Romantic Times Convention 2006

May 10, 2006 to May 22, 2006

I went to the East Coast and the South during this time to do camera work on a documentary about romance novel readers. The director and I spent the first week interviewing people from state to state, then the rest of our time at the Romantic Times Convention (held in Daytona Beach, FL, this year).


We started out in Maryland, then drove through Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia interviewing people before we ended up at the convention in Daytona Beach.


Daytona Beach The view from our room at the Hilton on both a sunny and not so sunny day.


The Ellora's Cave Party The first major party at the convention. The semi-nude beefcakes are cover models for the Ellora's Cave books. But more importantly, check out the women!!! What pops into your head when you think of romance novel conventions? A group of middle-aged housewives sitting in a circle and talking about their favorite books? That's sort of what I had in mind going into this thing, especially with my last experience at a romance novel convention...


But who knew there would be such fun and debauchery?! More power to them, I guess. I can only hope that I'll be able to enjoy life this much when I'm their age. ... But still...


These pictures are actually tame compared to what I saw. I wanted to take more pictures, but work had to come first. I could only snap a few shots when I wasn't shooting (which, unfortunately, was not that often - we shot pretty much all day, each day, and came away from the convention with over 50 hours of footage).


Conventioneers all dressed up at the Faery Costume Ball.


Mr. Romance Pageant YES! There is such a thing! In addition to the previous semi-nude beefcakes (most of whom only made the one appearance), there were other dudes strutting their stuff around the convention. The winner of this pageant is rumored to win $50k and a contract for modeling for romance novel covers. Apparently, this is where Fabio got his start. Anyway, in order to earn votes, they pretty much had to shmooze and mingle with everyone there all the time. Sometimes, this involved getting down with some of the women on the dance floor (IF ONLY I HAD TAKEN MORE PIX! GRRR!!!).


The Crew Emily (camera), Shannon (sound, PA), me (camera), and Denis (camera) The main crew, minus Sabrina (the director), who had to leave early due to a family emergency. All 5 of us were squeezed into 1 room (to think it was almost 6!!!) with the gear, so we really had no choice but to be friendly. I mean, that situation could have gone so wrong in so many ways... But in all honesty, this really was a good group of people. I'm glad to have worked with them.	The flight back home... I can't really say that I was homesick during this trip, but it felt really good to know that I was going to be back home.