Harbour Con-fusion 2012 - Small Con, Big Heart!

I had no idea what I was walking into on this one. Originally I had just planned to go and photograph around as they already had an official photographer, but a last minute issue came up and he had to drop out. So I was contacted by the staff and asked to fill the role and I jumped head first in. I was quite set in my thinking that I could do well, but I did run into a few issues, mostly of my own making. Firstly let me say the staff were divine for the entire weekend. The con was very small and thusly I had a small space, no matter I worked with it, bit it meant switching to a wider angle lens and I used my kit lens for the first time ever. There was a large banner in my photo space that I tried to incorporate into the frame at every given chance, this posed an interesting challenge in post. I didn't take very many booth photos during the event, so it worked out well and I could spend the extra time on them. As you'll see from these examples, I did cut the banner out of a few select images.

Beyond the booth I photographed nearly every major event and panel, there wasn't anything special edit wise, it was the same high ISO method I mentioned in the last post. The real challenges came from my errors in my outdoor location shoots. In one shoot I was a little under exposed in my lighting.

Because of the awesome power of RAW files, I was able to still pull a lot of detail from the shadows. My second major error was not setting my ISO down from my indoor shooting during one shoot. Every photographer has made this mistake once and I knew something weird was going on during my light testing but never clued in. What I ended up with was still great, but a little on the bright side and noisy. So I did a lot testing and different methods of editing on various shots.

I'm not unhappy with the end results, I just wish I had been more carful. 

That's all I have to say about the images for now, I would however really like to express how wonderful this convention was. I had one of the greatest experiences so far and hopefully gained a lot of new long time friends from the experience. I'm not saying I didn't make friends at the other cons, but the small tight knit atmosphere let me get to know people better.  I'm actually on the staff for next year and I really want to see this convention thrive and grow. Look for the full image catalog next post!

-Larry M. Holder