I’ve been kinda busy.  I just had enough time to go through the photos and pick the ones that were viewable posted them up.   So this write-up’s for NYAF is  a bit late.

On Friday morning as a couple of friends were trying to maximize their day in NYC and planned to come into the city early.  So I asked them to do a photoshoot  as  I told them all they would be doing is waiting in a line until 1PM when the convention opens.   I took them to the NYC Highline which is an old overhead railroad tracks that were used to bring meat from Penn Station to the meat packing district ages ago.  Now its been reperposed into  a walking park over the city streets.  It was an interesting experience as we were far from the con and it was too early for people to be to be in costume to seem normal for NYC.  We had a few people stop and ask but the best part was there was a Parks Services guy who I guess was managing the park that walked up to us.  I was expecting it to be one of those we needed a commerical permit or to tell us keep off the plants speaches  as we were close to the edge, but it turned out the guy was into Manga and he even had a sketches in a book of his.

Then for the afternoon I went to work and stopped by the Javits during lunch.  Man my first impression of the Javits was damn this place is depressing without carpet.  It looks like NYAF’s hurting still because they still couldn’t afford to carpet the place.  They also decided to host the World Cyber Games National final.   I only went to see one artist Ryuske Hammotomo.  I really like this guy’s work and wanted to pick up a copy so I didn’t have to worry about holding all day.

At night I returned as they finally had some nighttime programming worth attending.  And it lasted till late night which is rare at the Javits Center.  It was the Cosplay Variety Show.  I’m glad I went because that night I found out that the lens I rented kinda broke somehow during the day.  It was stuck wide open.  So I started to take photos and was thinking man all this stuff is comically bright colored.  I did some in camera setting compensation as the f-stop was stuck.  I have to say the Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 I rented wide-open was really fast as it let so much light in.  Just having to EV compensate kinda sucked.

So come Saturday.  I again took my friends through a runthough and shoot of Times Square.  As the streets are closed to cars we could walk on them and there were places to sit.  I personally nickname the section Death Street as my experience of the first section was 4 years ago in front of the Office Depot.  I was thinking this was  a really cool idea walking around obvious to everything going on.  I quicky changed my mind as my face was 4 inches away from a delivery truck going 30MPH because I almost walked onto the real road.  There was no barrier and the road and walking area’s all on the same level.

Back to the shoot.  I have access to  an office that overlooks at a 34th street intersection.  So I thought it’d be cool to get some overhead shots with everyone the size of ants.   Being the Fashion District I had to get some shots with the needle.  Thats when I noticed everything was coming out dark and I couldn’t figure out why.  In hindsight being in the morning and not 100% awake I failed to reset my camera’s compensation from the night before.  As I normally do a 3-bracket shot I just make it shoot even more frames with an extra 2 stop difference.  So we took some shots on top of the new TKTS booth’s stairsteps, they had some stone Baseball glove I spotted earlier that week,  and just a few street cafe style shots.

On the way walking back I spotted some Vocaloids in the corner of my eye.  I started to take photos while crossing the street.  And stopped on the corner to take a few.  They started dancing because someone on the other side of the street stopped them and was video taping them.

Eventually I made it to the Con.  The floor was way too packed for my tastes.  Even worse than last year.  So I avoided the floor most of the time.  Another friend of mine was in charge of the Maid Cafe.  Man every year they get the rug pulled from under them and have to change plans because of things out of their control.  Panel wise I didn’t go to any as the schedule was way off.  I didn’t feel like going to the concert in the middle of the afternoon.   So i just walked around and shot what I could.  I played with the toy I’ve been ranting about the lensbaby.  I also ran into a cool pinhole camera guy I believe is from Japan Halto Mori.  This camera was pretty cool.

For the night  the masquarade’s line sucked as I waited 1 hour and a half with fellow VIP passholders and some press.  I believe all the VIP passholders we got screwed this year.  Even though we were first in line.  We couldn’t even get front row.  The line for the regular passholders was really long.  It worked out well as it was civialized at least when everyone sat down.  Overall the show was decent they have a few good acts with some crap that they had to throw in.

Sunday it rained so the crowd died down a bunch.  It allowed me to have a bit more fun time so I broke out my current favorite toy.   Here are the highlights.

With that the con was at best average for events.  I had most of my fun running around and hanging around people I know.   The industry’s hurting and what originally made this con interesting is for now gone.   I hope with the NYCC merger it’ll give them time to rethink 2011.