Anime Boston 2026 Friday Part 1
Imagine my surprise when, after arriving at the Hynes Convention Center for Anime Boston 2026 and making my way up to the second floor Community Row where my table was again located this year, I saw that they had repainted the fun and interesting red walls a plain, flat, boring white.
Since we stopped using a backdrop in 2017 anyone could instantly tell where we took any photos from Anime Boston because of the distinctive red wall background. Now the photos look like they were taken in almost any large institutional hallway. Still, I pushed through my disappointment (at the Hynes and not Anime Boston — they had nothing to do with the change) and set up to be ready for the Dealers Room and Artist Alley to open at noon. I brought a second flash to use as a fill light and decided to not go with the blue I would have used for the red walls and go with a deep orange.
My second surprise was when the fill flash gave off not a gentle pop sound upon testing but a loud “kerPOW!” Sure enough, the flash tube in the head had popped, and it was now useless. And I had not brought my third spare flash in order to keep down the weight of my gear.
I guess my exhaustion from still working PAX East galleries and having another convention one week after that incredibly busy four days must have kept me from reacting badly to all of these setbacks, because I mostly just shrugged and finished setting up with my usual single flash. Once my table assistant Clever arrived, I was basically back to Anime Boston as normal, taking photos of cosplayers that knew where to find me and calling out to ones that wandered by.
Cosplayers in this first of three Friday galleries include contradan_cosplay, notprofessionalcosplay, Metallic Moon Cosplay, neocoolstar, themaskedoptician, sunbunnycosplay, generalbenkenobi, shadeseer19, magicalwarriorscosplay, bashfulfruit, bigbluecetacean, thymewithfinn, megincosplay, mllextine, Adventures of Clever, bad_phoenix_wolf, and many more.
We use Smugmug to present cosplay photo galleries. To view the entire gallery, just click on the image below. If you are pictured in any of our galleries, feel free to download the images and use them non-commercially on social media, with appropriate credit.
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Also, High-res images for sale is back!
If you are pictured in any of our galleries and want the high-resolution (3200 pixels at its widest by 300dpi) download for yourself, we can make it available via a private Smugmug link, for $10 per image. Just send an email to editor AT nerdcaliber.com. Currently limited to only photos taken by FirstPerson Shooter (aka Rodney Brown).
