherston.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=13899

I’m sorting photos into 3 categories: Cosplay, Events and Photoshoots. This should help you to find your photo if you attended a photoshoot. I’ll also try to add search tags to images, but that’s low priority for now.

I hope you enjoy my photos, please feel free to comment, and we’ll see you next year (or at Anime Evolution 07 if you’re going) !!

Feel free to use the pictures for whatever you wish and don’t forget to give me credit!