Houston

Texas and the 50mm: Safari in the Heights

Posted by Ivy

My friend David moved to the Heights a few months ago, which is a part of Houston I know nothing about (considering I lived in Houston for four years I know alarmingly little about the city, because I didn’t have a car when I was there). David said the neighborhood was ripe for photo safari-ing, so we went roaming around at magic light time.

I’m not very good at taking scenic shots (coincidentally, I have another friend named David who IS very good at this, and you should look at his work), so it was nice to practice without worrying about whether there was an actual assignment riding on the photos.

SOMEBODY hasn’t posted his pictures yet (ahem), but whenever they’re up they’ll be at http://djance.blogspot.com.

 

 

Welcome (Back) to Texas: Fishy Beer Bike

Posted by Ivy

I mentioned in the previous post that I’ve photographed Beer Bike for seven years.

And while it is certainly true that the key to good event coverage is always looking for the contextual and visual surprises…it’s also true that sometimes, you just want to try out a different lens. Like a fisheye.

When I rented the fisheye for this trip, I essentially did it for one reason. Everything else, every other picture I took, was just icing on the cake as far as I was concerned.

I wanted this picture:

This is not a groundbreaking, earth-shattering photo by any means, but I like it for two reasons. The first is that I’ve never seen this picture made before (oh, CPOY, you’ve taught me so much!). The second is that, like I said, this is almost exactly the shot I wanted…I wanted an aerial overview of the whole event (when I was deciding on whether to rent or not, Chris very correctly pointed out that the aerial was almost necessary to justify using a fisheye in the first place). This very rarely happens; it’s not often that I have an idea for a photo and then it actually works out as planned.

I thought at first I would just go up to the first level of the football stadium, where there are always some spectators, and see what I could see.

I took a few shots there, but they weren’t right at all. The curve of the horizon wasn’t prominent enough (nor was I high enough to get a convex curve), and the distortion wasn’t working with me.

(This is how not to shoot fisheye photos. Womp.)

So I went higher, to the top of the stadium. It was also the first time I’d ever thought to shoot from this vantage point (I know, I know…), which turned out well for some other photos as well (see previous post).

And from there, it worked. Thanks, fisheye!

Welcome (Back) to Texas: Beer Bike

Posted by Ivy

This was the seventh year in a row I’ve taken photos at Beer Bike. It is the the third year in a row I’ve blogged about it…but it never gets old.

For those who don’t feel like checking out back entries, Beer Bike takes place every spring at Rice University (my alma mater).

First, campus gets overtaken by a giant, formerly-Guinness-record-holding water balloon fight. This is where the beer comes in; most people are, um, soaked both inside and out.

Following the water balloon fight, everybody heads to the bike track for the races.

There are three races: alum, women’s and men’s. Each has ten chuggers (women chug 12 ounces of water, men chug 24 ounces; they used to down beer, but water replaced that when people realized it was a lot easier to chug- and therefore made it easier to win races) and ten bikers. As soon as a chugger finishes his water, the flag goes up and the biker goes off. This repeats ten times. First team to finish the relay wins!



Halfway through the men’s race, the track judges decided conditions were too windy (there had been seven crashes already in the race) for biking to continue, so they switched to a Beer Run with five legs left to go. The bikers who had yet to race thus had to go from biking a mile as fast as they could to running a third of a mile as fast as they could. Not the same thing. I don’t envy them that switch at all.


If these photos all look like the same maroon team racing…that’s because I’m biased and photographed mainly those bikers/chuggers from Brown College, where I used to live. One of the perks of not actually being on assignment :)

Welcome (Back) to Texas: Some Portraits

Posted by Ivy

Most of the time I’m not sure if it’s Texas that I miss so much, or just the people who live there (or who used to live there, back when I did). It’s probably some sort of combination of the two; I have yet to figure out the proportions.

Anyway, part of the reason my pre-job vacation was as fantastic as it was was the simple fact that I got to see said people…some of whom I hadn’t seen in almost three years (see: Anishka, first photo). Reunions are the best. [note: these are not ALL of the wonderful people I visited. that would make for a very, very long blog post…]


Not a portrait per se, but I like this picture a whole lot.


Welcome (Back) To Texas: Rodeo!

Posted by Ivy

I graduated from college in 2008 (geez…). That year, and in 2009, I went back to Texas and to Houston for New Year’s Eve—because during both of those years, I had a team playing in the Texas Bowl. And I went to Texas during my spring breaks while in grad school.

But this year, I didn’t have a reason to go to the Texas Bowl…and a couple of my friends instead came to visit me in New England, which meant I didn’t make my usual New Year’s trip. So I hadn’t been to Houston in a year (this was, frankly, way too long).

Usually when I go to Houston I’m trying to pack a ton of visits and events into a couple of days, and some stuff inevitably gets left out. This year I didn’t want that to happen, and I made my stay much longer than it usually is. Which left me time to go to the rodeo (well, the livestock show part of the rodeo. but still!)!

(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).

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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.

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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

(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.