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Something different...

8/2/2016

This past weekend, I went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire in Kenosha, WI.
For those who may not be familiar with BRF, it is a place that recreates a time when knights were noble, maids were merry and turkey legs were to die for. It takes you back in time to a festive village, celebrating a visiting Queen Elizabeth the late 1570s. You find yourself surrounded by villagers in period garb, fairies, folks in a variety of costumes and everyone is having a fabulous time eating, drinking and being as merry as the law allows. As they proudly say, "...revelry is the order of the day!"

There are a variety of things to see and do while there. For a photographer, it's a feast on the eyes as there are so many different things and characters to photograph in various ways.
I had a great time simply walking around and talking to different folks and making photographs of things I found appealing throughout the area.

I particularly loved photographing the fairies, as I love the colors and their playfulness as they frolic around interacting with people. They never say a word, but they say so much through their gestures and demeanor.

On occasion, you'll come across characters that don't have much to do with the Kings & Queens theme of the faire, but they look so cool that it simply merits to be captured as a photograph.

I liked photographing the jousting events. Those are action-packed and are quite entertaining. There are a couple of those per day, so I shot each one of those from a different angle just to get a more complete account of it.

'The Queen's Feast' was an interesting affair. Lots of different characters did their part in entertaining the Queen and the crowd for it. Photographing this, was fun for me.

I did not see all of the different acts and entertainers that were featured on that day as there simply is too much to see all in one day. I did get to see a couple very interesting ones.
This year marked the debut of an Aerial Silk Fantasy act, in which a girl by the name of Lauryn Murray would showcase her skills by floating practically effortlessly, a staggering 30 feet above an area known as Shakespeare’s Meadow. It was quite impressive to see how gracefully she managed to do that & more in the name of entertainment.

I definitely had a great time and will be visiting them again next year.
For a full gallery of the photographs / images I made that day, go to → https://mariosalazarphotography.smugmug.com/Bristol-Renaissance-Faire-2016/

Thank you for visiting my website and reading my blog. Hope you enjoy the images.
Until next time!
-Mario

1 Comment

Rolling With The Punches.

8/1/2016

0 Comments

In life, things don't always go the way we expect and/or plan. Many variables come into play for any given situation and can change everything to the point where we sometimes no longer know what to do.
That applies to photography as well. Things like technical difficulties, people's moods, lighting conditions and weather to name some, have an effect on our ability to get a specific job done. It is then when we put into action our "Plan Bs", our abilities to adapt to change and basically have to "roll with the punches".

Chicago hosts a tall ships event during the summer. It features replicas of a select number of historic ships and galeon-type vessels that were of importance to commerce and other interests as far back as the 1800s in the United States and the continent of America itself.

I had never been able to attend the event in years past due to work schedules. This year, I found myself with some down time on a Friday afternoon & decided to stroll down to the Navy Pier to check it out.

El Galeón Andalucía
Cadiz, Spain

It was a cloudy day, but that doesn't typically bother me as clouds tend to add character and drama to a landscape or scene and I usually welcome that element to my shoots. There was an apparent chance of rain, but I didn't think it would be either high enough or rain until much later. As it turned out, it rained as soon as I got there. The ships were simply docked and all sails were down. They were very majestic, impressive in their looks and I hoped to have seen them out in the water with at least a few sails open, but sadly that was not the case.
It would have been very easy for me to just walk away then and call it a bust, but as I said earlier, things don't always work the way you expect them to, so it was up to me to make the best out of this situation.

I photographed the ships from what I thought would be interesting angles, trying to give them an "epic" look and not make it obvious that they were just sitting there.

The images I made, while just ok by my standards, give a viewer an idea of what the size and few details on the vessels and what they may look like, in an artistic, visually-pleasing way. At times, I incorporate other elements into an image to make it interesting or to better tell any particular story.

The sun eventually broke through the clouds, but I needed to get going by then.
So things didn't quite pan out as I expected, but I still managed to shoot some frames and was able to see what these huge vessels look like. Hopefully, when they come back next year, I'll be able to block out a larger chunk of time so I can see them sailing across the water, the way they were meant to be seen.

Enjoy the photos and thank you for checking out my blog.
-Mario