Sunday, August 15, 2004
Historic England
Today, T. and I went to warwick.
Naturally, the day dawned grey and overcast.
I never thought I'd become a shutterbug, but today words would simply not have been able to capture everything i saw. Or rather, I'm not up to writing a ten thousand page essay, so...
One of the first camera-worthy pictures we saw was this :
heh heh. nb : all photos enlarge many times when clicked upon. okay, a few times. fine, just a little bit. blush.
A short walk later in quest of the city's main attraction, we wandered into
St Mary's Church, which to be completely honest, looks much like any other anglican cathedral in any city-town across the country. At this point, after much deliberation we realised that the quickest route to Warwick Castle was probably by going down Castle Road. Cunning, eh?
Now I'm happy with the photos I took of Warwick Castle. You see, this was one :
half of the external facade, and this was the other :
.
Sometimes a guy just itches to get his hands on a wide-angled camera.
Nevermind, we'll just have to make do with the wonders of adobe photoshop :
.
(And that's what I'm happy about. I built Warwick Castle! Okay, well, mebbe not quite. cough.)
Here's where my day really took off :
Ooooh.
aaaah.
Waaah.
T, by the way started dripping err I mean drooling immediately. Apparently she could tell through the solid cast-iron visor that this guy was cute. I just rolled my eyes...
This isn't a picture of Sir Gawain's nemesis riding in. This is a different Green Knight. Incidentally, I should mention at this point that my wonderful 3.2 megapixel digital camera has a special feature just to make taking action photographs that bit more challenging. What you see on the screen freezeframe when you press the trigger is almost what you see in the final product, give or take, oh, about four seconds.
Meaning the only way to get a target into the picture is to estimate where it's going to be in four seconds. Since I normally take photographs of rivers, and trees, and other nice sedentary subjects, these dangblasted ninety mile an hour knights with their twitchy horses were pretty frustrating to photograph. And I left my hunting rifle at home.
ooo. he's posing for the cameras. Snap.
Here, of course, is the hero of the "story" being re-enacted (beautiful princess seeks suitor to win hand, four knights, four colours, plus the enigmatic fifth unheralded white knight, a mere squire joust it out on field to earn her attentions. Somewhere along the way she (princess) did some horse tricks involving flipping out of her saddle and back in and lying on her back crossways across the saddle of her gallopping steed. Apparently this girl was used as angelina jolie's stunt double in tomb raidor summatorother. Well, she wasn't that pretty anyhow. 6 / 10. So I didn't take a piccy of her. so there.
White Knight (Harry) is a bit of a poseur as you can see here. So is his horse, who's a really dear little thing that prances outrageously (the other knights just got down to business) and rather self-consciously too. Oh, if you're wondering, the strange nick knacks are tokens of female affection from the crowd prior to their doing battle. Some of the other knights got underwear on their lances.
Naturally, the black knight played the villain.
He was obnoxious, hassled the audience, levelled his lance at poor children in the stands, and all in all was an utter lout.
Equally naturally, I cheered him on. Huzzaaaaah! He returned my fist salute too. laughs.
There's something enigmatic about an evil villain figure with a great sense of humour. If I was female I'd probably have married him by the end of the show. What??! What?? It's that notorious feminine morbid-fascination with biker dudes with studs and chains thing, only slightly different, innit?
Anyhow, I'm not female so I left all the flirting to T..
You should see what this guy got tied onto the end of his lance. Black, lacy, and G. Sometimes you wonder why women even wonder wearing stuff that transparent..... coughcough.
The bloke next to me muttered something about tying his mother in law to the knight's lance.
Brief show of cameraderie before the knights start
bashing each other up, and then
bashing each other up even more
It all boiled down (funnily enough) to the black knight vs the white knight. These guys were far too fast for me to correctly estimate where they'd be in four seconds, let alone where they'd meet up. The best I could do was this guy's back,
and again.
