(27) Eat Your Heart Out, Krispy Kreme

Posted by Ivy

Still catching up with 30-photos/30-days. These were taken (very early in the morning) on March 19.

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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?

*It should be noted that the freshly-baked hot-off-the-press donuts were well worth the absurd effort we went through to get them.
**More pictures (i.e. the non-candid ones) will be on Facebook eventually. I’m slow about posting things.

(26) Up in the Air

Posted by Ivy

I’m exceptionally behind in posting these photos, but I have been keeping up with the daily challenge! These are from March 18.

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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’.

(23) Relief

Posted by Ivy

Wow, I fell off the wagon with posting. I would blame coding, but Phoebe has kept up with her 30-Day project in spite of having far more newspaper images to work through than I did, so really, no excuse.

That said, today is probably one of the best days I’ve had all semester long. Scratch that. It IS the best day I’ve had all semester. This is for two reasons.

1) I don’t have to wear a leg brace anymore! This is the first time in exactly two months that I haven’t had some sort of immobilizing contraption on my left leg, and it’s a wonderful feeling. I’m so free! Take that, irresponsible SUV drivers of the world.

2) I finished coding all of the photos from my thesis data set! There were 635 total, and I made a 65-page spreadsheet cataloging them all (this is much longer than my thesis currently is, which is kind of depressing, but I won’t focus on that part right now). Now I can start actually analyzing stuff and learning things. Yay!

Fittingly, on the day I finished coding, I also got my film back from the Tennessee trip I made in order to get 548 of those images. But those (except for the very next one) will get their own post.

My little workspot in the Vanderbilt library. Disposable cameras can’t handle closeups.

(22a) Update!

Posted by Ivy

I did take some photos yesterday before midnight (of a very tasty pasta dish I created), but have yet to actually upload to the blog. So I get half a point for 30-day fulfillment.

I should also be getting my film from the epic Thesis Road Trip back tomorrow! Hooray! I still don’t know if any of those photos actually came out, but we’ll find out soon enough…

In totally unrelated news, I’m going to Texas a week from today…for ten whole days (whee!)! I need to get some serious work done before then, though.

(22) What's Up, Doc?

Posted by Ivy

I got hooked on documentaries of the nature variety when I was about eight; my great-grandmother bought me a two-part VHS series called “Life in the Wild” (which you too can buy on eBay for just $3.25). It wasn’t exactly the greatest nature doc ever, and I’m pretty sure the filmmakers used unethical tactics in it at some points, but before I watched that, I’d never heard of Kakadu, or Kruger, or the Camargue. PLUS, one of the sequences was shot in the Everglades, and as a kiddie Floridian (Flor-kid-ian! Ha! (please don’t judge me)), I was very happy to see my state represented (even though I still think they threw a rat into the water for a gator to eat).

In 2000, when I was thirteen, a Boston affiliate produced a series called “Wild Europe,” which I found equally fascinating, for the simple reason that nobody ever talks about European wildlife, except to mention hedgehogs in England and wolves in Romania. All good documentaries should shed light on the unknown or unexplored; that’s just good journalism. The program (sadly) never been released on DVD, but, again, if you’re interested, you can buy the complete six-VHS set on Amazon. Note that the quality of this one is, shall we say, a step up from the previous one, as denoted by its pricetag.

When I got to high school, I was introduced to the BBC, which takes nature documentaries right up to eleven on the Nigel Tufnel scale. I’d say that The Blue Planet, which I first watched in my Marine Bio class, is the best of the bunch…except that David Attenborough, narrator extraordinaire, and his team have also produced the fantastic “Life…” series. I haven’t seen all of this series, unfortunately, but if they’re all anything like “Life of Mammals,” which I own, I assume they must be pretty groundbreaking and excellent (that’s the best thing about BBC pieces—they’re not content to just go out, sit in a blind and film…they have to get new material that nobody has EVER filmed before. Hence, the feature on the inside of a platypus’ den, and the one about cave elephants. CAVE ELEPHANTS!)

The whole point of this long discussion was that I discovered over the weekend that putting nature documentaries on while I work on my thesis makes for excellent background noise. Maybe it’s the British accents, or the simple fact that I’ve seen them before, so I don’t get distracted trying to follow along with a plot. The only problem with this plan is that I don’t have my own copy of Planet Earth, which is also a strong contender for the title of BBC’s Best. This is a serious oversight on my part. I’ve seen all of the segments, thanks to borrowing friends’ copies, so it fit my ‘not-too-distracting’ criteria…but I didn’t have the actual set. Ugh.

Fortunately, 9th Street Video (which awesomely kept its name despite moving to Hitt Street) came through for me.

My living room table is messy.

And when I do have time to invest in watching a NEW documentary series…I’m turning towards everybody’s favorite photo pan-and-zoom man, Ken Burns.

Yes, he seriously set back multimedia production, but his Civil War piece alone makes up for this problem. I’ll let you know more about the Baseball one when I finally finish it. Then I can start on the National Parks set, and by then, well, hopefully the BBC will have something new out.