Photo An Hour is a link-up that I’ve seen Bev do a bunch of times, and she always mentions linking up with Louise and Jane, who I don’t know.  The premise is simple-  you take a photo each hour and post it in real time.

I haven’t ever done a Photo An Hour before, but the March Photo An Hour happened to fall on the Saturday of Spooky Empire, which is a great little convention-  not as big as a ComicCon or MegaCon, but still with enough interesting stuff going on to warrant a day out of the apartment.  Spooky happens twice a year in Orlando, and while the predominant focus is horror, there’s plenty of sci-fi and other genre representation.  For example, last year they had an Animal House panel- screwball college comedy is hardly horror.  In accordance with tradition, I went to Spooky with my friend Lorrie.

I’m not aware of any particular rules for the Photo An Hour, but I set one guideline for myself:  I would start at 9am and end at 9pm- twelve hours is enough of my noise.

9:00 AM – I started off the first hour with a quick nosh to get the day started.  I don’t usually get super hungry first thing in the morning, so I tend to go light until I’ve been up for a while.  Some cold sweet tea and a Zone Bar was enough to get me out the door.  Side note:  Sweet Leaf is my preferred caffeine infusion.  They recently changed their formula to reduce the sugar, and I was super relieved to not hate the new version.

10:00 AM – We arrived at Spooky Empire, and sifted our way through the lines of waiting people to find the table where we could pick up our wristbands for the day.  On our way back out, we spotted some really great cos-players.  I kinda want the Joker’s suit.

11:00 AM – Just before entering the merch room, we took advantage of a super silly photo cut-out.

12:00 Noon – We started off the noon hour in the autograph room with Carel Struycken, my favorite 80s/90s tall guy. He was in just about everything for a while, from Star Trek to Ewok adventures to Lurch from the Addams family.

1:00 PM – Frankenberry has obviously been hitting the gym.  Seriously, though, I applaud the creativity here.

2:00 PM – One of my favorite things at any convention is cosplayers who have done something out of the ordinary, something clever and creative.  This evil Wonder Woman, for example- her consort (not pictured) was a Marvel Zombies version of Captain America.

2:00 PM Alternate – I also snapped this picture in the 2:00 hour, but I posted the other one on March 23rd.  I wanted to include this one here though, because what other use could I possibly have for a Hellraiser-Deadmau5 crossover?  This costume was really amazing.  And kind of funny.  I wonder what you’d call him… Maybe Pinmau5?

3:00 PM – At 3, we attended the E.T. Panel featuring Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, Robert MacNaughton, and Matthew DeMeritt who was in the E.T. costume.  See, I told you it wasn’t all horror at Spooky Empire.  Dee, Henry, and Robert are in the photo.  Matthew DeMeritt was a little too far off to the left, and I’m afraid my pictures of him aren’t nearly this clear.

Side note:  I love hearing stories of behind the scenes stuff from the filming of things I love.  I find it to be super entertaining and super interesting at the same time.  That’s why the panels are my favorite things at any convention. (Followed closely by the costumes and the merch rooms, naturally.)

4:00 PM – Back in the merchandise room, we accidentally stumbled into the Upside Down.  She’s got the Eleven glare down.

5:00 PM – Time for the Christina Ricci Q&A panel.  We had managed to see an Addam’s Family panel earlier in the day, which included Carel Struycken and Jimmy Workman (Pugsley,) but which did not include Christina Ricci or Christopher Lloyd, who were both in attendance that day.  I suspect they didn’t join for scheduling reasons, but maybe it was to prevent the panel from overcrowding, since both Christina and Christopher Lloyd had their own separate panels later.

6:00 PM – After Christina Ricci’s panel, we left the convention and schlepped over to Red Robin for dinner and some refreshments.

7:00 PM – I had to cheat for the 7:00 hour because I was mostly driving for the entire hour.  Instead of dangerous highway photos, here’s my dinner from the previous hour.  The burger was delicious and amazing.  The french fries were… lackluster.  The nicest thing I can say about the fries is that they were really large.

8:00 PM – After we got back to the apartment, I did a quick scan of the paper photos from the day’s photo ops so that we have a digital copy. This is the photo with both Christina Ricci and Christopher Lloyd, opened in Photoshop after scanning.

9:00 PM – I closed out my Photo An Hour day with dessert.  It was a long day, and my sweet tooth would brook no further delays.

The next Photo An Hour is on Saturday, April 27th, 2019.  If you want to play along, simply take one photo every hour and post to Twitter or Instagram using the #photoanhour hash tag.  Alternately, save your photos and write a blog post afterwards.  I may very well do the blog-later option, because I’ll be in Chicago that weekend!

Have you ever been to Spooky Empire? What was your favorite panel or cosplay?