I attended San Diego Comic Con this year, for the first time. My girlfriend works in the industry and has been going to the show for years, and my daughter is a burgeoning manga and anime nerd, and is now old enough to 1) know what Comic Con is, and 2) know that access is just a polite request away.
So basically, I just went along for the ride, figuring I’d get some quality time in with the kid and make photos. Which is pretty much exactly what I did. And while Comic Con isn’t necessarily my jam, it’s a sprawling event — taking over the entirety of the San Diego convention center, and spilling out into the surrounding Downtown San Diego Gaslamp District — and its general sphere of cultural reference is broad enough to appeal to almost any interest, so I was certainly never bored while we were there.
I tried to avoid taking pictures of cosplayers blatantly posing for the camera, instead working to keep a low profile — dad mode or whatever — and capture people being themselves, regardless of their appearance. That turned out to be more difficult than it sounds. Generally speaking, as soon as anyone in cosplay at Comic Con notices a camera pointed anywhere in their general direction, they immediately get into character. And I did specifically ask one or two people if I could photograph them.
In any case, I managed to make a handful of passable images at the show, and aside from one image in this set, all these photos are in color. It’s just too vivid of a scene to shoot in black and white…