Spring 2023

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.

The Original (Before):

I choose this image because it made me smile and it brought back a sense of lightheartedness. This toddler is clearly enjoying themselves and is caught mid-jump. My daughter is roughly the age of the toddler in this photo and also enjoys jumping on the bed (or couch, or dog bed) and every time she does I have a big smile on my face. This image is sweet, and soft in its color pallet and lighting, but could benefit from some slight enhancements.

The Derivative (After):

I played around with a few composition ideas, like cropping super tight to only the toddler’s feet (looked too creepy), and cropping tight to the toddler’s head (which lost the sense of whimsy not knowing they were jumping) before selecting this final version. I enhanced the original photo, by taking the toddler and adjusting him as the focal point to the left side of the image, per the rule of thirds, creating some more movement and intrigue in the photo. The higher crop removes the side walls from the photo which adjusts the sense of space in the room. Uncentering the toddler creates a sense of intrigue, is the toddler jumping towards something or someone on the other side of the bed? Will that person or pet catch them? The focus of the photo is clearly on the toddler with the tighter crop, and it’s easier to see that they are in mid-jump with less distraction from the room walls and pillow on the ground.

If I were to take a photo like this, say of my daughter jumping on our bed, I might play around with the angle of the shot, getting down low on the ground and snapping the picture from below, or snapping it straight on looking at her face as she’s jumping. These would be fun variations of this photo’s sentiment.