I like everything about the Nikon D2xs except its ability to shoot action in low-light situations—you can’t push the ISO past 400, which gets to be a problem in baseball…since shutter speeds when photographing batting and pitching have to be pretty high. Even a 2.8 aperture can only do so much.
Result: Supergrain.
While Mizzou is on official spring break (it’s freakishly quiet in town now) and the Columbia Missourian newsroom is about a fifth of the population it normally is, I’m standing in as the department’s photo editor. I haven’t been in the newsroom at all this semester, and it was a little weird to get back into Missourian mode—but I didn’t forget the workflow process (that stuff gets deep inside your head), which is nice.
There’s only one other photographer working this week, so last night I picked up an assignment while she covered a Passover seder. I got to shoot my first college baseball game since spring of 2007, and it was excellent.
I’m usually pretty good about shooting pitching and batting, so I was trying to focus on baserunning and dugout photos. If there seem to be an excess of celebration photos, that’s because there was a serious excess of runs scored- Mizzou whomped Purdue 22-14.
I actually don’t think I’d like this more if you could see the players’ heads (the 300mm forced to me to compose creatively). Then it’d just be a picture of the backs of heads, which is boring. Discuss.
This is my last 30-Day post! I had to extend the project due to a couple days of not taking photos, and truly belated postings of images I did take on the scheduled days…so the overall series ends ten days after it was supposed to. Oh well. I’m actually glad it ends this way, because I get to include some of my spring break photos. It’s also a plus because next week I’ll be in the Missourian offices all day editing photos and working on my thesis (of course), so I probably wouldn’t have a chance to make as many pictures.
I’d definitely do one of these projects again- especially now that I have my very own 50mm 1.4 lens! I love it so much; before I bought it last week the only two lenses I had were the kit lens that came with my Rebel XT, and a 70-300mm 4.5. I’m still getting used to the upgrade.
Anyway, here are a couple of South Padre photos to send everybody at Mizzou off on their own spring breaks!
I’m spending the rest of my week off on South Padre Island with some friends from college, which has thus far been pretty awesome. Our rental condo is right on the beach, so we’ve been spending a lot of time down by the water. I took this photo a couple days ago (March 21), but hadn’t gone back over the memory card until now, so I forgot it was even on there.
We think this should be on the poster of a Tarantino movie.
Photos taken March 20.
The rest will be up on Facebook or Flickr sometime tomorrow (I hope).
******************
Puppies playing while their owners watch the water balloon parade from the safety of the sidelines.
Dudes in capes running to catch up with their college’s trucks
Rice students: balancing work and play since 1912
Alums watching the parade/staying out of the rain
Jones College as viewed from the steps of Keck Hall
FIGHT. (That’s not rain splashing in the background)
It’s important to come prepared to these kinds of things
Ammunition, please!
Enjoying a brief calm in the (literal and figurative) storm
Right after the parade had finished and everybody had run out of water balloons, it started raining again. Ugh.
On days when it’s not cold and rainy, the main event of Beer Bike are (surprise!) bike relay races around our outdoor cycling track. The teams have twenty members–ten bikers and ten chuggers. A chugger has to drink 12 (for girls) or 24 (for guys) ounces of water as fast as they can; after they finish, a biker immediately starts on a set number of laps. Once the laps are completed, the next chugger goes, and so on and so forth. Some colleges train for months for Beer Bike, and it’s pretty disappointing when the races get postponed.
They did hold the alumni race this year, because alums tend to come back to Rice specifically for Beer Bike and it would be hard to postpone this particular event. The alumni had to do a Beer Run instead of biking, which, sadly, I didn’t get any pictures of because I was busy being freezing and wet in the alumni tent (also, I didn’t want to get my camera gear soaked…). I did take this one after they had finished the Beer Run and just before I left the track area.
At least we got the water balloon fight in!
RICE FIGHT NEVER DIE.
Photos taken on March 20.
*************
Rice University + hundreds of thousands of water balloons + hundreds of college kids + early morning wakeup calls + pouring rain = 2010 Beer Bike parade.
Balloons loaded in the trucks pre-parade
Alumni reunions
Brown College getting ready for the parade…right before it starts to rain
Brown moves out in spite of the rain
Remnants
Still catching up with 30-photos/30-days. These were taken (very early in the morning) on March 19.
**************
A couple of weeks ago, when I was talking to Alex about my upcoming trip to Houston, he mentioned a plan to stay up extremely late one night and then go eat Shipley’s Do-Nuts at five in the morning, when the donut place first opens. I thought he was kidding.
But I should know better than to doubt my old roommate, and, sure enough, on my first night in Houston I found myself staying up way past my bedtime, cramming into a car with five other people, and driving down Kirby to wait around in the parking lot of Shipley’s, because we’d gotten there ten minutes before opening.*
I tried to shoot this as a modified five-points-of-view assignment, just for practice. I’d edit the series way down if I were actually turning it in, but I’m okay with all ten of these pictures being up on on the blog.** That’s what blogs are for, right?
I’m exceptionally behind in posting these photos, but I have been keeping up with the daily challenge! These are from March 18.
*********
Even though I’ve been to Texas multiple times in the last six years, I can’t remember the last time I took a night flight there. It might have been freshman spring, back in 2005.
This is kind of sad, because as much as I enjoy flying (quite a bit), I like night flights even more. It’s a very surreal feeling to get on a plane in one location when the sun is still up…and then land in a new place while it’s dark. I love it. I love seeing the landscape below me, and nightscapes in particular are fascinating. National Geographic did a great feature on this phenomenon last year (I think it also won some POYi awards), which I highly recommend checking out.
I was scheduled to arrive in Houston at 9pm, but gave up my seat on that flight for a $200 voucher on Southwest and a brief layover in Dallas. And it only took an hour longer to get to Htown. Not too shabby!
Dallas by night
Got tired of highlighting passages of reading for my thesis and instead highlighted all of the states I’ve been to on my Southwest napkin.
A happy accident of a picture taken right as the plane was landing. I had the shutter set to ‘bulb’.
Green tea is the closest I got to partaking in today’s festivities.
One of the perks of a thesis-filled semester: the flexibility to take a week for Spring Break according to what fits best with my own schedule, not Mizzou’s.
See you soon, Texas!