Texas

Bowling in Texas

Posted by Ivy

Last year, I went to the Texas Bowl in Houston as a spectator, when my alma mater (Rice) played and was victorious against Western Michigan.

This year, I went the Texas Bowl as an official part of the media corps. There’d been a lot of Internet commentary regarding Mizzou getting overlooked in the bowl selection process, and while I do feel this is true to an extent, I’m not upset with the game we were picked to play in…because it gave me a chance to go to Houston again and to actually photograph during a major (okay, mid-major) CFB matchup.

I’ve shot football exactly three times before today–once during a Rice-UHouston game in 2007 (when I was stuck shooting from the stands because my credentials were never processed correctly), once during Mizzou-Nebraska (when I didn’t get any game photos at all because I was focusing on fans), and once just for practice during a Hickman High game (when I was using just a 70-200mm)–and I was, shall we say, less than confident in my abilities to make any good pictures at all. I knew enough about college football and enough about how Mizzou and Navy both play (damn the unphotogenic running game) to not be scared completely out of my mind, but the idea that I would come back empty-handed kept nagging me. I wish it hadn’t.

This is not to imply that I took mind-blowing, paradigm-changing sports photos during the game (I didn’t), but what I took was by no means bad. I was honestly surprised by this, and in retrospect, it would have been nice to have had a little more faith in myself. I went back through the take after the first go-round of editing, and ended up finding a few MORE images that I liked, which, again, was a pleasant turn of events. All in all, at least from my perspective (not so much from Mizzou’s…), the Texas Bowl was a definite success.

In related news, I find it very strange to edit my own stuff for use in publication. I’d much rather have somebody else go through it all first.

Enjoy!
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Houston and Hendrix: Spring Break part one

Posted by Ivy

This spring break makes the third year running that I’ve been in at least two different places for the course of the vacation. I can never decide which trips I want to make, and usually just opt for going everywhere I possibly can (afford). I kind of outdid myself this year, though, because this year I also had a free round-trip on Southwest…which meant I could go even more places for what it normally costs me to do the usual two-destinations break (I suspect I also packed so much in because winter in Columbia made me very, very antsy to get out and go exploring).

It happened that Beer Bike was going on down at Rice the first weekend of break, which was a huge stroke of luck, especially since I didn’t make it to Homecoming in the fall. So I got to crash in my old dorm for a couple of days (with my old roomie, no less! Score!), visit with all of the amazing people I hadn’t seen since graduation, and, of course, check out the bike races and water balloon fight. Unfortunately, I foolishly left my telephoto back IN the dorm while all of the latter events were going on, so I didn’t get many good pictures of the festivities.

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[Members of Jones College (purple shirts) squaring off against Brown College (maroon shirts- BSWB!) during the pre-Beer Bike water balloon parade.]

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[Me and John Broadway during the races themselves, as reflected in the sunglasses of a guy from Baker. I was a bad journalist and never got the guy’s name, but then again, I can never use this photo for anything, anyway, since my camera’s pretty prominent in it].

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[Will Rice College maintaining its lead over Brown during the women’s race. WRC won by .04 of a second, once penalties were factored in, and, incidentally, swept all three races (alum, men’s, women’s). This is at once impressive and depressing.]

After two whirlwind days in Texas, I headed north and west to Seattle, where my friends Ian and Sarah live, and where my friend Derek was also visiting on his spring break. We spent some time visiting  the islands of Puget Sound and checking out Pike Place Market/other random tourist things, but most of the time were just relaxing and doing a whole lot of nothing.  On this leg of the trip, my camera battery died, and, as I have somehow lost the charger, I ended up using my little point-and-shoot quite a bit.

20090323_0682_edit[This is Derek’s book jacket picture (he has yet to write the actual book, but at least this part is good to go), which was taken during our trip to Camano Island]

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[Ian and Sarah’s puppy, Dugan, running around Camano Island]

20090326_0762[No trip to Seattle is complete without stopping to pay respects at Hendrix’s grave. ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky.]