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The Washington State Convention Center (WSCC) in Seattle hosts a number of large and small conventions throughout the year, including Sakura-ConEmerald City Comic Con (ECCC)PAX West (formerly PAX Prime)Geek Girl Con and Seattle Retro Gaming Expo (SRGE).

Many people fly in for these conventions, and we're here to help you get from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SeaTac) to the WSCC in Downtown Seattle!

This article is Part 1 in a two part series. The first article focuses on getting to the Link Light Rail from SeaTac Airport. The second article focuses on getting to the Sheraton Hotel and WSCC from the Link Light Rail.

A one-way trip on the Link Light Rail will only cost you $3.00 and can be paid for with either cash or credit card.

 

 

#20: Ride the Link Light Rail until you get to Westlake Center. This ride is approximately 35 minutes long. As of this writing, Westlake Center is the final stop for the Link Light Rail; however that will change before Sakura-Con and Emerald City Comic Con! Starting the week before Sakura-Con, the extension to the Link Light Rail will be open, meaning more stops down the line. So if your friends have told you to "Ride the train end-to-end", this will no longer be the case. Remember to pay attention to which stop you're at!

 

 #21: Exit the Link Light Rail at the Westlake Station. 

 

 

#22: Head up the escalators to the Westlake underground.

 

 

#23: The Westlake underground area is a long hallway with several exits.

 

 

#24: Walk all the way to the end with the Nordstrom sign, and use this exit.

 

 

#25: Head up the escalators following the signs for 5th Ave & Pine St.

 

#26: There will be another set of escalators, continue following the signs for 5th Ave & Pine St.

 

 

#27: At the very top of the escalators, take a right and this will put you between 5th Ave and 6th Ave on Pine St.

 

 

#28: Take a left and go to the corner of 6th Ave & Pine St. You'll be directly under the large Nordstrom signs. 

 

 

#29: Take a right onto 6th Ave and follow the street for one block.

 

 

#30: On 6th Ave & Pike, you'll see the Sheraton Hotel, marked by the large "S" near the top of the building. This building is a good landmark for finding the convention center!

 

 

#31: If you're staying at the Sheraton Hotel, you're in luck! You're already at your destination. Simply walk through the doors on the corner of 6th & Pike, and you're there.

 

 

#32: One block to the left at 7th Ave & Pike St. is the Washington State Convention Center, recognizable for the glass roof over the street. The WSCC name of the building also appears on the side of the glass bridge over the street. 

 

 

#33: You can enter the main part of the WSCC from the corner of 7th Ave & Pike St. under the large Washington State Convention Center banner.

 

 

#34: These directions may seem like quite a bit to follow, but in reality it is only two blocks long! 

  

Jump to the First Article: Getting to the Link Light Rail from SeaTac Airport

The Washington State Convention Center (WSCC) in Seattle hosts a number of large and small conventions throughout the year, including Sakura-Con, Emerald City Comic Con (ECCC), PAX West (formerly PAX Prime), Geek Girl Con and Seattle Retro Gaming Expo (SRGE).

Many people fly in for these conventions, and we're here to help you get from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SeaTac) to the WSCC in Downtown Seattle!

This article is Part 1 in a two part series. The first article focuses on getting to the Link Light Rail from SeaTac Airport. The second article focuses on getting to the Sheraton Hotel and WSCC from the Link Light Rail.

A one-way trip on the Link Light Rail will only cost you $3.00 and can be paid for with either cash or credit card.

 

 

#1: Follow the directions inside of the airport from your gate to Baggage Claim.

 

 

#2: After collecting your bags, follow the "Link Light Rail" signs up the escalators. NOTE: There will be two directions with escalators. The longer escalators head back to airline Check-Ins, this is the wrong direction! The second set of escalators head in the opposite direction, they're shorter, and head to a middle floor between Baggage Claim and Airline Check-Ins. This is the set that you want.

 

 

#3: Take the escalators up to the middle floor mentioned previously.

 

 

#4: At the top of the escalators, follow the signs pointing across the sky bridge that heads into the parking garage.

