sports

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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Mizzou vs. Nebraska: Sidelines

Posted by Ivy

Stills from the MU-Nebraska game this past Thursday (I got to shoot pregame activities and the first half before going up to the press box to edit during the second half). I had the D2H, so most of my attention while on the field was actually focused on the people in the stands. D2H + downpour + night + action shots of football…not a combination I wanted to play with.

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Down by the Bay: Baseball + Fireworks

Posted by Ivy

I’m procrastinating writing a paper for Qualitative, and figured now was as good a time as any to post the penultimate entry from my San Francisco trip.

On Friday, July 3, I went with my family and my friend Seth to see the San Francisco Giants play the Houston Astros. I wouldn’t call myself a hardcore Astros fan, but I did go to school in Houston for four years, so I’d probably err on their side when picking an NL team to root for. However, the Astros of 2009 are nothing like the Astros of a few years ago–the team that went to the World Series and had the power trio (the Killer Bs) of Berkman, Biggio and Bagwell. They ended up losing 9-0. Ouch. To be fair, San Francisco’s pitcher was absolutely brilliant- and it was only his second start!

There was also a fireworks show after the game, which rocked. I’m already excited for the fireworks in Oak Bluffs next month, but that’s partially because I’m really excited about going back to the East Coast for a couple weeks.

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Hole-in-One!

Posted by Ivy

Second time shooting golf for the Missourian. This was a loooooong tournament–and I only shot the back 9–which lasted about five hours, including a rain delay and the trophy presentations at the end. Whew. On the plus side, I got to use the 300mm, which I love…on the minus side, I had to handhold it because the monopod wouldn’t attach to the lens, and I needed to be able to quickly switch from horizontal to vertical framing. Whew.

The girl who won the tourney, Chelsea Schriewer (wearing the black shirt; Alisha Matthews, in the stripes, placed second), won by twelve strokes, tied the overall course record (as shot by a man or a woman) with a 66, AND got her first hole-in-one on the 16th. On the 16th, while she was hole-in-one-ing, I was, of course, changing lenses. CHANGING LENSES. Rotten, terrible luck. That’ll teach me to go out without two camera bodies.

Once again, these uploaded a little undersaturated…

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Advanced: Blending

Posted by Ivy

Oops…I forgot to upload my Blending select last week.

I’ve been accidentally blending for a long time now, since I like shooting with slow shutter speeds, so, of course, as soon as I tried to intentionally use the technique, I ran into some problems. I knew a lot of other people were going to turn in selects from bike polo, so I was reluctant to fall back on our final project subject, but none of my outtakes (there were a lot; I shot in four different places (apologies to Charles, who had to go through all of those while grading)) were as good as what I took during polo.

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Pete Abram (left) races past Columbia Bike Polo members Chris Williams (back left) and Tim Donahoe (back right) on April 22, 2009, as an unidentified member (right) attempts to catch up to the group. Abram crashed his bike earlier that night and injured his arm, but made a makeshift bandage for his wound and continued to play.

Advanced: Multiple Flash select

Posted by Ivy

After careful scrutiny, we determined that the photo I wanted to turn in as a select was in fact a single-flash shot. Oh well.

Here’s the one I actually turned in. I wish it were more of an action shot, but the moment is still a nice one:

20090415__mf_ashei_0343_lrColumbia Bike Polo team members Nicholas Charles Jacob (right) and Pete Abram (center) assist new teammate Ryan Heath (left) after Heath crashed his bike during a game on April 15. The team practices on the roof of the Hitt Street Parking Garage.

Advanced: Multiple Flash + Final Project take one

Posted by Ivy

Something that often gets me into trouble when I’m photographing: I believe very much in the idea that luck plays a huge part in making good images. I actually wouldn’t want it any other way. True, I want control over my images (otherwise I wouldn’t be spending two extra years in school learning all about it), but I like surprising myself when I go back and look through a take. This mostly applies to content and composition decisions, and not so much the technical side of things (this I would prefer to manage closely), but it’s also fun to play around with different apertures and shutter speeds (and flash ratios…) and see what works best. The benefit of this approach is it’s all the more satisfying–well, in my experience. I can’t speak for everyone–when you do get it just right. The cost is it’s not the most practical way to work, and it doesn’t guarantee you a good image.

I suspect this general attitude towards photography is why I was so overwhelmed in the studio at first (what? I have a say in EVERYTHING? nothing’s left to chance? nothing at all? oh geez…). It’s probably also why, of all the different photo subjects out there, I like shooting sports best. People/objects are always moving around, which means instant variability that must be accounted for. Yay!

