Put Him In!

Today’s bonus post is a crossover, not unlike popular TV series such as Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order, which have also done crossovers.  Last summer I went out shooting in Wichita with my Cousin and as I was taking this picture, unbeknownst to me, he was taking my picture.  As a cross-promotional endeavor, we decided to post each of our perspectives of the same scene.  I wanted to get a different angle on this statue that is in front of Wichita State’s Eck Stadium where they play baseball.  It isn’t always easy to set up for certain angles, and as you can see on Matthew’s page, this was one of those times.  As you’ll see, I’m pretty sprawled out on the concrete to get this angle.

Check out my Cousin Matthew’s take on the scene at http://matthewwellsphotography.blogspot.com/.  While you’re at it, check out his other work too.

Edit: Damn!  He outdid me in the humor department.. this time!

Exif information
Model	Canon EOS 20D
Original date	2009:09:05 14:19
Exposure time	1/200 sec
Focal length	10mm
F-Stop	f/10
ISO speed	ISO-100
Exposure Bias	0

WSU Baseball

Last time I was in Wichita I had a little time to kill one afternoon, so I grabbed my camera and wandered down the block to Eck Stadium at Wichita State University.  I grew up just a block from this stadium and have watched countless games there.  In high school I even went to a few WSU baseball camps and played some games there.  They have a good baseball program historically, but I think their longtime coach has sort of lost it the last few years and the team is suffering as a consequence.

I wanted to try something a little different with this photograph.  Sometimes new perspectives don't work very well, but I like what I got with this one.  I figure the only way I can grow and improve my photography is by trying new things.

Bean Ball!

Well it's about time for the annual Art/Work art show at work. This event takes place at a number of Kansas City businesses and the top three entries (as voted on by fellow employees) represent their company in a city wide art show which is hosted at Union Station. This show started the first year I was working at my current place of employment and had a decent turnout. That year I entered my Busch Stadium panorama and by all accounts should have won the contest. I was beaten out by an amateurish photograph of some firefighters putting out a fire at night; how cliche. I'm pretty sure the American Flag was even flying in the picture.

Anyway, last year I was under a lot of pressure by the woman who organized it within our company (she loved my panorama) to submit another photo. Unfortunately, I had a lot on my plate at that time, and didn't get around to finishing up the photograph I had wanted to enter. I ended up submitting this photo, which I like, but I don't think it is contest winning material. I just wanted to put something in there to support the show.

I took this shot in St. Louis, on another one of those extended-family vacations to see the Cardinals play baseball. It was the summer I got my new camera, so as I was snapping away like crazy, I happened to get this bean ball milliseconds before it hit the batter. It was pretty cool!



Stay tuned for this year's submission! I'm very happy with what I've got this time around!

Busch Stadium Panorama

I figured for my first post I would show you one of my favorites. This panorama is not only the biggest project I have undertaken, it was also my first real attempt to create a large photograph I wanted to print.

Originally, the inspiration behind this photograph was my Grandparents. They were both lifelong Cardinals fans and loved St. Louis and Busch Stadium. This was one of the last seasons the 'old' Busch Stadium was going to be used, as they were going to be building a 'new' Busch Stadium right next door, so I thought I would create a large photograph for them to have to remember Busch Stadium and all the years they went to watch the Cardinals play.

One day in the fall of 2005 after class, I was sitting at my computer looking through some photos I had taken the previous summer when the whole family got together in St. Louis for some baseball. I had quite a few shots of the entire stadium from our outfield seats and wondered if I could combine them to make a large panorama of the entire stadium. At this point, I was relatively new to Photoshop, so I started playing around with it, getting moderately good results. I continued to play with, tweak, move, and stretch six to twelve different photographs until I had a pretty decent view of the entire stadium from left to right.

When I took the original photos I don't think I had planned to put them together to form one grand panorama, so there were some missing areas, most notably, the extreme corner of right field (bottom left of this photo) and large portions of the deep outfield. I was also still relatively new to my Canon 20D DSLR, so not all of the exposures I was working with were the same. This made things a bit more difficult as colors didn't quite match from photo to photo. Additionally, the portions of the picture that I had to create manually were dependent on the existing photos. If I didn't get the places where each photo merged right, the whole thing would look off. I also wanted to have a 2:1 ratio of width to height. I figured this would look better. In addition to the outfield areas, I also had to extend the sky upwards some to achieve this ratio.

After innumerable hours working on this project (I was in college afterall, what else would I do, study??) I finally created something I was happy with. Unfortunately neither of my Grandparents were able to see my completed work while they were alive, but I'm sure they've seen it.



As I sit here looking at this I am overcome with the urge to go back and edit it a little more. I would like to bring out some of the sky a bit more; add a little more 'pop' to the picture.

I am also overcome with a feeling that the 'new' Busch Stadium can't hold a candle to the real Busch Stadium. This stadium was unique; it had character. Sure it needed some upgrades, but overall it was a classic stadium. I've been to the 'new' Busch Stadium, and to me it is just another MLB stadium built in the 2000's. Not much is unique about it; sure it's nice, but it doesn't have the character that Busch Stadium had. It's just another new stadium in a sea of new stadiums. Thank goodness Kansas City decided to renovate Kauffman Stadium instead of building a new one.