I’ve completely given up on trying to fix my gallery. It’s screwed up so badly, it’s really not worth trying to fix at this point. I’ll get another gallery up soon, but in the mean time, enjoy the new blog layout I made in about 2 hours.

Basketball season is officially upon us! The Virginia Tech Women’s basketball team didn’t exactly get off to a good note yesterday in their 70-79 loss to Peach State… oh well, at least it was jut an exhibition game. The Women have another home game this Friday right after a volleyball game. The Men’s basketball team will tip-off their season at 8pm Friday night immediately following the Women’s game. I won’t be covering the Men’s game, but will be going as a fan.

Well, I’ve been dealing with some problems from my host, who recently migrated my website to new servers.  Some serious problems have been caused including the corruption of one of my databases that the gallery depends on.  I’ll try to get the gallery fixed as soon as I can.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  Until then, you can always view my photos on my flickr page here.

So I finally got a picture with Erin Andrews! She’s been at 3 games I’ve shot so far and this is the first one I was able to get one. I’ll be posting the photos to the gallery soon, but until then you can see them on my flickr page along with some behind the scenes shots:

Game Photos
Behind the Scenes

The Hokie Men’s and Women’s basketball teams start their seasons in less than a month. They both put on a program for students and fans called “Late Night with the Hokies”. It consisted of a few half court shot contests, 3-point shot contests, some other games here and there, a sweet dunk contest with the Men’s team, some performances by the High Techs dance team and ended with a scrimmage by the men’s team. It sure did feel good to get back in Cassell. I can’t wait for basketball season to start!

Of course, besides actually taking pictures of the event itself, we tend to goof off a bit…

Mike in a classic “deer in the headlights” pic.

Paul being a goof.

I’m pretty sure we spend half the time taking pictures of ourselves. It’s no secret that photographers enjoy pictures of themselves taking pictures.

Ok, I know it’s getting old, but this HD video thing is just too cool.  Sadly enough, this video wasn’t exported in HD, but you get the idea.  It’s just a compilation of video I took this week with Jaffer’s new D90.

Stumbled upon this amazing video on Vimeo.  These timelapses are created by hundreds of photos taken at 30 second shutter speeds each and taken 6 seconds in between shots.  I have to try this sometime.

Jaffer went back to Best Buy today to exchange his faulty D90 for a new one… guess what… still faulty.  There’s only one visible dead pixel on this one, but still, he’s going to get this one replaced tomorrow… that’s 4 different D90’s in 4 days.  Well worth it though.  If I were spending this much on a new camera, I’d be doing the same thing.

Yeah, this has near nothing to do with me, but I think it’s cool.  Barely 7 months after getting his very first dSLR, my roommate Jaffer decided to sell his D40 and upgrade (a hell of an upgrade) to the new Nikon D90.  We fiddled around with the D-Movie feature a bit, which is amazing, but also a few pictures on 3200 ISO showed a few hot pixels, which made him a bit concerned.  I think he’s going to go to Best Buy tomorrow to get a replacement… word on the street is that this is a popular problem with the D90, hopefully it’s just a bad batch.

My brother and I took a quick trip to Best Buy and brought a memory card with us so we could sample some of the D90 video first hand.  My brother is about to drop the cash for one, so he wanted to make sure beforehand that it was going to be worth it… I think it’s a nice extra for the quality of camera it already is.  The video is pretty amazing… can’t wait to see what it would look like with my 50mm f/1.8 on it.

Wow, I know it’s not exactly the best HD video you can get, but it sure is cool.

At the Virginia Tech football game this weekend, we’ll be having a flyover of 2 AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopters. They went through a practice routine this morning from 8:45am until about 9:30am. A good friend of mine, Damian Salas invited me to come up and watch the flyovers from the top of the south end zone of Lane Stadium. I ended up getting a few good shots. I’ll post them in the gallery soon.

