mld, October 7, 2003 at 1:19:00 AM CEST

TRF Pics 2003 - Weekend the Fyrst

The first weekend of the Texas Renaissance Festival was a recordbreaker. The weather was perfect, and folks came out in herds. In fact, according to the Beefeaters, the Saturday crown of 29,106 patrons beat any previous opening day by about 20%. The Sunday crowd, while smaller, (it always is) was still a good one at 17,326.

I had a great time, marred by trying to hawk in some fairly new boots. Not good. A pic of my feet on Saturday night would scare women and small children, and give the most confident podiatrist pause. I switched boots for Sunday.

Since I have managed to seriously break my digital camera (sat on it, I think), and didn't wanna haul around the bigass 35mm, I resorted to one of those cheap disposables. Pic quality is not too good, but hey, what are you folks expecting for free? Besides, I was busy working. That's my story, yeah, that's the ticket...

Anyway, without further ado, a few pics that I managed to photoshop to the point that I'm not ashamed to let ya'll see them.

As always, standard boilerplate applies re: copyright and such, and these pics are resized, highly compressed versions of the originals, optimised for the web and all you po' folks still trying to suck down the net through a dialup straw. If you want the original hi-res versions, drop me a line.

Click on the thumbnails for a larger version of the pic...

A few of the girls from the St.Agnes choir



This girl's garb is much better looking than her pic shows - the back is a solid cape of the feathers you see on her right (your left) side.



Best new change to the faire I've seen so far this year was addition to the mud fairies whom I've written about before They were working on the dragon you saw at the top of this entry.


This was what it looked like early Sunday



Did I mention that they'll mug for the cameras?



This is what the dragon looked like by Sunday night



As usual, the ladies of the performance cast are colorful and photogenic



I was walking down a lane when I spied these wenches...



Who were happy to turn around and let me get a pic from the other side.

This is Sally the Strumpet. She's for rent, but caveat emptor...



Not enough whiskey in the world, baby.
 

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mld, January 7, 2003 at 4:10:00 AM CET

The Fairy GodFather

One of the more colorful characters to be seen at TRF is the Fairy GodFather.

He wanders around the grounds in his pink tutu and rainbow-striped tights, smoking his cigar, enchanting folks with his magic wand, all the while speaking in a thick Italian accent. He's a walking photo op, and popular with the patrons.

 

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mld, November 30, 2002 at 5:59:00 AM CET

TRF Plant Life

Not everything photogenic at TRF is of the animal kingdom. The owner of the faire, known by us as "King George," is quite the plant fancier. He spends boocoo bucks keeping the grounds manicured and tailored all the year round.

In fact, it's a bit of a shame. Walk onto the grounds a week or two before the faire starts, and it is as lovely as an English garden, and the grass is as nice as most golf courses. By the end of the second week of faire, thousands of feet have trampled the turf into torn red-brown dirt.

Still, the flowers in the various protected locations live on.

I took these pics the second weekend of faire. It was the first weekend of what proved to be a month of wet weather that basically killed the crowds this season. These plants were all in the new Roman Basilica, the new garden spot that replaced the old Battle Mound.

The light was marginal, as it was a cloudy and wet day. (as evidenced by the droplets seen on the leaves of the plants) I have no idea as to the flavor of plants these are, and would welcome any informed advice on that issue.

I just shoot them, OK? :-)

As always, comments are welcome, and hi-res versions of these pics are available, if you just lurrve them.

 

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