dormcat's cubicle, Blogger division

Dang, I just realized that I haven't 1) posted links to photos of PF12 day two 2) updated my blog for almost two months! For the past month, poor weather and busy day job kept me away from taking outdoor photographs. Anyway, digital photos of PF12 day two are here and film photos are here , respectively.

Photographs of PF12 day 1 have been organized. At first I was about to sort them out on the same day, but there was a memorable moment on Saturday, a friends' meeting on Sunday, and a wedding feast on Monday night, delaying the process till now. So what exactly was that "memorable moment?" It is now well circulated on the web; for the lesser informed, the picture above has the hint: Aya-chan (cosplaying Tianzi-sama from Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 at right) accepted the wedding proposal from her boyfriend right at PF12; to be specific, not in the costume above, but as Haruko Akagi from Slam Dumk , while his boyfriend cosplayed Hanamichi Sakuragi. The secrecy was kept tightly and she had no idea at all; when she realized what was going on she broke into tears in joy. It was a pity that I wasn't there witnessing the moment of truth. Other pictures are available at her web diary . Aside from the Slam Dunk group, I thought this Athena Glory from Aria pict...

Click here for the photo album. The weather of the second day was much better; not only the temperature rise up, it even became sunny (despite only occasionally), and I brought my Konica Auto S1.6 film camera with me. Unfortunately the film would not be developed until this Thursday (sigh). When taking the picture above, I only knew this pretty girl was cosplaying a character from Touhou Project but didn't know exactly who she was. Instead, I was attracted by the camera she held: a Fujifilm FinePix S3 Pro. As a supporter of Fujifilm, I seldom see female using this camera, let alone using it for cosplaying (too bad it was not her camera either; she borrowed it just for posing). After looking up Wikipedia, I am now certain that she was cosplaying Aya Syameimaru (射命丸 文), first appeared in Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View. Being a paparazzi reporter, S3 Pro fits her character perfectly, but I'd say Tamron 18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 would be much more useful than Nikko...

Click here for the photo album. The weather of FF15 / CWT24 this year was the coldest one I had ever encountered; a strong cold front brought the temperature below 10 degree Celsius. I had to wear my thickest feather jacket when I return to Taipei on Friday. While Saturday morning was not as cold as Thursday and Friday, cosplayers were fewer than previous events; lighting was far from satisfactory either. Tiger × Dragon groups were the most prominent among grouped cosplayers (four or more groups), probably because of the Year of Tiger; SOS-dan, which had been dominating cosplaying for the past few years, were significantly reduced. By the way, it would be fun if the three cosplayers in the picture above showed up at Rie Kugimiya's autograph session at Taipei International Book Exhibition. While it's cold outside (literally and figuratively), it was a complete chaos within the stadium: due to the events were held after the Chinese New Year, many young people have extra cas...

Three weeks have passed since the end of Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE) 2010. Due to some personal factors I haven't had my album organized and uploaded, and I feel terribly sorry to cosplayers and friends whom I promised to give photos to. This time I tried to use the built-in Flash direct linkage to my album at Yam, but it was buggy and could only display resized pictures using Internet Explorer, not with Firefox, forcing me to re-upload the title picture to Photobucket. For larger pictures (960 x 720 pixels) please click here . A cosplayer stole our attention: " yakiisis " (Naruto Uzumaki in the picture above) from the invited cosplay circle " 304 " which came all the way from Hangzhou. Her "Nobody Dance" (for the uninitiated: it came from Wonder Girls ) was not only well-memorized, but each beat was full of strength and speed, yet her body figure remained soft and flexible. Since she has "dancing" as a skill in her personal p...

Click here for the album (digital). The anniversary gathering of Bahamut (www.gamer.com.tw) is a real challenge for photographers: heavy overcast and drizzle outdoor; the gaming area is completely packed; the anime/manga area, while backgrounds and lightings were provided for photographers, the arrangement of those equipments were hastily prepared and I'd rather it had none. The most valuable experience I learned from this event was comparing digital and film photographs under the same composition and sensitivity (ISO). Surprisingly, the combination of Konica Auto S1.6 and Fujifilm Superia X-TRA 400 produced very high saturation and contrast (see below): Pictures taken by S100FS had to be increased 15% contrast and 30% saturation, respectively, in order to produce similar results.