After the show, while T was busy meeting the Green knight (whom she now considered cuuuuuuute, and had heartlessly dumped the yellow knight from her affections - after the helms came off) and then flirting outrageously with the black knight (who turned out to be a sean connery lookalike, only french, with a rogueish eye for oriental women (he was trying - and nearly convincing a crowd of japanese girls to take off their panties for him. Incidentally, the word for panty in Japanese, is apparently PantS.) I decided to make friends with his noble steed. This critter had been acting Bad all through the show, rolling her eyes and foaming at the mouth while prancing menacingly around the tiltyard... but up close and personal she was all sweet and lovey dovey and wanted to be petted, and petted, and petted. She had the most beautiful eyes...
The Green knight's steed, much like his owner, didn't want to be petted and they just stood in a corner and sulked handsomely to themselves. Gits.
The Red knight's steed was a roan mare who had a soft spot for kiddies but didn't want to be touched by grownups. Kinda cute. She licked some blond kid's head experimentally. hehe.
We then watched a routine which involved two knights on foot in plate armour doing battle. Considering one of them wasn't fully kitted up (he was just wearing a breastplate and nothing else), it just wasn't worth a photo.
I did persuade them after the show to let me play with their tool... err swords.
They're real, sharp, and sparked when they each other. They're surprisingly light as well - the balance is perfect, near the hilt of the sword. Unfortunately, as I was taking the picture, some kid had to dart into it, as they always do, the pesky things.
So I made him disappear :
To be honest, I just edited him out of the photo with photoshop. Good old clone tool.
The knights wanted their swords back by this time to show off to some dear wee little kiddies. I hope they got the most horrendous metal-cuts. grr.
T. wanted me to take this photo for some reason, so I did.
I didn't take a great deal more after that, owing to my using up all the shots on the jousting. There were beautiful state apartments with surprisingly lifelike wax effigies (Warwick castle is owned by Madame Tussaud's) with lavish carpets and curtains, and poster beds, and... all other manner of beautiful things you always get with nobility (read : poncy gits).
We visited the dungeons and torture chambers after, which proved rather explicit, yet disappointing.
I decided to take one last look at the castle before we left.
A good day out.
Shame I didn't get to test that sword on one of the knights though. heh.
Naturally, the day dawned grey and overcast.
I never thought I'd become a shutterbug, but today words would simply not have been able to capture everything i saw. Or rather, I'm not up to writing a ten thousand page essay, so...
One of the first camera-worthy pictures we saw was this :
heh heh. nb : all photos enlarge many times when clicked upon. okay, a few times. fine, just a little bit. blush.
A short walk later in quest of the city's main attraction, we wandered into
St Mary's Church, which to be completely honest, looks much like any other anglican cathedral in any city-town across the country. At this point, after much deliberation we realised that the quickest route to Warwick Castle was probably by going down Castle Road. Cunning, eh?
Now I'm happy with the photos I took of Warwick Castle. You see, this was one :
half of the external facade, and this was the other :
.
Sometimes a guy just itches to get his hands on a wide-angled camera.
Nevermind, we'll just have to make do with the wonders of adobe photoshop :
.
(And that's what I'm happy about. I built Warwick Castle! Okay, well, mebbe not quite. cough.)
Here's where my day really took off :
Ooooh.
aaaah.
Waaah.
T, by the way started dripping err I mean drooling immediately. Apparently she could tell through the solid cast-iron visor that this guy was cute. I just rolled my eyes...
This isn't a picture of Sir Gawain's nemesis riding in. This is a different Green Knight. Incidentally, I should mention at this point that my wonderful 3.2 megapixel digital camera has a special feature just to make taking action photographs that bit more challenging. What you see on the screen freezeframe when you press the trigger is almost what you see in the final product, give or take, oh, about four seconds.
Meaning the only way to get a target into the picture is to estimate where it's going to be in four seconds. Since I normally take photographs of rivers, and trees, and other nice sedentary subjects, these dangblasted ninety mile an hour knights with their twitchy horses were pretty frustrating to photograph. And I left my hunting rifle at home.
ooo. he's posing for the cameras. Snap.
