Texas Renaissance Festival - 2007

Texas Renaissance Festival, is an annual occurance in the otherwise sleepy town of Plantersville, TX. Happens every Oct-Nov, scheduled dates can be found here. If you were traveling from Houston like I was, you will be better off taking I-45 North all the way to Conroe and then driving West on Hwy 105 to Plantersville. Hwy 249 from Houston to Plantersville, plain sucks with the numerous traffic signals until you are out of the city and have crossed Tomball. Plus there is all the traffic going to the Fest, if you are visiting over a weekend. Entry tickets may be purchased for a few dollars less at HEB or Randalls and some other locations listed on the official website. There is plenty of parking and the fair grounds are converted spectacularly with medieval times scenery and the costumes people wear will have an average Joe like myself reaching for that camera.

Jousting Knights at an arena, axe throwing, drench-a-wench (she had a real bad tongue), aiming tomatoes at this fella, dancing gypsies, music from a long lost french era, english/french/european foods and crafts, pirates, women dressed as european upper class from the times of Queen Elizabeth I, can be all seen here. Without wasting anymore words, here are the pictures. Enjoy.

The Sound of Memories

Opening the book of memories, I’ve sat many a times, reading pages and excerpts from deep labyrinths of the mind infinite. Often times Gilmour has been a trigger behind it. Ah, for the love of food and Floyd. Without either, I shall perish. Music is the cheapest ticket for traveling in time, I’ve been transported to Delhi, Surathkal, Korba, Mumbai, Bangalore, from my living room at Houston, for the price of a CD. The quietest of evenings spring a time warp for me.

The lull between the lyrics in Echoes would take me to the fifth floor of the final block of KREC, where sprawled on the floor I can clearly hear a room erupting in the laughter of half dazed half crazed individuals. The height of whose wit has by far been incomparable to many I’ve met in my travels. Maybe I’ve walked on the wrong roads. Again?

A jolt of vigor from the sounds of “papa kehtey hain” would take me to a small room at the home of my cousins in a sleepy town where we would spend afternoons listening to the soundtrack (on tape) in an imported JVC mini two-in-one, which uncle brought during his last trip to Dubai. A song from Casablanca would leave me longing for the warm evenings of summer with a loved one.

Whatever be the season, whoever be the reason, each song holds a certain memory embedded in it. Like fortune cookies, the songs bears hidden meanings for everyone. Something from the past, perhaps something for the future.

Vishwakarma’s Hammer

It itched again below his right ear, it was not psychological, medical tests had confirmed it years ago. Prithwi was trying to cross the road to get to the recording studio. It had taken some time for him to learn again how to cross the road again. He had lost his eyesight at the age of eight, more than 20 years ago. “A bad reaction to vaccinations”, as the doctors had put it. The son of the local jeweler and the lone heir to a multi-crore business had absolutely no charm for gleam; the guitar was his solace after he lost his eyesight. Nature had mercilessly taken from him, but in a wicked way of apology imparted him a keen sense of music.

Sambhav was tapping his steel toed shoe on the hard marble on the seventeenth floor of the Bhawani Studios at Nariman Point; Sameer’s puffing away clouds of dense smoke at his face wasn’t helping his impatience this time either. This would be the final time they recorded with Pallavi in the lead solo, he had vowed. Images of them together in throes of ecstasy deep into the wintry nights at his apartment in Borivili had pushed his guilt farther than he could think possible. Perhaps this day holds the key to his..

To be cont’d sometime in the future..

Faith in Colours

One idle saturday morning saw me driving towards the Annunciation Church in Houston downtown (S-W corner of Texas ave. and Crawford st., map here) I was greeted by sister Martha and briefly introduced about the church before given a good half hour of the prayer hall to myself to shoot. One can visit the church between mass times to find absolute peace and darkness for shooting the stained glass paintings that are the main attraction for shutterbugs. The church is about 138 years old, it is one of the few European style churches at Houston. I think it is Victorian style architecture, but cant guarantee it. Half a block of downtown was bought in 1866 for $2000 to build this church, the interiors were restored sometime earlier this century.