 

 

#5: As soon as you enter the parking garage, head immediately left along the walking path before entering the actual parking area.

 

 

#6: If for some reason you ended up in the parking garage from the wrong floor, head to the 4th floor.

 

 

#7: At the entrance to the Link Light Rail walking path at the edge of the parking garage, you'll see a sign showing the hours of operation for the trains. This means you're headed in the right direction!

 

 

#8: The walking path to the Link Light Rail is an open-air walking hall way. To the left you'll be able to see the airport, and to the right will be the vehicle entrance to the parking garage behind metal grates.

 

 

#9: Part way down the hallway, it'll curve to the right, and continue down another long open-air walkway. This time you'll be able to see the Link Light Rail platform to your left.

 

 

#10: Here is the view of the Link Light Rail platform from the walking path.

 

 

#11: Near the end of the walking path, it will curve over to the left with another sky bridge. This bridge will have a sign letting you know you're almost there!

 

 

#12: When you enter the Link Light Rail station, walk through the initial gates and head over to the pay station terminals on the right.

 

 

#13: Head on over to a free pay station terminal to purchase your Link Light Rail ticket. Tap the screen on the machine to begin.

 

 

#14: Select the "Downtown Seattle" station group as you'll be heading to Westlake Station. Proceed to follow the on-screen instruction for payment and don't forget to take your ticket with you after it is printed out!

 

 

#15: After purchasing your ticket, head over to the yellow escalators up to the Link Light Rail platform.

 

 

#16: Follow the escalators all the way to the top.

 

 

#17: Once at the top, the Link Light Rail train will be right there. If a train is not at the platform, simply wait a few minutes and one will show up shortly.

NOTE: As of this writing, the SeaTac Link Light Rail station only has one route at this stop, and this stop is the end of the route, so you won't have to worry about getting on the wrong train or wrong direction. There is only one option!

UPDATE: The Link Light Rail now has one additional stop south of the airport. Ensure you are riding the train North to Downtown Seattle. If by chance you accidentally end up on a southbound train, don't stress. There is only one stop very close to the airport in this direction. Simply stay on the trian, and it'll start heading north again shortly.

 

 

#18: Remember, never enter the tracks themselves! Stay safe around the trains. 

 

 

#19: A little piece of history. Before the train leaves, look out the window to see the Hilton SeaTac Hotel. This is the former home of Sakura-Con over a decade ago! We miss you Hilton SeaTac <3

 

 

#20: Ride the Link Light Rail until you get to Westlake Center. This ride is approximately 35 minutes long. As of this writing, Westlake Center is the final stop for the Link Light Rail; however that will change before Sakura-Con and Emerald City Comic Con! Starting the week before Sakura-Con, the extension to the Link Light Rail will be open, meaning more stops down the line. So if you friends have told you to "Ride the train end-to-end", this will no longer be the case. Remember to pay attention to which stop you're at!

 

Jump to the Second Article: Getting to the Convention Center From the Link Light Rail

When VizMedia announced that Sailor Moon would be rereleased plus the creation of a new show, Sailor Moon Crystal, I told myself that I would get involved in it. I didn't know what I'd do or how to get involved, but I just knew there had to be some way, some how, I could contribute something to this most awesome and magical experience.

I'm a collector of artwork. I have a shelf with several anime related art books and cosplay related magazines. Today, The Sailor Moon R: Season 2 Part 1 Limited Edition (BD Combo) is released! With this special release comes a 96 page art book.

It is with my utmost excitement to say that there are two pages in this most awesome and magical art book featuring several photographs that I took at the official Sailor Moon Day at Anime Expo 2014!

There are still 94 other pages of beautiful and amazing artwork for you to check out, plus all the extra feature video content on the discs themselves. The sooner you buy it, the better. ;)

You can pick up your copy of the Blu-Ray today on Amazon! And remember, the extra special features like this awesome art book are only available with the blu-ray. http://amzn.to/1gzGnLN

 

Much like countless others out there, I had the issue where the brand new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC would not start up at all after intalling it through the Adobe Creative Cloud! This was a very frusterating scenario. I could watch the process in Windows Explorere: I could see lightroom.exe load up briefly for a few seconds, then disappear without any notifications. Lightroom 5.7 continued to function perfectly, so for the time being I stuck with that until the solution was found. Luckly for you all, that solution HAS been found, and I'm here to share that with you right now!

