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hazelchazSaturday, part 3 of 3. (See Part 1 to start at the beginning of this report.)
[Maria: I keep getting a busy signal when I try to call you. My phone's working now, country code 44, 77677 41313.]
During the photography session, they sent presentations over to us, and we tried to turn them around as quickly as possible. The job of coordinating this area isn't a huge deal, but it helps to have people like Nojay and Allan and Vlatko to handle the tech setup and teardown, and to run errands that may crop up. The photographers mostly stayed in one place and used their flash cameras to shoot the costumers. The biggest concern that came up was keeping the lane free from the outside door to the door of the ballroom. We asked for a few gophers, but the Gopher Hole was dry, all the gophers were off-duty watching the Masquerade in the special seating set aside for them. I spent 10 pounds tipping the two barmaids (Louise Hoiles and Clare Thorpe-Tracy) serving ale to try to keep an eye on the lane, and to chastise anyone loitering in the taped-off lane area, or moving a chair or table too close to it. Fan Lounge (next door) loaned us two gophers as well, and that helped a lot. Coupled with the Masquerade gophers escorting the costume entries, it went smoothly.
We'd been told we wouldn't be getting the child entries. We were surprised when a little pink princess turned up, with her mom dressed as a fireplace. We learned that she was our test subject, so we could make sure that we were ready to focus and shoot. There were many fine costumes that came across to see us. There was also the YAFA entry, which had![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jamesb and a crew of young people from the YAFA project dressed and made up as horribly mutilated walking corpses. You had to be quick to get those photos, as jamesb hustled them in and out in a lot shorter time than we usually enjoyed for each masquerade entry. I caught up with the grownups (the YAFA staff that participated) outside in the Real Ale Bar area later.
The very last entry was a group shot, with Death, and Death, and Death by Chocolate, and so forth. Thenpmcmurray came in, in a naval uniform of some sort, and a lovely pink sari clad lady whose name I didn't catch on his arm. And they were our last photo subject -- after that Nojay and crew struck the set.
I am very frustrated with the slow cycle time of my old Olympus. Part of it is the smartmedia card, which has slower access times. Also the flash has to recharge. I'd love to get a Canon Powershot S2 IS like Shawn Crosby's packing these days; it wouldn't be as compact, can't keep slipping it in and out of my pocket, but the quicker power-up time and cycle time would be a great boon to have. I expect I'll be spending money on restoring my website first, though; if heroic measures are determined to be necessary, if there are data on the dead disk that SpinRite can't recover for us and we have to send the old unit to a data recovery house like OnTrack, I'm going to be out $500 or $1000 for that process. (When I mentioned this to Naomi Fisher she immediately pledged $20 and suggested I put up a donation button. Hmmm, I think maybe I will, if it comes to that kind of an expense.) Since my camera wasn't that great, Allan MacBain who's got a modern Fuji camera gave me about 200 pictures from the Masquerade shoot.
The backdrop used Saturday night was basically a single-use roll of backdrop paper. We didn't know how much paper was on the roll; it's possible that there was enough on the roll for two uses. But we didn't know. We checked out the situation at the Armadillo, where we'd be using the Forth room for the Sunday morning photo session. They told us the Forth room was locked up tight, but when we went down to check it out we found it was actually wide open. Nojay, Allan and I surveyed the room. The walls were grey, there were lights built in, and on the whole we decided to forgo trying to set up the backdrop a second time. It was going to be used Sunday morning for the Worldcon Chairs photo, and Sunday evening for the Hugo nominees and winners; and would be a great improvement over prior photo sessions just in the grey-walled room. This is because past Worldcon Chairs photo sessions have been at the Worldcon Chairs "Old Pharts" party, which usually means vertically-striped hotel wallpaper as the backdrop; and past Hugo winners photos have been ad-hoc on stage, with horrific lighting and a dark background. So even if we didn't have lights and backdrop, just doing it in this room would be an improvement. Confident of that, we locked up the floodlights in the secure storage, and went off to bed, home, or parties.
Outside in the Real Ale Bar, I snapped a bunch of pictures of the crowd. I ran intol_zinkiewicz who asked for the "Muggle" ribbons and more "Squib" as well.
The first stop at the Hilton for partying was the Noreascon 4 thank-you party. Christian McGuire thought I'd look charming with a flamingo-straw in my hair, and shot me so adorned. There were a series of big posters on the wall, listing names; the first one had a headline that said "Glactic Patrol: Members of Noreascon Four" and you were supposed to highlight or circle your name if you were there at the party. I think that since the convention was over, the Galactic Patrol must have lost an "A" to become the Glactic Patrol. Maybe there was an apostrophe that went missing - G'lactic?
I ran into young Ethan Lawlor who'd been told I was the person to talk to about getting a few more ribbons on his badge. I told him to go to the back of the room, look for Seth Breidbart and Sharon Sbarsky, and ask "may I please have a hoax ribbon." He came back to the door happy, with one of the red "Interthingie II Hoax" ribbons on. He came back later and asked how to get a "Space Cadet" ribbon. I said he could get one in Hall 2 in the morning; he said that he was just on a day pass, so I volunteered to mail him one when I got back home. He gave me his address in Skibberdeen, W. Cork, Ireland.
At the Kansas City in 2009/Montreal in 2009 party next door, Megan Totusek introduced me to Myrna Parmentier, who I knew from seeing her picture in the Fan Gallery. She's like a favorite aunt to Megan. I showed Megan my slide show of photos so far, and started dozing off while she watched them. That's when we decided it was time for me to pack it in for the night.
