Dragon Con, the Ninjetti Rangers and Jeffrey Hall

Jeffrey Hall isn't a full time photographer, but I'll match his passion for the craft against anybody I know in photography, full or part time. By day he's a Ph.D. scientist working for the CDC in Atlanta, but his love for imaging comes out through Dr. LAW's Photo Lab, owned by Leigh Willis in Atlanta. I didn't get to meet Leigh, but I did get to watch Jeff in action during this year's Dragon Con.

For those of you who don't know about Dragon Con, it's been going on for close to thirty years. It's held in Atlanta every Labor Day weekend covering 4-5 different downtown hotels. My guess is they broke 70,000 attendees this year, all with several common denominators - a love for gaming, sci-fi, role playing along with TV, radio and movie entertainment. At least 5-10 % of the audience come in costume, some of them pretty amazing.

There's a small park across from the Hyatt and during the day characters wander over to be photographed. I had gone over to have some fun with a LUMIX FZ1000 and found Jeff photographing a group of college students. Meet the "Ninjetti Rangers". They're a group of incredibly enthusiastic college students who also redefine passion.

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I love watching artists interact with their subjects, especially when it's an even match of enthusiasm on both sides of the camera. The image above is of Jeff with his subjects. I got them to stand still for a quick group shot. While I'd love to take credit for the image below, they were really captured shooting over Jeff's shoulder. The group shot and the video were shot as they did a quick performance for some incredibly excited kids on the scene.

The images were all shot with the FZ1000. The last piece, a six second video, was just on impulse. No planning, but when the Ninjetti Rangers went into their routine it was impossible not to hit the video button on the camera! Everything is right out of the can. I can't wait to see some of Jeff's images, which will obviously be more professional.