The shoving of crowds along the Exhibitor's Hall. The smell of convention pizza and fanboy funk wafting throughout the convention center. The tight squeeze in finding a decent position to shoot a costumed character while holding back the urge to shoot the other photographers--and not with a camera--doing the same thing. Despite the hellish conditions the average comic book, anime, sci-fi, or general geek culture convention that have become standard convention, I really did miss those times. Last year's WonderCon was abruptly cut short due to family tragedy, which affected the rest of the 2010 season, but I promised to start anew with the San Franciscan comic book convention even if it is for a day. And now it's WonderCon 2011.

And Saturday featured a good round of events including a look back at the 25 years of WonderCon, Hollywood panels, a crammed Exhibitor's Hall, and the Saturday night costuming highlight known as Masquerade. With Yomi as my trusted trigger-woman and the old pistols on hand, I guess it's time to return to the tried and true practice of shooting first and asking questions later. It reflects a more genuine look and feel of the chaos and atosphere of a convention.

While cosplay was either too hard to get a clean shot at due to crowds or not worth crashing onto another person's photoshoot. I never cared for photoshoots DURING a convention since the CONVENTION is highlight of the convention. I have panels to cover, an Exhibitor Hall to explore, and friends to meet. It's about priorities, really. I'll do photoshoots at venues where costumes are the highlight of the venue. So my focus of WonderCon was covering panels like the director of the upcoming film "Priest," the manhwa creator of "Priest," and the Masquerade where cosplayers actually are the highlight of the convention.

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(Hall photos shot by both Tom and Yomi and Masquerade shot by Yomi.)