Album of day 1 Album of day 2 The two days of CWT23 had fine weathers in Taipei's winter. In addition to standard equipment of S100FS + PE-36S, I also brought out my Konica Auto S1.6, which had only been tested once at 44 South Village after being repaired, coupled with Fujifilm Superia Reala, their finest consumer color negative film, and the results were quite pleasing. Furthermore, K-ON! @ Tien Education Center has been uploaded as well.

Recent busy works kept be away from organizing my photographs or updating my blogs. Nine new albums have been added to my yam blog , including some that I had shown but not written for. 2009-04-19 Cats along Shen-Ou line ; had written a special blog entry for them. 2009-05-13 A friend's kittens 2009-06-28 New Pingsi Coal Mine ; had written a Part 1 for my visit. 2009-07-12 Locating Hasshaku-mon (八尺門) tunnel 2009-10-17 Matsu 2009-10-25 PF11 day 2 2009-10-25 PF11 day 2 Rin Kagamine 2009-11-08 Tiansongpi Station of Lotong Forestry Line 2009-11-08 Cats in Houtong Photos taken at a K-ON! -only event are the last ones to be organized.

Cosplayer photographs of the first day of Petit Fancy 11 have been uploaded . This is the third raining Fancy Frontier / Petit Fancy I've been through. Not only lighting was terrible, protecting my camera from raindrops was really tedious. Fortunately, while I hadn't met any acquainted cosplayer on the first day, this group of Oh! Mikey (also known as The Fuccons ) did it surprisingly well. Barbara Fuccon's mouth must have been exhausted.

Due to various reasons, I didn't have enough time to sort out cosplayer pictures taken during Comic Exhibition Taipei 2009 until yesterday. Now they can be found at this album (including two members of Taipei City Council).

The galleries of day 1 and day 2 can be found at respective links. In case you don't recognize Sōichi Negishi and his alter ego Johannes Krauser II from Detroit Metal City , here's an easier character: captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean series.

This cute tabby kitten is in the arms of a Di Gi Charat (Dejiko) cosplayer. Isn't he adorable? Other photographs of the first day of PF10 can be found here . My second day at PF10 was mostly occupied by this specific character: In addition to the album of the second day , I've also opened an independent album for this Yuki Nagato from The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi chan . She was so popular that more than 20 cameras were surrounding her at any given moment of the entire afternoon. By the way, I contributed one of the three sub-notebook computers.

A small collection of cosplayers and other event photographs of Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE) 2009 can be found here . Unlike Fancy Frontier, Petit Fancy, or CWT, there were very few cosplayers at TIBE. While the quality of cosplaying contests was very high, the atmosphere just couldn't compare to dōjin events.

I don't really have to tell you who he is, do I? Galleries of day 1 and day 2 can be found by clicking on the respective links.

Near the end of 2008, CWT 20 was held on December 13-14. Coincidentally, the user gathering of Bahamut (www.gamer.com.tw), the largest gaming community in Taiwan, was held on the same weekend (Saturday only), including a cosplaying contest. Unlike Fancy Frontier, CWT is more female-oriented (similar to Petit Fancy), although male fans can still enjoy high-quality cosplayers: Female fans are not left out, of course: More pictures of day 1 and day 2 can be found by clicking on the respective links.

Soon after Fancy Frontier 12, CWT 19 was held on August 10, 2008. I didn't enter the exhibition area of CWT 19 but merely took pictures of cosplayers around the NTU stadium. The quality of cosplayers were exceptionally high; there were comical ones like this: ...and juicy ones like this: More pictures can be found here .

In order to warm this blog up I'll start with providing links to my cosplayer gallery since July 2008. Photographs of cosplayers at Fancy Frontier 12 can be found here . Looking at pictures needs no translation, right? By the way, this title picture of Aria cosplayers was taken by my old Nikon Coolpix 3700, which was one of the best ultra-compact digital camera ever made and could still beat many current models with its vibrant color and sharp lens.