Category: Fairs and Festivals

Copyright © 2014 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Greetings Good Gents, and Ladies!

I spent Saturday at the Northern California Renaissance Faire with friends. Attending this faire one steps back in time. The language, characters, and costumes are all in keeping with the period, and patrons often attend in costume. It’s a Photographer’s playground! I get such a kick seeing the elaborate and crazy costumes. The shows are fun, and the Joust is exciting, and  it’s great fun cheering on your favorite Knight.

I went gear light; only taking my D700 with my 85mm f1.4D lens, and for fun my LensBaby Composer II w/ Double Glass Optic. I took a lot of images and can’t share all of them in this post, but here are a few I took with the Lensbaby Composer Pro II.

I  just passed this little plot of lovely flowers while on my way to meet friends Theresa, and Glenn- we were car-pooling to the faire.  when Theresa called and said they ran into traffic and would be about 10 minutes late, so I turned around and went to take photos of these flowers. They were so cheerful on this gray, overcast morning.

I used an aperture of f11 in the LensBaby Composer Pro II, and for the portraits I used On Camera Flash using my SB910 to open up the shadows under the hats, and eyebrows.  I had it in iTTL balanced Fill Flash mode, and adjusted my Flash EV t/- anywhere from +3 to -1.7 depending on the light. The light was mixed; deep shadows when under the trees, and bright light when out in the open once the morning fog burned off. My goal was to balance the Ambient light and flash without blowing out the images and looking like I used flash. How do you think I did?

Tatiana, Queen of the Faeries

Bird Cages, and a Broom

A Harp Player- Fantasy Character

A Cornucopia of Stuff

One last image of my friend T’s husband.  It’s Celtic Week-end at the Faire so there were lots of men in Kilts. Glenn wore his. I don’t know about you, but men in Kilts make me go week in the knees! HUZZAH!

More to come…