Although I might not have the uber-long hair, wear leather, or speak ultra-dramatically, I have to confess that deep down, I’m a Ren Faire geek. Sure, the real Renaisance was probably hellish to live in, but there’s a general vibe at the reenactments that glosses over the bad stuff and emphasizes the fun. I mean really, where else in present civilization will parents gladly leave their children in the hands of a sweaty, burly unshowered guy with dreadlocks as he hurls them around in a wooden tub labeled the “Barrel of Bedlam,” and actually pay him for the privilege? Where else in modern times can guys wear tights and women wear what some derisively call “gravy boats,” the package goods of both sexes blatantly out there for everyone to gawk at, without so much as the bat of an eye?

The Ren Faire, that’s where!

Thankfully, one of the best Ren Fairs around, the New York Ren Fair, isn’t too far away from me. If you want a vibrant photo opportunity, this is the place to go.

Photos of the last weekend of NY Ren Fair 2007 are below the cut. Enjoy!

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Yeah, I know. It’s 2008. I’m still slogging through the photos taken during my 2007 photo trips. What can I say? Digital Cameras and big memory cards equals taking lots and lots of pictures. Multiple gigabytes worth, in fact. Of course that means there’s a lot of crap to sort through and remove, hence the lengthy period involved in getting them online.

Anyway! Toronto, June 2007. Ahhh what a memorable trip that was. My main reason for going was to attend the Joint Technical Symposium for Audiovisual Archivists. It was an extremely informative conference, actually, and I gleaned a lot of info.

However, there was a funny thing about the timing of the event. It took place immediately after Pride Week in Toronto, and clearly not everyone got the memo that Pride Week was over. Combine this with the fact that the conference hotel was situated in Toronto’s Gay Mecca, and conference-goers had to wade through the center of Yonge Street to get to a number of conference events, the die was cast for a week of hijinks and hilarity.

Picture if you will, a bunch of moving image archivists. Some are a bunch of curmudgeonly old salts; having been in the business for decades and who take their jobs (and life itself) very seriously. Then there were the young’uns, like myself.

Now picture, those same crusty old salts colliding with post-Pride-Week Toronto. Hilarity ensued amongst us young’uns as exclamations were heard like:

“Hey, that’s not the Canadian Flag!“

“Why are those two young men holding hands?!”

“Open till 4 am? What could they possibly be doing in that business so late?!”

“What’s that boy doing wearing buttshorts out in public?!”

Now, when you hear stuff like that, and you happen to carry a camera around with you on every trip you go, is it wrong to take photos of the madness? I didn’t think so.

I’ll be adding captions as time permits. In the meantime, enjoy the randomness…

Click the “more” link to view photos:

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Awww yes, with the weather getting chilly finally and our stomachs engorged with leftover Halloween candy, it can be said that Summer is officially over, global warming be damned. With that, my attention turns to aggregating and publishing the photos I’ve taken over the summer.

We begin with my July 4 trip to Piittsburgh, PA, where myself, Onzeumi and Harknell visited the Pittsburgh science museum and the the local Aviary. Then, on to Athrocon 2007, a convention that is always great camera fodder because, well… there’s plenty of lads there dressed up like the guy in the photo up above. And sadly, his message was all too poignant. But the event was amusing, anyway.

This photo album is the first gallery on this site using AWSOM.ORG’s PixGallery plugin. It’s a nice little plugin that makes it easy to dump large amounts of photos in your blog withut having to resort to cumbersome additional modules that have to get linked in. If you post galleries, give it a try!

The full image library is behind the tag (warning: LOTS of images):

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Everyone knows that you can judge how good a photographer is by the size of their camera, right?

Okay, well of course that’s not true. But the Chicago tribune reports that a group of seven photographers from the legacy project are saying that size matters anyway. They’ve converted an old aircraft hangar into one giant camera obscura:

The photographers are using a nearly 31-by-111-foot piece of white fabric covered in 20 gallons of light-sensitive emulsion as the “negative.”

After exposing the fabric for up to 10 days, they will develop it in a huge tub made of pool siding, using 200 gallons of black-and-white developer solution and 600 gallons of fixer.

The photographers joke that they also are making the world’s largest disposable camera. When they are done, the hangar will be torn down.

No doubt, such a sizeable camera will probably produce quite a clear photograph. I just worry that the camera’s lack of permanence might rub off on the negative: how does one care for such a huge photograph?

So last week, in the middle of Spring (yes, that IS a tree with Spring Blossoms on it, above), New Jersey gets a freak snowstorm. A perfect event to try out a fresh-out-of-the-box Canon 30D. 🙂

Gallery: April “Showers”