After a MUCH too long hiatus I can finally return to this momentarily neglected website. I apologize for the time spent away while I finished up a few major moments of my life graduating university and writing incredibly important certification exams. Now that it is all behind my I can dive back in to photography and all things geek!

The day after my exams were finished I hoped on a plane to zip home to Halifax, NS to get prepared for the Sci-Fi and Fantasy associations “Hal-Con”. This is held every year in Halifax, NS and has recently moved to the new convention center in the heart of Halifax. This is the 10th year of Hal-Con and it pulls in great crowds and a disproportionate number of amazing cosplay costumes per guest at a rate I much higher than FanExpo or AnimeRevolution in my opinion.

I bought a weekend pass for the family and late Friday night we did a quick tour of the convention. The new location was incredible and the event planners made good use of the space overall. The only major over site I saw was the direction or travel and the flow of guests on the escalators. In order to embark or disembark any escalator you had to cross traffic of the escalator traveling the opposite direction. Luckily some smarty pants finally realized they could take a page from a spiral staircase and change the direction of a few escalators so now guests were motoring right along through all SIX convention floors.

Brief layout of the convention:

1st Floor = Food, guest autograph & photographs as well as some panel spaces and the main Fanta stage with plenty of space to line up for events.

2nd Floor = Main entrance, registration tables, coat check, some panels and Hal-Con art display and competition.

3rd Floor = Transition level.

4th Floor = Empty space filled by giant escalators.

5th Floor = Vendor area. I can’t recall anything else here.

6th Floor = All things gaming. Arcades, VR, Consoles, Tabletop, Board games, etc.

Here are some macro photos with my Nikon 105mm of the miniatures in the painting contest.

This is Helm’s Deep which my buddy actually owns! A mix of photos from my not so great but very handy focal length Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 and my beautiful macro Nikon 105mm lens.

Saturday was a great day of exploration. We walked the entire convention and sized up every vendor. We had our photo taken with Wes Chatham (Insta @officialweschatham) of “The Expanse” and “The Hunger Games” and Amiee Garcia (Insta @aimeegarcia4realz) of “Dexter” and more recently “Lucifer” fame. We also participated in some of the events and ducked out for a lackluster meal with lackluster service at Maxwell’s Plum tavern nearby. I should add in that I embarrassed my family by dressing up as Monty Python’s Mr Gumby and I LOVED every moment of it! The responses from others was great and it was a blast for me!

Sunday was incredible! We arrived just in time for the “Dark Archer” John Barrowman (Insta @johnscotbarrowman) and his sister Carol entertain everyone on the main stage for a Q&A session. We could have cried these two were that funny playing off each other as brother and sister trading and sharing embarrassing stories and moments. A shining moment was when a disruptive baby was mad they he wasn’t getting his parents attention. A few interruptions later baby was brought onto stage and settled immediately since he was the center of the universe again. Amazingly cute guest on stage!

We also attended the beautiful Aimee Garcia’s Q&A panel which was very fun and entertaining to be a part of as well. Remarkably she had a few fans names committed to memory when they stepped up to the mic from earlier autograph and photograph sessions earlier in the day. Pretty impressive mental memory muscles! Unfortunately no photos for this event of hers. Just memories!

Luckily the final event we went to was photography positive and I grabbed an aisle seat towards the back of the room with my Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 G2 on my Nikon D750 and dug in for a shooting marathon. The Cosplay contest traditionally was nearly impossible to attend due to crowds and venue size in previous years. The new convention center was busting at the seams but appears to have handled us all somehow!

Just in case some contestants land on this page I’ll put up all my contest photos. I caught at least one of approximately 90% of the contestants. The rare contestant didn’t pause during their trek across the stage therefore I didn’t get a shot. I don’t typically watermark my shots but I’d appreciate having it on these so if they are shared friends and families know who put a few hours of work into editing all of these shots.

My family loved seeing the creativity and we can’t wait to go back to catch it all again next year! Without further ado here are the shots!
Talk to you all soon!

~Jeff aka the RPG