Here, of course, is the hero of the "story" being re-enacted (beautiful princess seeks suitor to win hand, four knights, four colours, plus the enigmatic fifth unheralded white knight, a mere squire joust it out on field to earn her attentions. Somewhere along the way she (princess) did some horse tricks involving flipping out of her saddle and back in and lying on her back crossways across the saddle of her gallopping steed. Apparently this girl was used as angelina jolie's stunt double in tomb raidor summatorother. Well, she wasn't that pretty anyhow. 6 / 10. So I didn't take a piccy of her. so there.
White Knight (Harry) is a bit of a poseur as you can see here. So is his horse, who's a really dear little thing that prances outrageously (the other knights just got down to business) and rather self-consciously too. Oh, if you're wondering, the strange nick knacks are tokens of female affection from the crowd prior to their doing battle. Some of the other knights got underwear on their lances.
Naturally, the black knight played the villain.
He was obnoxious, hassled the audience, levelled his lance at poor children in the stands, and all in all was an utter lout.
Equally naturally, I cheered him on. Huzzaaaaah! He returned my fist salute too. laughs.
There's something enigmatic about an evil villain figure with a great sense of humour. If I was female I'd probably have married him by the end of the show. What??! What?? It's that notorious feminine morbid-fascination with biker dudes with studs and chains thing, only slightly different, innit?
Anyhow, I'm not female so I left all the flirting to T..
You should see what this guy got tied onto the end of his lance. Black, lacy, and G. Sometimes you wonder why women even wonder wearing stuff that transparent..... coughcough.
The bloke next to me muttered something about tying his mother in law to the knight's lance.
Brief show of cameraderie before the knights start
bashing each other up, and then
bashing each other up even more
It all boiled down (funnily enough) to the black knight vs the white knight. These guys were far too fast for me to correctly estimate where they'd be in four seconds, let alone where they'd meet up. The best I could do was this guy's back,
and again.
After the show, while T was busy meeting the Green knight (whom she now considered cuuuuuuute, and had heartlessly dumped the yellow knight from her affections - after the helms came off) and then flirting outrageously with the black knight (who turned out to be a sean connery lookalike, only french, with a rogueish eye for oriental women (he was trying - and nearly convincing a crowd of japanese girls to take off their panties for him. Incidentally, the word for panty in Japanese, is apparently PantS.) I decided to make friends with his noble steed. This critter had been acting Bad all through the show, rolling her eyes and foaming at the mouth while prancing menacingly around the tiltyard... but up close and personal she was all sweet and lovey dovey and wanted to be petted, and petted, and petted. She had the most beautiful eyes...
The Green knight's steed, much like his owner, didn't want to be petted and they just stood in a corner and sulked handsomely to themselves. Gits.
The Red knight's steed was a roan mare who had a soft spot for kiddies but didn't want to be touched by grownups. Kinda cute. She licked some blond kid's head experimentally. hehe.
We then watched a routine which involved two knights on foot in plate armour doing battle. Considering one of them wasn't fully kitted up (he was just wearing a breastplate and nothing else), it just wasn't worth a photo.
I did persuade them after the show to let me play with their tool... err swords.
They're real, sharp, and sparked when they each other. They're surprisingly light as well - the balance is perfect, near the hilt of the sword. Unfortunately, as I was taking the picture, some kid had to dart into it, as they always do, the pesky things.
So I made him disappear :
To be honest, I just edited him out of the photo with photoshop. Good old clone tool.
The knights wanted their swords back by this time to show off to some dear wee little kiddies. I hope they got the most horrendous metal-cuts. grr.
T. wanted me to take this photo for some reason, so I did.
I didn't take a great deal more after that, owing to my using up all the shots on the jousting. There were beautiful state apartments with surprisingly lifelike wax effigies (Warwick castle is owned by Madame Tussaud's) with lavish carpets and curtains, and poster beds, and... all other manner of beautiful things you always get with nobility (read : poncy gits).
We visited the dungeons and torture chambers after, which proved rather explicit, yet disappointing.
I decided to take one last look at the castle before we left.
A good day out.
Shame I didn't get to test that sword on one of the knights though. heh.