 

The solution is this simple: sign out of your Adobe Creative Cloud account, and then sign back into it. When installing Lightroom CC through the Creative Cloud Manager, the application isn't properly registered to your Adobe account, and doing the sign out / sign in cycle forces the credentials to be reset for the application! You can use any other Creative Cloud application to sign out of your account, this includes Lightroom 5.x or Photoshop (pictured below)

 

Fix for Lightroom CC
Vince (Darkain) Vince (Darkain) March 3rd, 2015 at 5:15 AM

There is something important within cosplay/photography the community I'd like to address.

Just casually reading posts on various social media sites, there has always been this trend of passively aggressively attacking photographers, usually anonymously. These attacks, however, are generally only directed at a very select few, yet it is a practice that is carried on by both photographers and cosplayers alike - virtually EVERYONE at that, not even a select few.

There is this complaint that "certain" photographers only work with "certain" cosplayers. There is this complaint of favoritism. There is this mentality that this is for some reason something that should be looked down upon, something that should be frowned upon, something that should be shunned within the community.

Now I ask you this: do you have close friends? Should you be attacked for hanging out with those close friends? What if you got a hotel together at a con? What about going out and grabbing food or drinks together? Would anyone really think twice about it? Then why does it all of a sudden become an issue when a friend takes a photo of another friend?

Let's put this into another perspective. As far as I know, this attack has never really been directed at me personally. But why is that? I have that exact same bias of routinely working with the same few cosplayers over and over again. I do this because we're good friends outside of cosplay too, and some of us also work on projects too besides photography. It is only natural that since we spend so much time together otherwise, that the camera comes out too for some shoots.

But why then, when both myself and the people I work with routinely, we don't get this same level of attack? It is as simple as this. I'm not viewed in that "celebrity" photographer category, and the people I work with the most are not viewed in that "celebrity" cosplayer category.

And yet, our frequency of working together is often times much MUCH higher than these so called "celebrity" photographers and "celebrity" cosplayers.

So, let me ask you this: why is it a problem for them to do these actions, and yet for someone such as myself, it isn't an issue?

This, my friends, is the absolute definition of objectification.

Once someone reaches that so called "celebrity" status, they're no longer treated like people. They're treated like tools, like objects. Things that have no personalities or emotions.

These photographers are being treated like tools. Like things that should simply be used. They're not being treated like humans anymore, they're simply being treated like objects.

Rather than treating these photographers like enemies, think of them more as mentors. They've acquired that "celebrity" social status, not by accident, but by working hard at their craft.

Vince (Darkain) Vince (Darkain) June 19th, 2014 at 6:55 PM

image
 
 

I've been asked a couple times now where I managed to find a wonderful beach around the Kalahari Resort during ColossalCon this year. The real answer is: composite photos! This photo shoot set set up by Elysiam Entertainment featuring Fushicho Cosplay outside of their room at the Kalahari Resort. Elysiam asked if I wanted to grab some shots too, and my only thought was "how could I refuse?" I was there capturing candid and behind-the-scenes photos during this shoot.

 
In this first BTS shot, you can see Elysiam directing the first part of the shoot along with the full Kalahari Resort in the background. This gives a good idea of the environment we were working with, including cars constantly driving in the street behind everyone!
 
 
BEHIND THE SCENES WITH ELYSIAM AND FUSHICHO
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Listed below are the two images that were put together to created the final "Baywatch" photo, along with some settings to achieve desired effects. The first is the shot at the Kalahari Resort featuring Fushicho at the Volleyball court.
 

THE ORIGINAL BAYWATCH COSPLAY PHOTOGRAPH
image
 
 
The image above simply had too many things going on at once. Most noticeable is car in the back ground, the stop signs, some trees, oh and of course the volleyball net. Before tackling any of those in Photoshop, the image begins in Lightroom to help with highlight recovery. The sand on the ground is completely washed out and looks like a flat tan texture.
 
