Category: Holidays

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More Halloween Moments

Natalie was exactly four and a half that Halloween. As cool as trick or treating was growing up in Chalfont, the block we lived on in SLC was a kid’s dream come true.
60 houses in a 2 block area…all lit up and well stocked with goodies. The kids made a huge haul in under an hour. But Larry ate most of it.

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Did I ever tell you about Halloween 1992?

I haven’t just recently started dressing up for Halloween – I’ve been doing it for years. One of my favorites was a road trip to Utah in 1992 (Penn State/Utah football game). Niece Natalie (the real one) and I got to go trick or treating. I think we made quite the pair – Little Orphan Annie and Daddy Warbucks.

The trick or treating was easily my fondest memories of that weekend. Since then I’ve tried to block out any memories of the pasting the Utah handed the PSU football team. And I’ve also tried to block out memories of my feeble attempts to make a move on the newscaster at Ken’s station – she was a former Utah homecoming queen if I remember right. I tried to get her to make a bet on the game with me – when she blew me off I suggested a simple bet, maybe a coke or something – she declined that. Of course, I felt like a total idiot when Ken pulled me aside and said “Mormons don’t bet and Mormons don’t drink caffeine”. How was I to know?

However, Natalie saved the weekend. We had a blast going around the neighborhood. Who do you think is the cutest?

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A New Years Memory

It’s a little strange sitting home watching football on New Years after so many years of being at bowl games for the holidays (for the record I’ve been to 23 bowl games) but with the slump that Penn State was in before this season I’ve started to get used to it.

One trip that stands out was thirty years ago. Penn State played Alabama in the first Sugar Bowl in the Superdome on New Years Eve December 31st 1975. The game started at about 8 PM local time and seemed to drag on forever. Penn State wound up losing 13-6 with the game ending a little past 11:30 which meant that we were going to have to rush to get down to Bourbon Street before midnight.

I was with Tod Jeffers and he and I rushed to the famed Pat O’Brien’s. Unfortunately, hundreds of others had the same idea and we wound up trapped in line during a rainstorm. Sure enough, midnight struck with us still in line. Cheers and noisemakers started going off and everyone started hugging and kissing their dates. Bummer, we had lost the game, we were soaking wet, and we had failed to get into the bar before midnight – the night wasn’t going well at all.

At that point I looked up and there was this cute blond coed dressed in Penn State blue standing in line just in front of me. Time to seize the moment. I just grabbed her, wished her a Happy New Year, and laid a big kiss on her. The kiss must have worked because I wound up dating her for about 3 1/2 years.

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Ice Ice Baby

Just a follow up to my post yesterday on the First Night Festivities in State College. I went back down last night and took some more photos of the ice sculptures. Ice is a difficult subject to photograph. I tried three different approaches each of which has a unique perspective.

The daylight shots show the detail in the ice better than any of the others but just don’t capture the wet glistening look. The figures could be made out of plastic for all you can tell from the photos.

For the night shots, I tried taking photos both with the flash on and with it off. With the night shots, the ice takes on the transparent look that is missing from the daylight shots. The flash also gives you a nice glistening look that is missing from the other too approaches. Unfortunately, you lose some of the detail that you can see in the daylight shots. Also the flash overpowers much of the front lighting that the scene has and the result isn’t the same as it appears to the naked eye.

That leaves night shots without a flash. Of course that approach presents some exposure, focus, and camera shake challenges but they are overcomeable. Without the flash, you are able to see both the front and back light that is illuminating the scene. Unfortunately, I think the long exposures over accentuate the available light to the detriment of the subject itself. I think you lose too much detail in the subject (of course, it could just be that I wasn’t able to find the correct combination of lighting and exposure).

Here are some shots from yesterday that demonstrate what I am talking about.

First for completeness sake, yesterday I showed the preliminary ice sketch of the continental soldier, and I wanted to show you the finished product. Here’s yesterday’s daylight shot along with two photos from last night – first with, then without flash.

Here are some shots that really highlight the differences from the three approaches.
This sculpture is of Admiral Peary who is generally considered to be the first person to reach the North Pole (how appropriate for an ice sculpture).

This is probably my favorite shot from last night. It was taken with flash, and is just part of the Jeremy Rose/Afleet Alex sculpture.

I’ve update the online album by adding last nights photos. You can view both yesterday afternoon’s and last night’s photos by clicking here.