K is for Kauffman

Posted by Ivy

I’m slowly working my way through all of the Major League Baseball ballparks in the country. So far I’ve been to a third of them*; I added my tenth last night when I went to see the Red Sox (my most favorite team ever) play Kansas City at the K. Having now been to both of the Missouri ballparks, I can confidently say that, while I love the roofdeck at Busch Stadium, I like the overall coziness of Kauffman much better. I think I also might have preferred the Cardinals’ old stadium to their current one.

Anyway, the game itself was excellent–it was a matchup of Zack Greinke and Josh Beckett, which is in itself fantastic. The game itself was pretty competitive for the first few innings, until the old guard of the Sox (Jason Varitek and Mike Lowell) decided they might as well make the most of their limitd playing time and hit some home runs. Once Greinke was taken out of the game, it was over for the Royals. A huge thank-you must go out to Laura Herring and her friends who were also at the game for not giving this Red Sox fan a hard time about her team loyalties!

We were in the nosebleed section, and my 70-300mm can only do so much from that range, but I tried to make a few photos anyway:

*I am doing much better in my parallel quest to go to all the NPB parks in Japan. I’ve been to six, with six more to go.

Zack Greinke. He was on my first and only fantasy baseball team five years ago.

Jacoby Ellsbury all alone in the outfield

There was a hot dog race. Ketchup won. He’s so jaunty!

People started leaving in the seventh. Boooo.

Laura’s boyfriend kept score the whole game.

I have NEVER seen the opposing team’s gear for sale in an MLB team store. They do that everywhere in Japan, but here it seems kind of weird.

Wide-open shutter…

Easter Shenanigans

Posted by Ivy

I’ve been to many, many Easter egg hunts.

But I’ve never tried to photograph one, and it was a very good thing Caitlyn reminded me yesterday (after her own egg hunt shoot) just how short they really are. There’s a whole lot of buildup, a mad dash, and then…it’s over and you go play games.

When I went to cover the Douglass Park EGGstravaganza (their emphasis, not mine) this afternoon, I intentionally went straight for the part of the park where the 1 and 2 year olds would be gathering eggs, since I knew they would be the slowest group. I was right, but the hunt was still over in less than two minutes.

All things considered, I guess the egg hunt photos aren’t terrible…except that two of the ones I liked best—the first two—couldn’t be used in the paper because I lost track of the families right after the eggs had been collected (there were about 350 people there) and I thus didn’t get names. FRUSTRATING. I’m still mad at myself about this.

The kids are still cute, though.

Extra bonus photo- balance flash from the in-camera flash on my baby Rebel XT! I just love the facial expressions here; the little girl had essentially just cut in front of the first boy, and you can definitely tell.

Softball + Rainout

Posted by Ivy

I covered a softball game for the Missourian this afternoon, but the game was rained out and rescheduled after 3 and a half innings. The reporter didn’t write up a story, and the sports desk had left early, so none of the photos were published. Oh well. I had fun shooting anyway!

Off the Mound

Posted by Ivy

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.

(30) Island Life

Posted by Ivy

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!

(29) Beach Samurai

Posted by Ivy

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.

(28b) Beer Bike: Can't Rain On Our Parade

Posted by Ivy

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.

(28a) Beer Bike, pre-parade

Posted by Ivy

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