OTAKON, WASTING LIGHT
Otakon has always held a strange place for me. It was my very first anime convention when I attended in 2011, yet is far from my favorite. However, I decided to attend to give myself a second chance after leaving Otakon 2024 rather whelmed.
Film has always been my medium of choice, but there are moments where shooting on film isn’t practical. I decided to make Otakon 2025 a proving ground for improving my 35mm film emulation and to blur the line between the two mediums.
The series is captured digitally using Leica, Voigtlander, and Zeiss lenses, with visual inspiration drawing from Fujifilm based film stocks and movies captured on 8-perf 35mm VistaVision. I wanted the photos to feel rich and analog; clean yet gritty and very characteristic.
I named the series “Wasting Light” after the Foo Fighters album to embrace the raw, chaotic, and electric atmosphere of the convention. While I envisioned Memories of Katsucon 2025 to feel like a triple album LP on vinyl that you could sit down and immerse yourself in, I wanted this to feel like a rock album you could jam to in your bedroom.
I try to capture that energy by having more dynamic poses with my subjects, and embracing wide portraits to balance cosplayers with their surrounding environments. I also embraced my street photography background when capturing the night sequences; instead of controlled poses, I wanted to shoot candid moments and allowing the available light to be a part of the character within that chaos.
While my feelings for Otakon 2024’s photos have softened, I couldn’t help but feel like I could have done more. “Otakon, Wasting Light” was the first time I left the convention feeling genuinely happy with my work. A lot of it came from being around great friends, meeting and working with talented folks, and having a more balanced approach with how I approach conventions.
This is perhaps my most accessible work to the cosplay community in terms of sticking to genre conventions, but I’m okay with it. That being said, I hope viewers came out of this series having a clearer perspective on what a large anime convention feels like.
TECHNICAL SPECS
CAMERA: Panasonic Lumix S5
LENSES: Leica Summicron-M 50mm/f2 V5, Voigtlander Ultron 35mm/f2 II, Contax G 45mm/f2 Zeiss Planar T*