 
LIGHT ROOM ADJUSTMENTS
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To help with the brightness, I lowered the "Highlights" and "Whites" in the image. To help target just the sand within the image, "Yellow" is also turned down. Because I didn't want the skin and sky colors to become too dark, there is a slight increase in brightness to "Orange" and "Blue". These were the only significant changes made to this image in Lightroom.
 
 
 
THE BAYWATCH IMAGE WITH LIGHTROOM ADJUSTMENTS
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A lesson to be learned by all photograhers: You never know when a photo may come in useful. With the Baywatch photo, it was suggested by some friends to replace the background with a water setting. With this concept in mind, I instantly thought of photos from last year's beach photo shoot in Seattle, WA overlooking Puget Sound. After getting home, I quickly searched through that photo catalog to find something that would work out. I settled on the image below because it was shot at a similar angle, with the same lens, with similar settings. 
 
 
THE VIEW OF PUGET SOUND FROM SEATTLE WASHINGTON
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This image was far too bright as it is, and has some cleanup of its own that needs to happen. Most obviously, having another model in the background wouldn't really work out too well! But first, this image needs some Lightroom adjustments. Since I only need it for the water and background, this whole image can be safely darkened without worrying about making the model appear too dark.
 
 
LIGHTROOM ADJUSTMENTS
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Once again, "Highlights" and "Whites" have been reduced in the image. This time, "Exposure" has also been lowered to help darken the entire image. To help make the image more of a blue tone, "Highlights Split-tone" is set to a blue shade, and the "Saturation" for the split-tone is set to a high value. Lastly in the "Calibration" panel, "Blue Primary Saturation" is set to the maximum value.
 
 
THE PUGET SOUND IMAGE WITH LIGHTROOM ADJUSTMENTS
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From here begins the fun in Photoshop! A simple selection around our subject is all we need. "Content Aware Fill" will take care of the rest. This feature requires Photoshop CS5, CS6, or CC. After making your selection, press the "Delete" key on your keyboard, select "Content-Aware" from the drop down list, and hit the "OK" button. Photoshop will do all the magic for you, transforming the left image into the right!
 
 
CONTENT AWARE FILL THE PUGET SOUND
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This same technique is also used on the Volleyball net of the main Baywatch photograph. From here, layering the two images is pretty simple. Place the Puget Sound image on top of the Baywatch image, and mask out around the cosplayer and sand on the ground.
 
 
MASK OF THE PUGET SOUND
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After this point, some basic adjustment layers are applied to create the desired final coloring effects of the image. Cleanup of the skin, ground, and sky are also done. And then BAM, the final results!
 
 
THE FINAL BAYWATCH COMPOSITE COSPLAY PHOTO
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Vince (Darkain) Vince (Darkain) May 16th, 2014 at 10:20 PM

A few days ago, I published a photo featuring Pastel Moon as Elsa from Frozen. Prior to meeting her in person at this particular event, I had never met her or even heard of her before. This is also a location that I had never been to until this very day. As a photographer in the convention scene, resourcefulness of the moment can seriously make or break the quality of a photo shoot.

Having a strong history in making "fire" photos, and seeing an Elsa cosplayer, the idea instantly popped into my head to attempt an "ice" photo. We had discussed this idea a bit, and then set out to find a decent location.

Our first stop was an open field. We took some shots in that area (this article will be updated when those are finished and published). Brian Ewell was with us at the time, and suggested heading over to this large structure about a hundred yards away from where we were at, just across the field.

Around this time, Tom Good, another photographer, joined us. Figuring that I already had the shot that I thought I wanted out in the field, I let the two of them take over the photo shoot. While they did their thing, I started snapping some candid shots from behind the scenes. 

This first candid shot shows off the structure nicely:

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While Brian and Tom were getting their shots, another idea popped into my head... What if this structure represented the very beginning of her building the ice castle up on the mountain? For an experiment, I asked her to put her hands in the air and look right up the center of these three rusted "things" extending from the ground.

As a base image, this worked out quite well to start with. I positioned myself so the sun was directly behind one of these twisty pillars, adding some good glow to the scene overall. 