Finally starting to have some consistent football weather here in Blacksburg.  Being able to wear a sweatshirt all day long is something I enjoy.  Not too cold yet, but not very warm either.  Fall is kicking into high gear already.

This is a panoramic of the tree I took pictures of two days ago. It’s starting to lose a lot of leaves. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the leaves were gone in 2 weeks.

Later on in the evening, I gave my buddy, Mike Wentz a call to see if he wanted to go shoot some pictures of some starts over near the VT airport. It was supposed to be a really clear night and boy did it make for some good shots. My longest one was a 30 minute exposure, but I was kind of disappointed with the outcome. Here’s a nice shot of some of the stars and Mike’s camera on his tripod:

The night started off with me waking up from a well deserved nap at around 6pm.  I had been up the previous night until about 3am finishing up a project for one of my classes, finishing up a CAD drawing for a homework assignement and studying for my first Statistics midterm.  When I woke up, I walked across the street from my apartment where there is this big tree that is already starting to turn color.  So I snapped a few pictures of that and then headed over to the Men’s Soccer game vs. George Washington.

This was a nice HDR shot I got from the Men’s Soccer game.  The Hokies won on a penalty kick with about 2 minutes to go… it was pretty intense.  Not much of a crowd though, then again it had rained about 2 hours before the game and was a Tuesday night.

After the game, I drove back to my apartment, editted some of the pictures and then went back out over near the VT airport to take some pictures of the stars and what not.  I wish I had stayed out a little longer, but sitting around waiting for a 10, 20 or 30 minute exposure can get a little boring.  So I cut most of my exposures down to 5 or 6 minutes tops and ended up with a few nice shots.

I’ve forgotten how much I love night photography.  Since I purchased my remote shutter a couple of months back, I’ve never really gotten the chance to use it.  The picture above may not show it, but it was pretty pitch black outside off this road.  That big gleaming light over the horizon is from the intramural practice fields closer to Lane Stadium.

To see some more long exposure shots I took last night, check them out in my flickr album:
http://flickr.com/photos/briansewell/sets/72157607462956095/

So last night’s drive up to Blacksburg after the UNC game got really interesting at around 12:40am. I’ve made this trip a million times before, since I live in Cary, NC and travel back in forth from Tech to home and have always wanted to stop off the side of I-77 to take pictures of Mount Airy. There’s a really steep grade for about 5 miles up the side of this mountain that has a really great view of Mount Airy, and more of North Carolina.

On our way up, I figured we might as well. So we pulled off on the shoulder which is pretty dangerous since it’s really close to a steep drop off the mountain and a lot of big rig trucks travel up that road in the far right lane and sometimes verge off the road a bit. I had my emergency flashers on to start and figured it would probably be a better idea to turn on my headlights so we would be a bit more visible. So we’re out there taking pictures right off the side of the road for about 20 minutes and actually got some great shots:

So after we were done taking pictures, we hopped in the car and the battery was dead. I cranked it a few times and finally we decided to just turn off all of the lights, and let the car sit for about 5-10 minutes while we waiting outside the car (just in case a trucker ran into our car, we wouldn’t plummet off the end of the mountain). After waiting for about 5 minutes, we tried it one more time, and it just barely had the juice to start. Could have been a lot worse I guess.

Still here in the press box, waiting for our writer to finish up his story, then we’re hitting the road back to Blacksburg.

Well, it wasn’t looking so good midway through the 3rd quarter when UNC went on top 17-3 on some crazy long running play, but after that the momentum just did a complete reverse.  The Hokies scored an unanswered 17 points to end the game and win 20-17.  All the photos are in the gallery and on my flickr account.  We’re still here in the press box waiting to post the recap and then heading back to Blacksburg.  Whew, what a game!

We’re here at UNC ready to see the Hokies play the Tar Holes (cough.. I mean Heels).  Kickoff is only about an hour away.  Mike Wentz and I are going to head down to the field in a few moments.  Check back after the game for some pics!  Go Hokies!