Light and Shadow

Constantly giving the update of "I've been busy" but I seriously mean it for this year's entire autumn season lolol. Lots of traveling—business trips to Austin and Washington DC.... Chicago was a personal trip but due to deadlines I made the mistake of not fully taking the week off (never again) which resulted in working late nights after spending the day with fome's parents..... Next week is Anime Expo Chibi down near LA where I'll be reprising what I did at AX earlier this year—supporting musical guest performers and photography! And somehow I'm going to be challenging taking photos at a wedding for the first time later this month...

This week alone has been insane too lol. What the heck.

• Monday - worked til 6 AM to finish draft of video to send to client (thankfully still slept 5 hours instead of pulling an all-nighter like last time)
• Tuesday - finalized video, it plays at the awards ceremony, lots of great feedback!! 🌟 sometime during this evening, a nasty bug bites my ankle :/
• Wednesday - flying home from DC ✈️ during the flight my ankle swells up to a balloon.... blisters develop.... it hurts so much I limp off the plane.
• Thursday - it's my recovery day from the big biz trip but parents wake me up early to go to urgent care, am prescribed medications
• Friday - meds make my ankle tolerable enough that I still went to our San Francisco stop of BAR Con's Light and Shadow Tour where I helped sell artist merch and took photos! 📸 with some fucked up luck, our tire went flat so after waiting for roadside assistance and slowly crawling along the highway on a dinky spare, didn't get home til nearly 5 AM.
• Saturday - i stopped existing literally just sleep and ded on the couch
• Sunday - ...that's today!

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Before leaving for DC, I also worked on this little promo video for the tour~
Isiliel's reaction to it was so precious I died and went to heaven. 😭😭😭😭

#moonbowgathering#californiadreamin
Thank you everyone who made it to Northwest Idolfest to kick off the Light and Shadow Tour 2022! Next stop is BAR Con Carnival Phantasm 2, on Sunday, October 30! pic.twitter.com/RnKGmnBvrk

— BAR CON (@boozeanimerock) October 25, 2022

Anyway, for this post I just wanted to compile some of the photos I took at the SF show. It was fun, all the performers were fantastic, and I'm happy that I'll be supporting them next week at AX Chibi as well!

Anime Expo 2022 📸✨

{ Currently listening to: "Stay This Way" by fromis_9 🎶 }

Things been crazy again lolololol.

Despite attending Anime Expo every year since 2012—HOLY IT'S BEEN TEN YEARS ? ! barring the two years it was virtual..... This year I hadn't planned on it until a month beforehand because the team I work with for BAR Con was either managing, representing, or collaborating with a bunch of music performers and we just needed more personnel on-site. It was thanks to volunteering at Fanime, having a great time with the team, meeting cool performers, and having so much fun taking photos that solidified my decision and I'm glad I went ;u; Hindsight certainly says I would've regretted not going.

The thing to regret though... most of my friends caught COVID. 💀 It's hard to pinpoint how and when. Miraculously considering I shared a room with someone who's been bedridden this past week, my body seems to have managed to fend it off entirely..? Shout out to my 2nd booster vaccine that I was able to get by citing mild immunodeficiency from my lung risk—you a real one. 🙏

It was definitely a different experience; Anime Expo in the past always felt like a bonding camp where I'd squish into a hotel room with too many friends and we'd just chill together, I cosplayed pretty much every year, and we'd leave at the end feeling like a little family with the stupidest inside jokes. It was the central place where we could meet our youtitty friends from all over the world and I helped out with organizing the AX Youtaite Meetup, sometimes vlogged, one year we even filmed Youtaite React. Heartwarming, bursting with friendship and things that became wild stories, mostly wholesome. Many of my favorite memories are of AX!

This year most of my typical friends hadn't planned on going... until just like me: many ended up there for staffing, boothing, or networking/work-related purposes. Pandemic isn't a good time for sardine-mode hotel room so we did our separate things. Very interesting that we've spent enough years attending the con and gaining experience/rank that we now stand on the other side of the velvet rope—my friends have become so powerful hahaha.

📸🎶

Um it was just March, I blinked, and now it's June...? Huh.......?
Thankfully life did manage to slow down a bit during April, but oh sweet baby jesus lordy—the entirety of May was a month-long nonstop sprint. Just running and running, kept going and going and going.

My month of May was characterized by... spraining my ankle, helping fome move to a new apartment, big work projects, 9 day long stressful but amazing business trip with lots of walking on injured ankle, a national tragedy, and then I ended it with a bang by helping volunteer for Fanime our local anime con.

Specifically it's because I have lots of friends involved with either running or performing for the Dance so I signed on to help with A/V and thought I'd try my hand at taking some photos as well!

Honestly I had dreaded this weekend, not for any external reasons other than that I knew I'd be exhausted. 😔 Going from preexisting exhaustion to a highly exhaustive, physically demanding gig with extremely long hours and high social pressure aaah. I wasn't wrong with these predictions; it felt like I was pushing myself to my limits and somewhere in the middle I even cried from fatigue......

(staff vest bright pink,,)

But what I didn't predict was that. I would.. end up.. feeling pretty happy about the entire experience? Despite the lows, it felt... fulfilling? What I'm left with is only.... glowing feelings? Is it Stockholm Syndrome?

This weekend I met a lot of cool people and made new friends—and I didn't expect that that would put me into such a state of giddiness. 🥺 I'm not necessarily the type of person to actively seek out new friends but how can I not be excited about having met and spent time with folks that I got along with well?! And the little community that formed out of all of us working on this event together and supporting each other warms my heart. Attending the shows was fun too since the performers gave tons of energy, bombass remixes, and it's awe-inspiring to see a huge room of people get hyped over their favorite anisong hits haha.

Admittedly I also have to mention that it feels amazing to see people using the photos that I took. Feels like validation that they liked my amateur photos and just being someone who's considered useful/helpful to others is what I live for. It's extra gratifying since taking photos was purely my idea, nobody asked me to do it, yet it ended up becoming something somewhat significant; I feel honored to have been able to contribute like that and help some of the performers be able to immortalize their experience from what sounds like was a meaningful stage for many of them 😭

Plus, I'm not a real photographer so every compliment I've received on my work has meant a whole lot!! There were certainly ups and downs in my photography—especially at the end of each night when I was most tired, the quality suffered—but I want to think that overall I can feel proud of myself. ;u; This may have been my first time experimenting with angles like this too!

Anyway I just wanted to share some of my favorite shots that I managed to take~ I'm not including every artist and it certainly doesn't reflect at all on my opinion on any of them or their incredible performances. 🙏 This is essentially from a photography standpoint.

Regrettably there were four nights of shows, from 6 PM til 2 AM, so unfortunately I just couldn't make it around to capture photos for every performer... And like I said, my work was really inconsistent—most of the shots came out poorly because of the dark room, ever-changing lights and haze, constant movements, my fatigue, sore arms, having to borrow fome's camera for one of the days and being unfamiliar with it, and not having fast enough shutter speed. These are the shots where luck aligned somehow!