At this point I was a pro. Not only did I feel like I mastered my niche, but I had also honed a talent that had remained only fairly useful in my everyday life. You know the people that can name obscure characters from shows? Well, that’s me (depending on the reference). However, this random talent also includes facial recognition and the uncanny ability to spot celebrities. When I spot a face, I tend to remember it.

With all of that in mind I decided to level up. As the hipster millennial, I thought “yeah I can take pictures of celebrities, but how crazy would it be to get them on film?!” I had some serious under 25 confidence. I’m glad I did it because the results created the most unique series of pictures I’ve ever taken. One even won me a prize!

Here it Goes. Venturing into the Gaslamp was something I was excited to finally experience. Staying in another city and driving in with a group of others pulls you in different directions in the best way. However, this year I was tired of missing out on all of the downtown festivities, so we ventured.

The first off-site visit was to a millennial icon: Conan. He had various artistic renditions of his likeness. It was a glorious display. Fans were even allowed to be a part of one of the installations by coloring their own portion of the artwork. Unfortunately, his real likeness alludes me. Much like the evasive sasquach, I have yet to get a good picture of Conan himself. Below you can find a picture of what I did capture, his famous red coif.

A few other things found in the wild… The thrill of the hunt came when I had to track the Adult Swim ice cream truck that handed out free Ben & Jerry’s. Man, do these people know how to market. Also a relic of the time included semi trucks driving down Harbor Drive. The resulting picture was of that undead dude’s terrifying mug found below. Also featured, the double deckerTrue Blood buses meandering in front of The Con. More on this series later.

Looking back, there were sadly so many things that will never be. For instance, before twitch and popular gamers, there was G4. They stood proud and prominently in the middle of the exhibit hall where they filmed and broadcast Attack of the Show. At this point Olivia Munn cordially exited the show, was replaced, and the show was still very present at the Con.

Also featured, the originators of twitch?? Not really but Adam Sessler and Blair Butler were the premiere source for what’s what with games and were in attendance ready to update their viewers. Check the pictures below for other G4 vets.

Do you remember the height of vampiredom? No, well, let me introduce you to the cast of True Blood. HBO was dominating home entertainment with a few of their series including Game of Thrones and I think East Bound and Down still had some pull. I was into it. The year prior I had gotten so close to the wolfman and the unrequited human love interest, but I still had one task to complete.

Sometimes the roulette wheel can turn in your favor and this time, it did mine. Every other year the main cast had eluded me, but this year I finally got beautiful 35mm shots of some of the main players. They were gorgeous and also totally nice.

One of my favorite stories happened with, as you can see, Ken Jeong. At the time no one was sure who’s baby Shirley was having. Of course, we were Chang stans so we prepared accordingly. Our group went to the Community panel and decided we needed a sign. We spelled out “we want Chang babies” directly related to the shocking Shirley/Chang story line. We were too far back when the cast exited and left with no hope that he had seen our sign. Then as luck would have it, we walked out of the Hilton and there he was. We yelled his name from across the road and he read our sign. He was so happy, came over, signed our signs, and took a picture with us. The kind person who took the picture cut out a member of our party which was a bummer, but we were so excited he took the time to see us. Forever Chang’d.

Some other celebs from the floor as a professional nomad. First, the cast of Napoleon Dynamite got together for a signing for their animated series. Gotta be honest, I had to google why they were there because it has been a while and their movie was a few years old by that point.

A random assortment of celebs. It was nice to see Michael Jai White and Nestor Carbonell at the same Con post The Dark Night. Also, totally random to see Danica McKellar a.k.a. Winnie Cooper. Clearly she has done more since then, but I was convinced she perpetually lived somewhere in the 80’s/90’s. Not really.

Catching Son’s of Anarchy stars was a surprise. Normally timing for big shows, even if I didn’t normally watch them, was rare. This year seemed like timing was good and assortment of celeb sightings was completely random.

Another example, I was standing in the exhibit hall and ran into the It’s Always Sunny cast. As chill as ever and Glenn even smiled for my camera. Con magic. This time, I didn’t seek them out so that new people could be able to see them. Fortunately, I ran into them anyway and it was a welcome surprise.

Quick exhibit hall break. Some of the things that stood out and still make The Con so different. Networks/shows do the best job of hyping up new shows and providing iconic visuals for their already successful ones as you can see below. The nostalgia was also very present with the Delorian and upside down Spiderman a la Andrew Garfield.

Another 35mm assortment of the celebs I ran into at The Con. I’m most definitely a late bloomer for the LOTR movies, so it almost seems like I kind of wasted a whole celeb encounter there. I did enjoy his early movies though.

Finally, the picture that helped me score a 4 day ticket to New York Comic-Con. Blacked out the middle person’s face for privacy reasons, but here it is. One of the most hilarious cosplays I had ever seen. It may seem like this took no effort to the untrained eye. However, as any 90’s/00’s girl can tell you that much glitter takes work to apply and I can only assume he is still removing said glitter. The level of commitment was obviously high.

Getting celebs on film was a difficult task and did not come without some blurry pics. After getting these albums back from the lab though, I felt I’d earned a seasoned nomad status. I’ll leave you with some of my Sunday antics. Mostly, it’s spending time in the comics, getting some final looks, and the old Sunday meal at Anthony’s. Stay tuned for more…