Happy Trails, Kevin Lillard

I think I can say that I’ve been fortunate that there haven’t been a lot of deaths in my life of people that really, genuinely impacts me.  The passings of figures and celebrities are sad, like when Bobby Heenan or Sonny Chiba passed, but they’re still celebrities to me and I never knew them personally.

But today, I found out that a guy I knew way back from my old convention days passed away, and it definitely was a wtf kind of moment to hear about, and brings me sadness to have learned about it.  Kevin Lillard, a legendary figure to those of us convention going olds from the late 90s into the 2000s, who was a photographer and historian who ran the very well-known Fan’s View website, where he went to a staggering number of conventions every year and basically photographed every single costumer in existence at the time.

Like, a convention wasn’t a convention if Kevin Lillard wasn’t there to document it.  At the time, there were only really like 9-12 conventions a year, and he would somehow go to each and every one of them.  I remember the first time he pulled double duty, and was at one convention on a Friday, and literally flew out Saturday morning so that he could go cover a second convention for the remainder of the weekend.  I was floored, because it was always one of my goals to get him to join my merry group of miscreants for dinner or an off-site outing, because I was a hipster and was always planning on ways to flex being too cool for the conventions, but he was ever the loyal, consistent guy with the press pass who always, always dutifully did his own thing for the sake of his site.

It’s funny looking back, because I really only was hardcore active in the convention scene for like 2-3 years before petering out for the next few before I really kind of stopped going to anime cons outright.  But I can confidently say that I developed a friendly relationship with Kevin throughout those years, and I genuinely liked and cared about the person.  Like many people, I had pored and combed through his site over the years, and even through his non-anime convention stuff, I saw that he had covered an ECW house show at one point, so I knew he had to have had some interest.  In 2000, when my friends and I were planning to go to an ECW show that overlapped with Katsucon, I made a point to lobby hard to Kevin to try and get him to come with us, to which he was interested, but politely declined so that he could document the opening ceremonies instead.

But that was the Kevin Lillard I grew to know; consistent, always friendly and polite, and without question the most unbiased and inclusive person that stepped foot into every single convention he went to.  It didn’t matter if a costumer was a hardcore tryhard cosplayer, or a novice teenager in a cardboard Samus suit, he took everyone’s picture.  He and his camera had the innate ability to make people feel special and confident, and give them something to look forward to later to just know that they were going to be able to find their picture on his website.

I remember the first time he took my photo, I was dressed up as Tasuki with my friends also in Fushigi Yuugi costumes.  I was quite tickled when I found the photo, and throughout the ensuing years, it never didn’t make smile whenever I came across myself, or friends, and to recollect the stories and memories of a convention weekend through his parade of photos.

Through his site, I enjoyed a little bit of convention credibility when he had made me one of his personality of the weeks, and written some nice words about me, and my dedication to going to conventions and having fun at the time, which really touched me, because he was usually a little dry and sarcastic in conversation in person.  I was an antisocial awkward teenager, and his acknowledgment and exposure really did a number for my confidence, and considering there are a lot of people from those days that are still actively in my life today, there’s something to be owed for that.

After the journey of life drifted me away from conventions, I heard bits and pieces of his health and life in general.  When I finally came aboard Facebook much later, I wish I had reconnected with him at some point, but I suppose the opportunity just never presented itself.  I’d probably have loved to have had a conversation with him about the changes of the convention scene that had happened throughout the last 20 years, and gotten his take on, everything, from the sheer number of cons, to the immense growth of the cosplay community and its skill levels.

But would’ve, should’ve, could’ve; things didn’t happen that way, we never reconnected, and now I’ll never get the opportunity.  Such is the nature of living and the passage of time sometimes.  Regardless, it does not make me any less sadder than any of the numerous people who are discovering this unfortunate news today as we all are, and I just wanted to put some words down on brog to express my appreciation for his existence, some positive memories I have of him, and well wishes to whatever happens next in his journey.

Happy trails, Kevin.  It was an honor to have known you, it’s an honor to have a rare copy of your book, and I appreciate all your contributions to a scene and culture that would undoubtedly never grown to its current heights without you.

I wonder if there’s any coming back this time

MomoCon was this past weekend, and I didn’t go at all, even despite future wife and I having free badges, courtesy of a friend who worked for the con.  We had a lot of wedding decorations to do over the weekend, which consumed pretty much the entire three-day weekend, but the thing is that even if we had no plans, I can’t say that I really would’ve gone anyway. 

I didn’t really know of that many people who were going that I’d have wanted to hope to run into.  And frankly, I had little desire to fight the traffic to go into Downtown Atlanta on a holiday weekend, and I didn’t really feel much desire or inspiration to get my camera out and take pictures of costumers.

The thing is, this time last year, I was in a position where I had wanted to go to MomoCon, but couldn’t, because I had to entertain guests in from out of town.  I had undeniable FOMO as the weekend trucked along and I wasn’t there and I was disappointed that I didn’t get to go when the weekend had passed.

However this year, I felt no FOMO at all, and I simply didn’t care that didn’t go.  I thought maybe it’s because my weekend was so booked up was why I felt that way, but as I said, there’s no guarantee that I would’ve gone in the first place even if I had the free time.

