Camping at Crane Prairie

Most of us just got back from a few days of camping at Crane Prairie with Grandma and Grandpa-- Jolie stayed behind to spend an extra night and the rest of us cruised home via Sunriver and Sawyer Ice Caves.  With the exception of an ill-timed, brief rain while we were packing up our gear this afternoon, the trip was great.  As an added bonus, we celebrated Claire's birthday with shrimp kabobs and ice cream cake today.  Having ice cream cake on day three of an outing is one of the numerous benefits of camping with an RV...

We also enjoyed having Sharon (visiting from Texas) on the trip as well.  She is in Oregon visiting her dad for a few weeks and she got her visit started off right away with a camping trip.  I guess by the time she goes home, she will have spend a significant portion of her trip sleeping in a tent.  That makes for a fun summer trip! 

 

By the way, more pictures from the trip can be viewed on Flickr. 

Summer gymnastics

A little birdie told me that, while the baseball pictures are interesting and all, some gymnastics pictures would also be appreciated.  Since I aim to please, here are some gymnastics pictures from the last few weeks.  If you are wondering why there are so many more pictures of April than Audrey, it boils down to me taking the camera to two of April's classes and one of Audrey's. 

Also, from a photography perspective, the gymnastics gym was a fairly challenging space in which to shoot.  The east facing room is on the second floor of an old building on campus.  It has amazing, huge windows which are about 15 to 20' off of the floor which bring in some great shafts of hard light, but the rest of the room is mostly decorated in dark blue tumbling mats.  This combination makes achieving proper exposure a bit of a challenge-- especially as the class moves around the room.  I was using evaluative metering last week and was frustrated with the results-- with the hard, intense light in the background, the foreground was often a stop or two under.  This week, I planned to switch to spot metering, but forgot to switch-- way to go.  Actually, the main reason I am writing this paragraph (besides to bore the reader with a subject he or she probably couldn't care less about) is to try to remember to switch my exposure metering next time I am in similar lighting conditions.  That being accomplished (I hope), I will now conclude this really interesting tangent. 

I just remembered one more cool photo feature of the building where the gymnastics class is held.  Taking up the entire middle of the second floor of this building is an enormous, oversized basketball court.  The court takes up the full depth of the building, so there are windows on both sides.  The north facing windows are made up of banks of palatial half-rounds that are probably 25' above the floor.  This place would be perfect for shooting a day game or just for setting up some interesting individual basketball pictures.  For the person looking for a location to take senior photos (who plays basketball) it doesn't get much better than this. 

More baseball... it's summer!

Another Wednesday night, another local baseball game.  This time we went to Corvallis to take in a Knights game.  They are not a professional farm team like the Volcanoes, but rather college summer league players.  It was an entertaining game to watch.  The home team Knights tied the game in the 9th on a 2-run fielding error and then had a chance for a rare and elusive suicide squeeze for the walk-off win, but alas, the bunt went foul and the game ended up going seven more innings.  We left after the 14th inning and ended up missing the walk-off home run in the 16th.  Oh well, we were all probably asleep and dreaming about the other 14 innings before the winning shot was clearing the right field fence.  Oh, by the way, the first picture is one of the visiting players getting beaned by a rather high and inside fastball-- ouch!

These are the last few moments of a guy getting thrown out at first.

This guy got thrown out trying to steal second.

The third baseman was a step faster than the base runner on this play. 

I don't remember if this was a base hit or strikeout, but the ball was frozen in an interesting location

Just like at the Volcanoes game, the crowd was unruly and somewhat disturbing to look at. 

Take me out to the ball game!

 
So, my man Dave Beer asks me last week if I would like to have our weekly Teachers activity at a Keizer Volcanos baseball game (the single A farm team for the San Francisco Giants) and further more, he has sponsor tickets that come with an open tab at the snack bar-- we're talking about all the hot dogs and garlic fries you can eat!  After pretending to think about it for a moment, I said, "Yes!"  And what a night for baseball it was.  A beautiful summer evening, an entertaining ball game, and the snack bar turned into your personal buffet.  I was crying tears of joy before the first pitch! 

This was also the first time I was able to shoot a baseball game.  There is definitely a steep learning curve that I was able to appreciate, but not begin to climb.  It would be fun to give it a few more tries, but only if the food it free...

Oh, by the way, the Volcanos have this really freaky looking mascot called Crater that looks like a monster from a 10 year old's nightmare.  For some reason, the team thinks it makes for entertaining seventh-inning-stretch material to have the mascot chase a ten year old around the bases... There's no way that kid didn't wake up screaming that night!

Finally, I was pretty set on snagging a foul ball during the game, but by the eighth inning the prospects were looking pretty slim.  In a desperation move, I convinced the third-base-line ball boy to steal a ball for me from the dugout.  Like a trooper, he set me up with the ball that Dave is holding in the first picture.  It's even autographed by a bunch of players I don't know.  That kid was awesome!  What's more, he can hock a mean loogie!