The Renaissance Festival always has a jousting show, but it was different this year. After a few runs on horseback with lances, the knights dismounted and engaged in hand-to-hand combat. It got nasty.
These pictures are in chronological order. It felt genuinely dangerous. Never before did one knight slit the throat of the other and leave him to die, spouting fake blood, in the dust. I thought it was horrifying, perhaps reflecting the darker side of America. The audience was full of children. Madeleine, of course, was too young to get it but she did look over my shoulder while I was editing these shots. "He's mean!" she exclaimed.
Yes, really mean.