What I’m getting to is that I think I’m over conventions again.  I say again, because for those who’ve known me for a long time, might remember a stretch of time where I was kind of burned out on conventions, and I really stopped going and actively sought out alternative things to do during them so I could deliberately distance myself from them.  There was part of me that was just being a hipster about things growing in popularity, and there was another part of me that was growing jaded by the increasing notion that conventions were turning into vehicles for attention-starved narcissists to be fake, and some really unsavory clique culture forming.

I eventually got excited about them again, because I had a lot of friends who started becoming the people that ran them, and gave me a little bit of preferential treatment if I showed up to them, and that I also had other friends who were very inclusive of adding me to their costume groups and gave me real drive and objective to wanting to participate and attend.  For a couple of years, cons were fun again, and I was enjoying them again.

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Sad, but understandable

TL;DR: Canon CEO admits that they can’t really compete with the burgeoning mobile photography demographic

There’s a defiant change-resisting part of me that wants to erupt in a knee-jerk reaction and proclaim that cell phone cameras may saturate the world of photography now, but they’ll never compete with the quality of a traditional camera!  Honestly though, I don’t really feel like I can however.

Not only have cell phone cameras really closed the gap in capabilities of even the most bulky and expensive DSLR cameras out there, I also fall into the demographic that’s kind of tired of lugging around a brick with a heavy lens that’s cost me nearly $2 grand and is fragile as shit.  At the time I’m writing this, I have an embarrassingly large backlog of photos that I haven’t processed because they’re RAWs, and I typically do them one at a time, but the thing is I don’t have as much free time anymore as I used to, and I’ve got over half of my last European vacation photos to go through, as well as starting the photographs I took at Dragon*Con many months ago.

I don’t regret investing in a decent camera and investing even more in a bunch of expensive lenses; among the thousands of photos I’ve taken over the last decade, I’m sure I’ve got at least a handful of good ones that made it all worth it.  But the fact of the matter is that looking towards the future, I know that I’ve gotten more and more tired of lugging around “gear,” all for the sake of accomplishing what the modern cell phone is getting closer and closer to accomplishing.  Even during my last day in Germany a few months ago, one of the most liberating things was the fact that I had decided to not bring my camera with me, and to just go out and enjoy Munich without it.

Although I’m often behind the times when it comes to cell phones, mostly because I still don’t really consider my mobile device as my primary camera, and I don’t feel like keeping up with the Joneses and constantly updating and upgrading to the newest and latest and greatest phones because I want a better camera, I really do understand the general appeal of mobile device photography.  It’s literally going from your pocket to your hand, and you’re getting amazingly decent results from a few taps onto the screen.  There’s no wheels to turn, F-stops to adjust, no white to balance.  In the matter of seconds, a competent photo could be taken, as opposed to the vastly longer time it takes to configure a camera for the same result.

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Photos: A couple of engagement pictures

[2020 note]: because mythical now-wife and I wanted to unload most of our wedding budget on stuff like hiring a baller photographer and getting the best catering we could (that we ourselves were barely were able to eat), engagement photos were one of those things that we kind of took a DIY approach.  I’ve got an okay camera with a few okay lenses, and in the end, we only needed like 1-2 good photos to use, so we took it upon ourselves to orchestrate our own shoot on a cold-ass December afternoon like the geniuses we are.

And then we went to get some beer at Gate City Brewery in Roswell, to where it turned out to be a good place to take a few shots there as well, because we’re classy folks.

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2018

[2020 note]: this is unposted content from 2018’s Dragon*Con.  I actually sat on these photos for nearly two full years, because as my post-2018 Dragon*Con post alluded to, I had kind of a forgettable time, and I skipped out in 2019 to zero regrets, and had no plan on going to 2020, even if coronavirus weren’t a thing.

It wasn’t until I began to chronologically catch up to Dragon*Con 2018 did I realize that I never touched the RAW photos, and I broke my posting stride just to make sure that these didn’t slip through the cracks and never get posted.

Looking back at these photos, the sheer fact that there are only 60 photos should be sign enough of just how unenthused my heart was going into this convention.  I used to want to shoot hundreds of pictures, but a combination of my inability to enjoy the con, not really seeing things that make me want to shoot, and I guess being at the wrong places at the wrong time to not see the things I wanted to see, leads to a really small photo count.

But it’s the ones with friends that matter the most, and ultimately I’m okay if there’s more of those photos than of people I don’t necessarily know.

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They were never uncool, you hipster douches

full disclosure, this is a 2020 photo, since I left photo direction on the original word doc, which explains my quarantine hair that’s all white.

Impetus: Instagram losers start community dedicated to photos taken with older digital cameras, claiming they’re cool again; but the question is, were they ever uncool in the first place?

It’s articles like this disenchant me from photography.  Some arrogant photography snobs on the internet dictate on what’s cool and what’s not, and thousands of idiot sheep with no capability of independent thought buy in, and because perception is reality, it perpetuates this cycle where others fall in place, and suddenly things are cool, and things are uncool at the drop of a hat. 

For lack of a better term in context of the related link, I’ll go ahead and call them digicams: portable, brick-sized-or-less, point-and-shoot cameras.  Not DSLRs, the big, clunky cameras with detachable lenses that cost more than car payments, or any other cameras that act like Polaroids without actually being called Polaroids.

But anyway, there’s apparently an Instagram community dedicated to photography shot on old digicams, and how they’re declaring that they’re cool again.  Leading me to beg the question, when were they ever uncool in the first place?

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