Welcome to the GeekShot Photo Exclusive Series. This will be a weekly post featuring cool, interesting, or just plain awesome moments we have captured during San Diego Comic-Con. Each week we’ll post a photo by Beth or James of GeekShot Photography. We may include a short story about the photo, but sometimes we’ll just let the photo speak for itself.

About This Photo

Hugh Jackman and Len Wein at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con.

This particular moment was both special and sweet. In the middle of The Wolverine panel Hugh called Wolverine co-creator Len Wein up to the front. Then he made it perfectly clear just how thankful he was for the character and Len. It was such a cool moment and I’m really glad I was able to capture it.

This kind of shot did provide some challenges. You have to remember that anyone in the audience is usually much darker than those on stage. In this case even Hugh had less light on him than normal because he was so far to the front and side of the stage. If I had taken the time to change the settings I likely would have missed the shot. Since I was using “stage” settings I ended up needing to increase the exposure in Photoshop almost 3 full stops. I also did some spot changes to make Len brighter than the rest of the photo so it looked a bit more even. Of course when you make this much of an adjustment there is a significant amount of noise to deal with, and I didn’t want to overdo it so you can still see a decent amount.

As I’ve said before, the goal is to get the shot. Even if there is something wrong like the underexposure on this one, I would much rather get the shot than not. Always give yourself the best chance to get the shot by practicing, knowing your camera, and keeping your attention on what’s going on around you.

Did you get a special moment that didn’t come out perfect? Let us know in the comments.

You can see all of the previous posts in this series here.