PAX Unplugged 2025 Friday Gallery
After our success at PAX East back in May, we reached out to ReedPop regarding doing the same cosplay photo studio at PAX Unplugged. Because of the timing of so many ReedPop events in the Fall, from PAX Prime to New York Comic Con and more, it took a while for them to get back to us, but when they did, they were very excited about the prospect.
Once all the negotiations were done — and that was fast because we used the same parameters we had hammered out for PAX East — we set out for a long road trip to Philadelphia. Despite one or two missed exits in New Jersey, we made good time and got to the hotel at about 5:30 p.m. Since our studio location was in a hallway of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and not a panel room like at PAX East in the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, we decided it made no sense to set up Thursday evening just to break it down and store it away for security purposes. So, we did the setup Friday morning.
While I’ve seen plenty of social media posts about cosplay at PAX Unplugged over the years, the numbers were nothing like what happens at PAX East or PAX Prime. So, I figured I might get about the minimum number of photos we seek from a single day at a big convention, usually 50. I was very pleasantly surprised to get a total of 100.
That number might have been larger if not for the fact that our hallway location saw much less foot traffic than the hallway just above us. When attendees entered from the main Broad Street entrance, they were directed up escalators to the second floor, which has skybridges that connect the three main city block-sized sections of the PCC. At ground level, the sections are separated by N. 12th Street and N. 13th Street, and the PCC would need security at each street corner or side entrance, so the 2nd floor was the only way to get all the way throughout the facility. And since the Exhibit Hall was on the 2nd floor of the farthest block from us, most people just avoided our hallway.
Luckily for us, the PAX social media team did a good job promoting our presence at the convention both beforehand and during convention hours, and a good number of the cosplayers in the gallery linked below mentioned they made a point of finding us because of that promotion.
Among the cosplayers in this first-ever cosplay studio gallery from PAX Unplugged are lexxblade, thaumielle, vampx13, asc_jkenn, shaileedeann, dy3anoth3rday, borknbeans, saephyredragon, absolutezerocosplay, wreckeur, juicy.garland, arcanegoth, therosecleric, gammaliz, and many more.
Because so many of the cosplayers in this gallery are new to Nerd Caliber, I need to explain again our policy on tagging people on social media. If you have a private account, even if you have put it down in our book, we won’t tag you, because your link will go out to our many tens of thousands of fans. And we don’t want your private account to be potentially flooded with unwanted friend requests.
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.
If you like our work and want to show your appreciation, feel free to tip us at Ko-fi or become a patron on Patreon.
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).
