The Ohio Renaissance Festival is a magical place. Will and I spend many autumn weekends dressed as pirates, wenches, merchants, nobles, rogues – whatever we can dream up. We recently had to buy a wardrobe for all of our costuming clutter. We’re a bit obsessed.
The energy at the ren faire is infectious. You see one suit of armor walk by, and suddenly you’re running to ye olde chain maile shoppe to get fitted. You’ll even find children’s sized tiaras and overcoats, tunics and skirts. The pressure to wear garb is real! Buying and/or making an outfit is a huge source of fun for rennies, but faires also offer garb rental shops for convenience. Even with that in mind, it’s still an expensive hobby.
You’ll find plenty of people dressed in “normal” clothes at your local faire, and I totally get it. Some people feel weird dressing up. Lots of parents don’t see the point in dropping tons of coin on garb that their kids will quickly grow out of. And of course, the price barrier in general for the good stuff – rennies pay their artists well! The one down side to this is that, despite the period-appropriate surroundings with plenty of interesting background characters to spice up your pictures, there’s always someone photobombing your time-traveling moment with modern clothes.
In my picture on the left, we have a cute little girl sitting at the pond behind Will. In order to un-center Will as the subject, and to hide away this kiddo, I cropped the image slightly. What’s interesting is how the image shifts from a simple posed picture to something a bit different. It’s almost like Will is gesturing at the pond and all of the other patrons behind it, like “look at the faire in all it’s glory!”. He almost looks like a character that gives out quests to new players of an RPG. And of course, it makes the Captain Morgan comparisons even easier to make.
Hi! I absolutely love ren faires. The mood and atmosphere is unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced. It also makes for amazing pictures with how dressed up everyone and everything is. When was this picture taken, if you don’t mind me asking? It’s been such a long time since I’ve been near or in one going on. You did a great job both taking the picture and cropping it. It’s so clear! My hands are way too shaky to get a photo to come out that nicely. Also, you managed to remove the kid in the background seamlessly all while changing the focal point to be directly on Will. My eye is immediately drawn where it should go in the second picture which is pretty cool, in my opinion. Great job!
Thanks!! I’m lucky that my iPhone does the live photo thing, it always saves me from a blurry photo. This was taken in October of 2021. Our local ren faire (about an hour away from Columbus, OH) is getting more and more popular every year!
It looks like there are quite a few ren faires in Florida. From your intro post it looks like you’re in Clearwater, so I think the Bay Area Renaissance Festival is closest, and it’s happening soon!! You should totally go!
https://www.bayarearenfest.com/
Your crop certainly enhances the picture, but the general meaning remains the same, here is a person dressed up at a faire. With the tighter crop it does feel more cozy and inviting, it could be used in marketing to promote the faire. Removing the one little girl sitting by the pond helps to center the focus more on the subject of Will, and I like that there are people milling around the faire in the background, which helps to communicate that Will is not just alone on a stroll dressed as a Captain. Some alternative cropping suggestions could be, an even tighter crop, removing some of the tree branches above, and having a more extreme tight crop on will in the Captain pose. Another variation could be to do a tight crop on the top half of Will’s body, removing all the faire-goers and the pond and showcasing the captain hat and Will’s face.
Nice suggestions on different crops! Thanks Nicole!
Hi Alex! First of all, I absolutely love your costume. I have never been to one of these events but it seems like a fun event to attend especially since it seems like most people dress up and have fun with it.
Great job with the cropping. By bringing in the focus, the photo was less “busy” and I was able to focus more on you and your costume. I’m loving the cape by the way. If I cropped it, I would have cropped it more on the left side to bring the focus in a little bit more to bring an even more focus on you and your costume because you have some cool aspects to it but you still did a nice job with your choice in cropping. Good job!
Thanks Latasha! This is my partner, Will. I’ll pass the compliments onto him! 🙂