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The next step would be in post-production work inside of Photoshop. Personally, I don't think a power poll, chair lift, warehouse, or vehicles really represent the feeling of the movie Frozen one bit. This is especially true when you consider we are going for the ice castle on the side of a steep mountain slope.

These objects were all removed with some simple combinations of content aware filling, cloning, and healing.

Next came coloring the scene. Using quick select with refine edge on the rusted object made it simple to extract it out from the rest of the image. Only Hue/Saturation and Brightness/Contrast adjustment layers were used on it. The texture already there on the rust when given a colder tint made it look like the perfect ice texture!

Similarly, the ground was selected, and the same adjustment layers were applied to it, with some minor tweaks to account for the fact the ground had a different started color compared to the structure.  The center of the structure is a metal sign embedded in the ground, which gives off that subtle diffused reflection that would be expected from ice as well.

Lastly, a stock image of a few wave patterns overlaid on top of one another in a single image was used for the ice beam itself. The beam was warped to reshape it from an even wave to tapered size: starting small from Elsa, to large near the structure. 

And here you have it, the final output! About two hours worth of work, almost all of it from masking out the different layers. The coloring and effects were applied fairly quickly afterwards!

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"Building The Ice Castle" - Photo by Darkain Multimedia - Cosplay by Pastel Moon


Vince (Darkain) Vince (Darkain) December 8th, 2013 at 9:37 AM

We are now a full week past the ending of the Indiegogo Fundraiser, and I'd personally like to thank EVERYONE for their support! There has been far greater support for the Cospix.net than simply donations into our fundraiser. People from within the cosplay community all over the world have come together to contribute to different aspects of this project: administrative tasks, programming, design, public relations, marketing, and quite a bit more. I am often credited as the person creating the Cospix.net project, but this is not the case. I simply created an idea, and the community as a whole is coming together to turn that concept into a living reality.


With all of that said, there has been little public updates about what has been accomplished within this past week, save for the dev log for the site.
First and foremost, this article that you're reading is new. The ability to write articles is now fully in place, and any member of the site can contribute articles! This is still an early work in progress, but that is the nature of an ever-growing web site. New ideas come along, and things are continually improved upon.


Next, we have something more along the technical lines. The site's CSS and JavaScript content is undergoing some major optimizations to minimize their size and resource usage, making pages load more smoothly on mobile. From there, the site is nearly total full HTML5 validation. In addition to the HTML5 validation, every page is also being extended with HTML5 MicroData, OpenGraph data, and Cards data. Besides building a web site for end-users, I personally believe that the site should integrate as tightly as possible with the leading tools in the world: Google, Facebook, Twitter at this current time.


And with that said, we push into the final 3 weeks before the public launch of the web site at the first of the year!
 - V
Vince (Darkain) Vince (Darkain) December 7th, 2013 at 12:02 AM

CanonNikonSigmaTamron
EF 35mm Full Frame F-Mount 35mm Full Frame DG Full Frame Di Full Frame
EF-S APS-C 1.6x Crop DX-Mount APS-C 1.5x Crop DC Crop Sensor Di II Crop Sensor
EF-M Mirrorless 1-Mount Mirrorless DN Mirrorless Di III Mirrorless
L-Series Luxury     EX Excellence SP Super Performance
USM Ultrasonic Motor AF-S
SWM
Auto Focus Silent
Silent Wave Motor
HSM HyperSonic Motor USD Ultrasonic Silent Drive
STM Stepper Motor            
IS Image Stabilizer VR Vibration Reduction OS Optical Stabilization VC Vibration Compensation
TS-E Tilt-Shift
Electromagnetic Diaphragm
PC-E Perspective Control
Electromagnetic Diaphragm
       
Macro Close focusing Micro Close focusing        
I/R Internal/Rear Focusing RF Rear Focusing IF
RF
Internal Focusing
Rear Focusing
IF Internal Focusing
FT-M Full Time Manual Focusing            
    ED Extra-Low Dispersion APO Apochromatic LD Low Dispersion
DO Diffractive Optics PF Phase Fresnel