[Maria: I keep getting a busy signal when I try to call you. My phone's working now, country code 44, 77677 41313.]
During the photography session, they sent presentations over to us, and we tried to turn them around as quickly as possible. The job of coordinating this area isn't a huge deal, but it helps to have people like Nojay and Allan and Vlatko to handle the tech setup and teardown, and to run errands that may crop up. The photographers mostly stayed in one place and used their flash cameras to shoot the costumers. The biggest concern that came up was keeping the lane free from the outside door to the door of the ballroom. We asked for a few gophers, but the Gopher Hole was dry, all the gophers were off-duty watching the Masquerade in the special seating set aside for them. I spent 10 pounds tipping the two barmaids (Louise Hoiles and Clare Thorpe-Tracy) serving ale to try to keep an eye on the lane, and to chastise anyone loitering in the taped-off lane area, or moving a chair or table too close to it. Fan Lounge (next door) loaned us two gophers as well, and that helped a lot. Coupled with the Masquerade gophers escorting the costume entries, it went smoothly.
We'd been told we wouldn't be getting the child entries. We were surprised when a little pink princess turned up, with her mom dressed as a fireplace. We learned that she was our test subject, so we could make sure that we were ready to focus and shoot. There were many fine costumes that came across to see us. There was also the YAFA entry, which had
jamesb and a crew of young people from the YAFA project dressed and made up as horribly mutilated walking corpses. You had to be quick to get those photos, as jamesb hustled them in and out in a lot shorter time than we usually enjoyed for each masquerade entry. I caught up with the grownups (the YAFA staff that participated) outside in the Real Ale Bar area later.The very last entry was a group shot, with Death, and Death, and Death by Chocolate, and so forth. Then
pmcmurray came in, in a naval uniform of some sort, and a lovely pink sari clad lady whose name I didn't catch on his arm. And they were our last photo subject -- after that Nojay and crew struck the set.I am very frustrated with the slow cycle time of my old Olympus. Part of it is the smartmedia card, which has slower access times. Also the flash has to recharge. I'd love to get a Canon Powershot S2 IS like Shawn Crosby's packing these days; it wouldn't be as compact, can't keep slipping it in and out of my pocket, but the quicker power-up time and cycle time would be a great boon to have. I expect I'll be spending money on restoring my website first, though; if heroic measures are determined to be necessary, if there are data on the dead disk that SpinRite can't recover for us and we have to send the old unit to a data recovery house like OnTrack, I'm going to be out $500 or $1000 for that process. (When I mentioned this to Naomi Fisher she immediately pledged $20 and suggested I put up a donation button. Hmmm, I think maybe I will, if it comes to that kind of an expense.) Since my camera wasn't that great, Allan MacBain who's got a modern Fuji camera gave me about 200 pictures from the Masquerade shoot.
The backdrop used Saturday night was basically a single-use roll of backdrop paper. We didn't know how much paper was on the roll; it's possible that there was enough on the roll for two uses. But we didn't know. We checked out the situation at the Armadillo, where we'd be using the Forth room for the Sunday morning photo session. They told us the Forth room was locked up tight, but when we went down to check it out we found it was actually wide open. Nojay, Allan and I surveyed the room. The walls were grey, there were lights built in, and on the whole we decided to forgo trying to set up the backdrop a second time. It was going to be used Sunday morning for the Worldcon Chairs photo, and Sunday evening for the Hugo nominees and winners; and would be a great improvement over prior photo sessions just in the grey-walled room. This is because past Worldcon Chairs photo sessions have been at the Worldcon Chairs "Old Pharts" party, which usually means vertically-striped hotel wallpaper as the backdrop; and past Hugo winners photos have been ad-hoc on stage, with horrific lighting and a dark background. So even if we didn't have lights and backdrop, just doing it in this room would be an improvement. Confident of that, we locked up the floodlights in the secure storage, and went off to bed, home, or parties.
Outside in the Real Ale Bar, I snapped a bunch of pictures of the crowd. I ran into
l_zinkiewicz who asked for the "Muggle" ribbons and more "Squib" as well.The first stop at the Hilton for partying was the Noreascon 4 thank-you party. Christian McGuire thought I'd look charming with a flamingo-straw in my hair, and shot me so adorned. There were a series of big posters on the wall, listing names; the first one had a headline that said "Glactic Patrol: Members of Noreascon Four" and you were supposed to highlight or circle your name if you were there at the party. I think that since the convention was over, the Galactic Patrol must have lost an "A" to become the Glactic Patrol. Maybe there was an apostrophe that went missing - G'lactic?
I ran into young Ethan Lawlor who'd been told I was the person to talk to about getting a few more ribbons on his badge. I told him to go to the back of the room, look for Seth Breidbart and Sharon Sbarsky, and ask "may I please have a hoax ribbon." He came back to the door happy, with one of the red "Interthingie II Hoax" ribbons on. He came back later and asked how to get a "Space Cadet" ribbon. I said he could get one in Hall 2 in the morning; he said that he was just on a day pass, so I volunteered to mail him one when I got back home. He gave me his address in Skibberdeen, W. Cork, Ireland.
At the Kansas City in 2009/Montreal in 2009 party next door, Megan Totusek introduced me to Myrna Parmentier, who I knew from seeing her picture in the Fan Gallery. She's like a favorite aunt to Megan. I showed Megan my slide show of photos so far, and started dozing off while she watched them. That's when we decided it was time for me to pack it in for the night.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 03:41 pm (UTC)I did have another comment to make, but I forget what....
no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 04:36 pm (UTC)At any rate, I'm sure people would be willing to help you recover the data.