Tonight I went with Mito (Calin and Lesley, our other group members, were also there) to work on the Multiple Flash assignment and to get some images for our final project. The Columbia Bike Polo team (its members will be familiar faces with everybody in Advanced by the end of the semester, given how much our group has already made pictures of them) holds its evening practices up on the roof of the Hitt Street parking garage; thanks to the wonders of Daylight Savings Time, we were photographing in about three different light situations as the sun started to go down, twilight set in, and evening finall fell. It was ridiculous trying to use multiple flash while the sun was still bright, since the flash Mito was holding just wouldn’t respond to the one on my camera; it thought that the light from the sun was just fine for photo-taking. This was not helped by the on-camera flash being Canon, and the others being Nikon.

We thought things would get easier once it got dark, but were still getting mostly single-flash images, as the Nikon was still refusing to go off. Calin finally solved the problem by switching the trigger settings to Auto (instead of Manual), and after that we were pretty golden with the multiple light sources. It took some messing around to get the lighting ratio just right (we ended up using 4:1), especially since, during the whole flash-not-going-off deal, I was using a much more powerful beam from the on-camera flash than I should have had to.

Also, a HUGE thank-you goes to Mito for being a human flash-stand all night!

Here are some of the 400+ images- there are quite a few that I can probably fix in Photoshop later on, but for now, these are the ones that were okay as is:

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I think I’m turning this one in as a select:

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Cactus League: Spring Break part two

Posted by Ivy

I lived in Florida for eight years and never went to any spring training games. I didn’t really get into baseball until I was in high school, and we moved when I was thirteen, but still– I should have at least seen something of the Grapefruit League while I was down there. It’s kind of embarrassing.  I’ve seen my dad play amateur ball (in the Roy Hobbs League) at City of Palms Park, where the Red Sox spring train, but never the Sox themselves. Admittedly, it’s a hell of a lot cooler to see your dad play than anybody else, but regardless, I totally dropped the ball on Florida baseball.

So now I’m trying to make up for that. My grandparents live in Scottsdale, AZ, and (again with the happy coinciding of dates) spring break nicely lines up with spring training, Cactus League style. Arizona baseball doesn’t have the history that Florida does (nor do the Red Sox play there, DAMN IT), but it does have the excellent advantage of all the ballparks being really close to each other and not sprawled out all over the state. Had I had the time and money, I would have seen more than two games, but two is still a huge breath of fresh air after the long baseball-less winter. The whole experience was made even better by my best friend Tegan being in Arizona at the same time (having just finished a stint with AmeriCorps)…so we got to go be baseball junkies together. Awesome!

I managed to recharge my camera battery at Tempe Camera (on the advice of Tegan’s boyfriend, who could hold up to any Mizzou photo-j in terms of camera gear know-how), so I was good to go and could telephoto to my heart’s content. One regret: not enough photos of Grady Sizemore.

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[Game One: Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Chicago White Sox at Camelback Ranch, Glendale, AZ. Russell Martin catching while Jim Thome bats. The White Sox won 6-1.]

20090328_0015_edit[Dodgers vs. White Sox. Orlando Hudson at bat, AJ Pierzynski catching, Manny Ramirez on deck. YAY MANNY! I still love you; I just hate Scott Boras.]

20090328_0021_edit[Dodgers vs. White Sox. Manny Ramirez breaking his bat before grounding into a double play with the bases loaded. Whoops.]

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[Dodgers vs. White Sox. Paul Konerko covering first base.]

20090329_0203_edit[Game Two. Cleveland Indians vs. Chicago Cubs at Hohokam Stadium, Mesa, AZ. This was a much better, more competitive game than the other, but the Indians were victorious, 7-5.]

20090329_0194_edit[Indians vs. Cubs. Mark DeRosa (who just moved from the latter to the former) runs the bases in front of a sellout crowd after his second home run of the game. DeRosa was 3 for 4 with two homers and a double.]

20090329_0180[Indians vs. Cubs. Derrek Lee dwarfs Indians 1B Tony Graffanino. Because he’s REALLY TALL.]

20090329_0216_edit[Tegan’s boyfriend Dan at the Indians/Cubbies game. Incidentally, he’s wearing the jersey (which he stole from Tegan) of the Chiba Lotte Marines, the Japanese team Bobby Valentine manages.]