None Shall Pass....

I went to a local Rennaissance Fair yesterday and true to form the light was lousy (what I get for not taking advantage of the good light on other days), but I think I captured a few interesting moments from the mock jousting tourney.

All shots were cropped to varying degrees, white balanced (otherwise no curve manipulation) and sharpened a tad with USM. All comments welcome. This was literally my first forray into "action photography" in the 5 years or so I've been shooting, so be merciful (unlike the Black Knight of Doom). :D


NOTE: WHAT SEB and PENNY REFER TO as "3" is now "1", and vice versa. I tried reloading the photos three different ways but the result was always the same. Sorry for the confusion.

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Originally Posted by PuckJunkey

I went to a local Rennaissance Fair yesterday and true to form the light was lousy (what I get for not taking advantage of the good light on other days), but I think I captured a few interesting moments from the mock jousting tourney.

All shots were cropped to varying degrees, white balanced (otherwise no curve manipulation) and sharpened a tad with USM. All comments welcome. This was literally my first forray into "action photography" in the 5 years or so I've been shooting, so be merciful (unlike the Black Knight of Doom). :D

Note: there are some JPEG artifacts as I tried to keep these files as small as I could for dial-up users. The originals don't suffer from the same.

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Hello Puck,

These are all a little flat (colour wise) but I truly enjoy your compostions. I think that they should all turn fine with a little colours saturation.

I like the second and third ones the best. I enjoy how glorious the knights looks in the second one and the way you have captured movements in the third one.

regards

Seb

Thanks for the comments. It wouldn't be too tough to punch up the colors a bit but this is actually pretty close to what it looked like. I wondered at one point if it would have been better, had the skies not been so uniformly grey but rather stormy. Might've been really cool with a wider angle.

Hi PJ,
The shots depict what was going on well. Did they fight? I just feel the fighting scene should be there.
All the best.
yoyo

Yoyo... thanks for the idea. Here are a couple of shots more closely approximating "fighting" though I didn't get any actual "hits".

Penny: I tried reposting the more stationary shots with more saturation but for some reason it's not showing up through the site the way it does in Photoshop. Anyway, I agree the colors are a bit sallow. Also note: the picture you like best got it's order reversed when I tried reposting (it's now #1).

PhotoJohn: There really ought to be a way with the upload function to control the order. Right now it seems it posts multiple shots sorted by file size because no matter whether I put the joust in first or last, it now shows up first (in my original post).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PuckJunkey

Yoyo... thanks for the idea. Here are a couple of shots more closely approximating "fighting" though I didn't get any actual "hits".

Penny: I tried reposting the more stationary shots with more saturation but for some reason it's not showing up through the site the way it does in Photoshop. Anyway, I agree the colors are a bit sallow. Also note: the picture you like best got it's order reversed when I tried reposting (it's now #1).

PhotoJohn: There really ought to be a way with the upload function to control the order. Right now it seems it posts multiple shots sorted by file size because no matter whether I put the joust in first or last, it now shows up first (in my original post).

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They are all good shots, but I love the 2nd one you just put on. (with the white horse in front) I also love the top one at the bottom of this post of the two horses and two riders jousting. I also am confused about the posting order. In fact, sometimes when click to look at a thread, the pics are at the top. Most of the time they are at the bottom. I would prefer top but don't know how to fix it. I tried changing the Ascending/Descending choice on the "photo-critique" page but nope. Anyway The subject matter in these pics is unusual and your composition right on. I also feel you could punch them up to give them the excitement they deserve. You're lucky to see a real scene like these without going to the movies. The horses and riders are magnificent.
~ Kit

Thanks, Kit. :)

Wow. That one puts mine to shame. The grass / added color helps but that person did a much better job of panning than I did. I think my shutter speed was just too fast to get that blurred ground / background effect. Next time I'll know though, which is the whole point. Thanks for linking that.

;)