At-Home Archery Drills!

For all the archers that don’t have a range to visit or cannot shoot safely at home. Here are some exercises to help us maintain or build our strength. Stay safe and healthy. Looking forward to when we can all shoot together again. Practice will remain on hiatus until we receive word that it is safe to gather for shooting. Miss seeing all of you.

At-Home Archery Drills, courtesy of World Archery

Lady Maria Donald of Windmasters Hill
Bryn Gwlad Archery Marshal

Photographer’s Series – #6

Assignment 6: take the best 5 images you created and make them even better!

This is all about post-processing using tools like Capture One, Photoshop, Lightroom, Camera RAW or whatever tool you prefer. Use skills you have or ask questions.I can help you with this at almost any skill level—seriously.

If you do not have a tool you like, most have free trials you can download.Capture One even has completely free versions if you use Sony or Fuji cameras.

Maybe Knott
Photographer’s Guild Principal

Check out the Photography Guild Page and Share your progress, ask about specific phot-editing tools, and join the discussion on the Photographer’s Guild Facebook Group!

Photographers Series – #5

Assignment 5: time to use the skills from 1-4. Create 5 great images of your chosen subject in good light!

So you have worked on finding good angles and perspectives for your subject. You have learned about light angles and how they look on your subject. You have explored how window light works (which contributes a lot to the use of strobes, if you have not tried that yet).

Now take your chosen subject and try to create five distinct images using what you learned in the first assignments.If your subject is a person or pet, how can you get the best or most interesting expressions?

If you are not already using RAW files on your camera, please start doing so. You can set your camera to shoot RAW plus jpeg, so you still have jpegs you might be used to. But, trust me, you will be happier in the future if you get in the habit of shooting RAW now. (Plus, you’ll want RAW files for the next assignment!)

Maybe Knott
Photographer’s Guild Principal

Check out the Photography Guild Page and Share your progress and join the discussion on the Photographer’s Guild Facebook Group!

Photographer’s Assignment Series – #4

Assignment 4: use a reflector.

This can be combined with assignment three to further explore window light. Or you can use the light-source from assignment two.

Grab something white and something black. A piece of poster board is ideal, but many items can work (hold up a t-shirt, paper, a bed sheet…be creative). Hold up either white or black item near your subject (start with opposite from window and then experiment.

What do you notice? How can you make the shadows lighter or darker? How many different ways can you make your subject look better or worse? Learning what doesn’t work is often as valuable as what does.

Maybe Knott
Photographer’s Guild Principal

Check out the Photography Guild Page and Share your progress and join the discussion on the Photographer’s Guild Facebook Group!

Photographer’s Assignment Series – #3

Assignment 3: use a window for light

So this is fantastic for people, naturally, but window light is also fantastic for food or almost anything.

The relationship of the light source to the subject, as we learned in the last experiment, makes a difference. So does the angle and distance, as we learned from the first. So keep going as long as patience lasts and find out new things!

Maybe Knott
Photographer’s Guild Principal

Check out the Photography Guild Page and Share your progress and join the discussion on the Photographer’s Guild Facebook Group!

Photographer’s Guild Series – #2

Assignment 2: Pick a single subject and a light source. Keep the subject and camera in the same place and move your light source to different places.

The light above or at least at the same height is “traditional” since the sun is above, but you should feel free to experiment with it. Play with light behind, change angles around the subject. Change angle up and down. Change the way the light faces if this can be changed. So many options.

Maybe Knott
Photographer’s Guild Principal

Check out the Photography Guild Page and Share your progress and join the discussion on the Photographer’s Guild Facebook Group!

Photographer’s Guild Assignment Series – #1

Assignment 1: pick a subject and photograph it or them from five distinct angles.

You can be in front, next to, behind, above, below, closer or further away. This could be something you have made, a family member, a pet, garb, armor or anything else.

Maybe Knott
Photography Guild Principal

Check out the Photography Guild Page and Share your progress and join the discussion on the Photographer’s Guild Facebook Group!

Photographer’s Guild Assignment Series

Virus keeping you from going to events? Want to get your camera out and learn, practice, and discuss photography with other people? Well, the Bryn Gwlad Photographer’s Guild has an assignment series for you! Every few days, Maybe Knott (Guild Leader) will be posting assignments to the guild. Look for assignments posted here, and join … Read more

Greetings from the Baron & Baroness!

Good day, good Gentles, and Welcome to the Fairest Barony in the Knowne World!

Let us extend the hand of friendship and fellowship to those brave individuals who have chosen to find out what all those people in costume are doing! We are people from all walks of life and careers: high-tech and low, college age, middle age, mom-and-dad age and children. But we all share the love of Things Medieval. We thrill to the stories of knights in shining armor and ladies fair, to minstrels singing heroic tales in the Great Hall—and we yearn to wear a sword, or don a flowing gown and veil and enter those stories. Here in the Society for Creative Anachronism you can do exactly that! Come and join us; be a part of our Baronial Champions Tournament where armor glitters and knights compete for honor and glory. Or our Feast of Candlemas, where artisans and scholars display their work, where song, poetry and dance abound, and candlelight flickers over a feast fit for a king! Welcome, my friends, to this great barony, and the Current Middle Ages.

If you have seen great acts of skill, guile, service, or note worthy actions by the populous of Bryn Gwlad or wish to contact the Baron or Baroness for any other reason please feel free to email us.

Don’t forget great acts can be acknowledged at the Kingdom level, too.

Gavin mac Giolla Ruaidh & Wentiliana le Chandeler
Baron and Baroness of Bryn Gwlad