travels

Shining Sea Bikeway

Posted by Ivy

On Friday, after my dentist and ophthalmologist appointments in Falmouth, my ophthalmologist recommended walking to Woods Hole on the Shining Sea Bikeway (so named because the author of “America the Beautiful” was born in Falmouth) instead of backtracking on the town roads to the landing where I’d come in. It was four-and-a-half miles to Woods Hole, which I kind of barreled through because I was trying to make the 5:00 ferry back to MV (spoiler: I made it), but…what a walk. The Cape shore is simply beautiful.

(okay, so this was taken on the ferry, not the bikeway…but look at the rainbow!)

 

Texas and the 50mm: Downtown Austin + the Capitol

Posted by Ivy

After I went to Houston for a weekend, I took the bus up to Austin for a few days.

The bus ride went right through the corridor of Texas that’s been having all the wildfires. Just a wee bit scary…

I was staying with my friends Alex and Emre, who are both at UT and in classes most of the day, which meant I had a whole lot of time to just wander around downtown Austin. Since I’d never actually been to Austin before, this worked out perfectly.

That said, I don’t think Sixth Street by day is quite the same as Sixth Street by night:

I also went to the Capitol building. Twice. The first day, I just walked over to see what all the fuss was about. The second day, I decided to go inside to check things out, and walked in right as a tour was starting. Hooray!

Almost backed into the street trying to make the whole building fit into the scope of a 50mm.

Texas and the 50mm: En Route

Posted by Ivy

I’m a month behind on these posts. Better late than never!

——

I celebrated my 6-month anniversary with the Gazette by taking a vacation (isn’t that always the way of things?).

The main reason for the vacation was to attend my college roommate’s wedding in Waco, but it’s hard for me to go to Texas and not, well, visit everybody else I know there, so I made a couple of other stops along the way (Houston and Austin).

I brought one lens with me: my 50mm. Push comes to shove, I’d have picked the 20mm over the 50 any day, but that lens is still broken.

Logan Airport, surprisingly empty for a Friday afternoon…

 

 

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!)!