I toned everything here to fix the white balance up- except for the next three photos (well, I made one black and white. But the exposure is as is). Those are the result of GORGEOUS and absolutely perfect natural light. I’d never seen anything like it. Maybe I should move to San Francisco just to get that sky-as-a-softbox effect all the time…
As per family tradition, I went to San Mateo, CA for the 4th of July to visit my brother and sister-in-law, and their two daughters (Liza, 3, and Molly, who’s only ten weeks old!). My parents, fresh out of a trip to Vegas for my mom’s 50th birthday, also came. Angus and Lori just moved to San Mateo after several years living in San Francisco (it’s about 25 minutes north of where they are now; Angus still commutes to work in the city); the town is, as far as I could tell, close to the epitome of Suburbia. The neighborhood and community seemed great, and I’m so glad the family’s all settled in there…even if I did kind of miss their little SanFran apartment.
I also got to meet up with a few people from Rice (hooray!), go to a Giants/Astros game (Houston is so terrible this year. It’s hard to believe they were in a World Series four years ago), visit Berkeley for the first time (I prefer San Francisco, but then I was only on the other side of the bay for about an hour and a half), go to the BEACH for the first time in more than a year (that’s just sad) and eat oh so much excellent food. I got very carried away taking food pictures, so those are all going to get their own post.
Oh! On the way home, I bounced through Salt Lake City, and flew right over the lake on the way out. I couldn’t get any pictures of it), but wow. I’d fly through Utah again just for that sight. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that color blue before, and the salt flats around it were beautiful. No wonder LG’s friends got married out there.
Anyway, I have so many photos to upload here (I’m still behind on my Missourian assignments, but I keep meaning to make a Soundslides for all of them…eventually…) that I broke everything down into separate posts:
Foul Balls and Fireworks
Fourth of July
Food (nom nom nom nom)
San Francisco
I like Missouri just fine, but the lack of ocean here drives me crazy. It was quite the sight for sore eyes to see the Pacific in all of its glory. Beautiful. 
Bean Hollow State Beach
Liza and Angus roaming the shore.
Liza at the beach makes for a super high-key portrait.
A dolphin! I love my telephoto lens! Now I need a 400 and a monopod, so I can get even closer next time.
Liza’s sandy sandals.
Daddy and little Molly. Shot this at 1/6 of a second, and Molly the squirmy moved her head just enough thather bow has motion blur. Sigh.
I love all of the open spaces and giant windows in Angus and Lori’s house.
Miss Molly! I didn’t have time to frame this the way I wanted to (I wish Molly were more in the photo), but I looked up, saw the reflection, and made one image. Oh well.
Pretty afternoon lighting in Angus and Lori’s backyard.
Liza, Daddy, Mom, and pretty indoor lighting. Also, balance flash! Woohoo yay!
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.
[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.]
[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.]
[Dodgers vs. White Sox. Manny Ramirez breaking his bat before grounding into a double play with the bases loaded. Whoops.]
[Dodgers vs. White Sox. Paul Konerko covering first base.]
[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.]
[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.]
[Indians vs. Cubs. Derrek Lee dwarfs Indians 1B Tony Graffanino. Because he’s REALLY TALL.]
[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.]
This spring break makes the third year running that I’ve been in at least two different places for the course of the vacation. I can never decide which trips I want to make, and usually just opt for going everywhere I possibly can (afford). I kind of outdid myself this year, though, because this year I also had a free round-trip on Southwest…which meant I could go even more places for what it normally costs me to do the usual two-destinations break (I suspect I also packed so much in because winter in Columbia made me very, very antsy to get out and go exploring).
It happened that Beer Bike was going on down at Rice the first weekend of break, which was a huge stroke of luck, especially since I didn’t make it to Homecoming in the fall. So I got to crash in my old dorm for a couple of days (with my old roomie, no less! Score!), visit with all of the amazing people I hadn’t seen since graduation, and, of course, check out the bike races and water balloon fight. Unfortunately, I foolishly left my telephoto back IN the dorm while all of the latter events were going on, so I didn’t get many good pictures of the festivities.
[Members of Jones College (purple shirts) squaring off against Brown College (maroon shirts- BSWB!) during the pre-Beer Bike water balloon parade.]
[Me and John Broadway during the races themselves, as reflected in the sunglasses of a guy from Baker. I was a bad journalist and never got the guy’s name, but then again, I can never use this photo for anything, anyway, since my camera’s pretty prominent in it].
[Will Rice College maintaining its lead over Brown during the women’s race. WRC won by .04 of a second, once penalties were factored in, and, incidentally, swept all three races (alum, men’s, women’s). This is at once impressive and depressing.]
After two whirlwind days in Texas, I headed north and west to Seattle, where my friends Ian and Sarah live, and where my friend Derek was also visiting on his spring break. We spent some time visiting the islands of Puget Sound and checking out Pike Place Market/other random tourist things, but most of the time were just relaxing and doing a whole lot of nothing. On this leg of the trip, my camera battery died, and, as I have somehow lost the charger, I ended up using my little point-and-shoot quite a bit.
[This is Derek’s book jacket picture (he has yet to write the actual book, but at least this part is good to go), which was taken during our trip to Camano Island]
[Ian and Sarah’s puppy, Dugan, running around Camano Island]
[No trip to Seattle is complete without stopping to pay respects at Hendrix’s grave. ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky.]