If you plan to go to the church for taking pictures, an appointment is recommended. For suitability of lighting, avoid 1-2 hours on either side of noon to get the sun behind the huge 10-12 ft tall windows. A weekday would be the best if you wish to avoid people, but if you work weekdays like me, saturday is better than sunday.

Pictures are taken using a Nikon FE2 with a Quantaray 70-300 mm tele-macro on Fuji Sensia 200 slide film. The candlelit picture of the Holy Mother was taken with a Nikkor 50 mm lens at 4.0 stop. Here are some pictures of the paintings, sorry about the shake on some of them..


This picture is the one I liked the best of the lot, there is mild shake but the colours look great on print.

Wings Over Houston

Ellington Airfield, is a tiny airport on the Spanish settlement of Houston, the southeast corner where you are alien if you are neither Mexican nor poor. The airfield is home mostly to cargo planes and this once a year airshow which I went to this year in October. The day started off well with two friends burping away breakfast at What-a-burger and then finding the roads leading to the airport as choked as our arteries were from the b’fast.

This would be the first time I was experimenting with slide film or popular name – transparencies. I was using Fuji Sensia ISO 200 (although I am much against Fuji for their being heavy on the green compared to red and blue), in a Nikon FE2 with a 70-300mm tele-macro Quantaray lens. Half of the pictures are shot on regular Kodak 100 Gold and I will leave it to the discerning eye to sort out which from which.

The show had F-16s, one F-15, a Stealth, formations by the Canadian Snowbirds and an impressive re-enactment of the Pearl Harbor bombings by well preserved B-2 bombers. Details about the planes can be found on the airshow’s website. Some pictures I took of the bombings are pasted here faithfully.

Of course Texas had a trump card up its sleeve and it rocketed out in the form of a Truck designed by NeXplore Shockwave Jet Truck. Its basically a truck strapped with 3 Jet engines, with 36K hp (yeah K) and goes about 256 mph in 6.36 seconds. It beats chutput planes in races for lunch and has its name in the Guiness Book of World Records for dinner. Here is a picture I took, standing near the front row fence, braving the loud Texan drawl laden announcements from the high pitched squealing loudspeaker installed 2 feet away from the fence.

The strip was well populated with refreshment stands serving the regular American fare of hotdogs to pretzels, well avoided by me and my watan-ke-saathis. A bright lemonade cup made its way into my camera.

Most Memorable Photos - VI

I originally intended to make a 12-15 part series of the most memorable pictures i've come across, but lethargy and procrastination got the better of me. Also, a friend got bugged by my writing grave stuff and got me a very beautiful coffee table book about all the pulitzer winning photographs of the last century with narrative, and I lost the remnants of enthusiasm of writing..to reading.

Kolkata ke Keeday

Read Amitav Ghosh's - The Calcutta Chromosome. Its an old book now, released some 10 years back. Its part sci fi, part scientific research involving a wierd malarial strain, and somewhat futuristic. The author does a loose job on the sci fi front, the novel doesnt really have much about science fiction or doesnt delineate any new/emerging technology as could have 10 years back.

The first 3/4ths of the book left me grappling for loose ends and juggling the myraid of characters who were themselved confused as to where they should have been placed in the book. But the ending few chapters are remarkable and the story unfolds into one of the most haunting tales i've read in recent times. The last page leaves ones mind deeply mired in dark thoughts and unravels hazaar mysteries of the mind of the main character Antar.

The author hints at the darkness and disturbing lifestyle the future holds for us, and I will be deeply saddened to see my future generation living Antar's life who works from home, lives in a flat and interacts with his organization through his supercomputer Ava. Overall, this is a good read, if somewhat disconnected at parts. Surely good for Halloween!