Yesterday I dragged my heels getting myself out to London Ontario’s Comic Con. I’ve been a little spoiled by Toronto’s massive Fan-Expo experience and I felt a “comic” focused convention might not be enough diversity for my geek personality.

I was wrong!

London’s Comic Con was very well put together and I especially enjoyed the guest speaker panels they had set up for the main stage. I had a chance to sit and listen to Dean Cundey who is the cinematographer from movies such as Halloween, Back to the Future and The Thing to mention just a few! I learned that it is a true myth that when making the movie Halloween John Carpenter wanted a very bland and generic killer so our imaginations would take over and one way of achieving that was by making Michael Myers face very bland. They accomplished this by taking a mask of William Shatner’s face from a Star Trek Death Mask and stretching it out and panting it white with the eye’s cut out.

Even more importantly I learned just now Dean Cundey was the cinematographer for one of my favorite movies of all time, Hook! I wish I could run back inside and shake his hand for that amazing film!

Next up on stage was Alyson Court known for sitting on The Big Comfy Couch, Mr Dressup and the Resident Evil II video game as Claire as well as Jubilee on X-Men the animated series and the list goes on. It was really interesting to listen to her experiences and learn little inside tips such as Mr Dressup’s role was initially given to Mr Fred Rogers himself who then was offered a PBS spot for Mr Rogers neighborhood so he phoned his american friend Ernie Coombs and was able to get him linked into the CBC cast as Mr Dressup.

The last event on the main stage for the day was the Cosplay showcase & craftsmanship awards. Many brilliant costumes walked across the stage including Falcor from the Neverending story! There was also the cutest She-Ra Princess of Power you’d ever see and incredible Coco costumes and more. The cosplay was excellent and the grand winners were stunning in outfits from the video game The Witcher.

With Comic Con ended I was making my way out of the building and passed an opening in the curtains for the CANUSA classic Pro Wrestling event. Not one to pass up an opportunity to try my hand at a few photos I snapped a few shots of Su Yung vs Allie. I only stuck around for the one match not realizing it was free for Comic Con ticket holders. I thought it was a separate purchase. Opps! I would have stayed had I known. It was a great performance!

One thing I did before coming to London’s Comic Con was watch a few videos on how to shoot with a higher ISO. Until yesterday I was terrified to go above ISO 400 on my Nikon D5100 fearing noise in my photos. That typically didn’t work out for me in the past and so I took the internet’s advise to push the ISO to make sure exposure was correct or a little to the right of the histogram. This “should” get all the data onto the camera I need to touch the photo up in post processing. When I got home I looked over the photos and realized I had learned a lot through shooting throughout the day tossing worries of ISO to the wind. Next I looked up removing noise from RAW images and was surprised to find a fairly easy way to dial back on noise. I’m very excited to have learned a lot more about my gear and already have plans on how I would adapt my photography in future situations!

I guess that’s it for me this time. I’ll throw in some of my favorite shots from the event down below.

‘Till next time,

~The RPG