The Munchkin's Notebook

On June 9th, I attended the D.C. Cosplay Photo Shoots ’ meet-up held at Skate N’ Fun Zone in Manassas, VA.  This was an interesting place to hold a photo meet up and challenged both cosplayers and photographers.  The location was very colorful and very open due to the skate rink.  I think this was challenging location due to colors, needing the right cosplay to make it truly work, and possibly needing to be able to roller skate some.  I did take some good photos, but I wouldn’t say this was my best work. For this session I used: Canon R6 1 Speed light Trigger 1 Light stands 24 - 105mm lens Gels Assistant Camera Settings: For this shoot I used a range of ISOs from ISO 100 to ISO2000 when I was in the laser tag section.  Though in general my ISO stayed around ISO 400 to balance ambient and flash.  I kept my aperture wide open at F4 or F4.5 to blur backgrounds, as the backgrounds could be very distracting.  While my shutter speed ra...

On June 2, I did a photo shoot with Coralinx Cosplay at Meadowlark Gardens for her Taylor Swift inspired Folklore fairy cosplay.  The cosplay was inspired by Taylor Swift fan art by Alef Vernon .  I choose to do an on location shoot for this cosplay session, because Meadowlark has several little places that work perfectly for cosplay and allowed for more variety in the photos. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger Small ocatbox. Speedlight Painter’s pole assistant     The set up Since this session was done on location, there wasn’t a lot of set up for the session.  The main thing was getting the speed light mounted on the painter’s pole with a small ocatbox, so I could add that pop of light to the model’s face.  Natural light is great, and reflectors work well but you can’t match the control of a flash.  Th...

On May 24th, I did two cosplay sessions using the same basic set, the first with Ainsley as Marin Kitagawa from My Dress Up Darling and the second with Rizu as Dottore from Genshin Impact.   I did these simple sessions to get me back into a creative mindset since the main part of school was ending at the time.   Note: I officially graduated from The Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy on June 13th and took a week's vacation afterward.   Since these two sessions were to get me back into a creative mindset, I kept things simple and clean focusing on lighting rather than set design. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix strobes 2 600EX-RT Speedlights 2 c-stands 1 Backdrop stand 1 Grey seamless Sandbags 1 5’ Umbrella with sock 2 rectangular soft-boxes Grid Teal gels 2 posing cubes 3 ...

For our last day in San Diego we went to Balbo Park and did a tour of the USS Midway before our red-eye flight back to DC.  It was a bit of a slow day, because I got too much sun the day before at the zoo, and just was not feeling 100-percent.  We got up around 7:00AM and had breakfast around 8:00AM and then finished packing things up.  I checked Mom out of her room and moved everything into my room since I got a 4:00PM late checkout for my room.  Being a Platinum Plus member does have its perks.  We then headed up to Balbo Park and walked around there for a bit and saw the Japanese Gardens and the rose gardens.  I really liked the Japanese Garden and would love to do a photoshoot there one day.   After spending time at the park we headed back to the hotel to drop a few things off and then headed over to the USS Midway.   After touring the Midway we walked over to see the “Unconditional Surrender” statue.  From there, we had a late l...

Today we basically spent all day at the zoo, since San Diego Zoo is very large.  We got up around 7:00 AM and had breakfast at the hotel breakfast buffet.  They had build your own breakfast burrito. I didn’t make a burrito, just had some eggs and a muffin.   After breakfast we headed to the zoo, which was 15 minutes away.  I did argue with the GPS slightly as it wanted to put me on the freeway for half mile, when I could just go through the city streets and not deal with rush hour traffic.  I convinced it to take the city street route.   We got to the zoo right when it opened at 9:00AM and didn’t leave till almost 3:00PM.  Yes, the zoo is that big.   We started in the Wildlife Explorers Base Camp which had some invertebrates, red pandas, owls, fennec foxes, and hummingbirds. We started here because the aerial tram station is there and it takes you to the top of the zoo, so we could work our way down the hill instead of up.  The a...

Today was a day of mostly driving as we traveled from hot and sunny Palm Springs to cool and sunny San Diego.  We left the hotel around 8:00AM and stopped at an IHOP for breakfast.  I had a Belgian waffle and mom had strawberries and banana French toast.   After breakfast it was time to get on the road.  On the way out of Palm Springs we stopped at the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument visitor center before heading up the windy twisty road out of the valley.  The drive was uneventful and since it was only going to take about 3 hours to get to San Diego, I added a stop at the Cabrillo National Monument on Point Loma before heading to the hotel.  It was still hazy when we arrived around noon so, you couldn’t get a nice clear view of San Diego from the point.  We walked the light house loop trail, sadly the light house is being repaired so you couldn’t go up to the top.  From there we got into the car and drove down to t...

Today we got up early to head to Joshua Tree National Park , but not early enough to get there for sunrise.  I did not feel like getting up at 3:00AM to do that, since the park is an hour away and I have not been there before.   It is always good to do reconnaissance before a sunrise shoot.   We got to the west entrance visitor center around 7:30AM just a little bit after it opened.  The visitor center has a large sign at the entrance saying “don’t die today, hike responsibly.”  Inside it lists recommended hikes for the outdoor temperature and a person’s fitness level.  We were only going to do short easy trails.  Once we got our park passport stamps, a couple souvenirs, and looked at the recommended hikes; we headed into the park.                     Part of this is on me and part of this is on the park.  I should have loaded all possible hike locations in to the GPS before entering...