Monday, April 11, 2011

Spring Practice Game

I have been busy with the final projects over the past few weeks but thought I must share this with you.
The only game of football for the spring semester was held ove the weekend; as I was not here for the football season it would be the only game of football I would see, I was also lucky enough to go on a tour of the football stadium during the week. The pictures below are of the tour and game.
 Death Valley
Locker Room
 Weight Room
 Howards Rock
 Game Day Action
 Game Day Action
Game Day Action

The tour was a real eye opener for me to see how much resources are actually put aside to a college sport in America. The facilities of the Clemson football team rival and exceed most professional sporting teams from Australia and it’s a college team not a professional team, to me that is crazy and also shows how much football means to Americans.

In the tour we saw everything in the stadium, from the coach’s office, to the locker room and Howard’s Rock. It was a real honour to be able to go on this tour as all the American’s that I know in Clemson have never been on a tour of the stadium let alone seen the locker room. We were able to have a picture with Howard’s Rock which has a little bit of a storey behind it.http://collegefootball.about.com/od/traditions/a/Tradition-Clem.htm

The game itself was also crazy!
It was a hot spring afternoon, almost perfect conditions for a game of football, the roads around Clemson were packed with cars trying to get to the stadium, the streets were full with people flocking to the stadium, all of this for a so called ‘low key’ game. Even though it was an internal trial 30,000 faithful Clemson supporters attended the game again astonishing to me as our professional sports in Australia struggle to get a crowd of that magnitude to every game.

The atmosphere was crazy, and has almost convinced me to come back another semester when it is football season. For all of you who want to study abroad at Clemson I would come in the fall semester as the games seem to be an experience that can not be rivalled by any sport.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Major Project Planning

I have been a bit busy of late with Spring break and all but still have managed to plan my attack for the major projects of this course. I have three videos to make; a personal reflecting on the host culture, a proffesional video to do with my major, and a public issue video.

Spring Break helped me to get some more pictures and videos that I can use in these videos so it was not just a waste of time. In my personal video I really want to show the world the culture of South Carolina. In my previous blogs I have examined the differences in the cultures of South Carolina and my home country, this video will allow people from all over the world to see how the culture in Clemson differs from their own.

Whilst driving around from place to place during spring break, I have seen alot of different highway systems to Australia, so I want my professional video to touch on the American highway systems and traffic problems along them.

The public issues video I am still undecided on what to do but have a few things in mind. I hope to have these videos done in the next few weeks so stay tuned to see the final features of my blog.

Bye Ya'll

Monday, February 28, 2011

Tropos Photography

I love this picture for many reasons. It's a photo after we won our first premiership, it was my first premiership in any sport I have played. It also reminds me about the hard work we put in as a team that year.  The picture shows how happy everyone is after winning the game, it's a picture of all of the linemen in the team which we call the engine room, these are the people in the team I spend most of my time with, the picture therfore means a whole lot more.


This picture is from Greenville, I like this picture as the people sitting on the rock shows how immense this waterfall is.  This is watefall is part of a park which is one of the nicest parks I have come accross. The anlge of the picture is due to where a viewing station was, but it showcases the waterfall as the main feature of the park. The picture also portrays the laid back atmosphere of the place, shown by the people sitting on the rock with no care of the waterfall hitting them.

I wanted to add these two photos as their are some of my favourate photo's the next two are from the previous blog which we are supposed to examine.

This picture to me sums up the Campus of the University of Georgia.
Everything was so clean, pretty and perfect; there were numerous parks and features around the campus this one just shows how relaxed the campus is. There are lots of cntrasting colours from different trees, bushes, buildings and path ways which shows the beauty of the campus.


This picture of Lake Harwell like the image above showcases the beutiful landscape of the area. I chose this angle to encorperate the different shorelines from where I was standing to accross the other side of the lake where the forest started. I have never spend time around lakes I have always been up the river or at a beach, when looking at this photo it reminds me of our shack on the Murray River which evoked many joyful memories, the river is my favourate place to spend time relaxing.

Digital Photos

I have never been a big photo person, watching the Pat Wright videos was an eye opener for me.  I din't realise there was so many different aspects to taking a photo, I thought it was as simple as turning the flash on and off.

Over the past week I explored some of the techniques that Pat describes in his videos.

This first picture is an exapmle of a close picture, where the focal point of the image is the whole image. The image below is an example of a far image where the focal point (water feature) is smaller and does not take up the whole picture. These pictures were taken in Athens, Georgia where we went for my mates 21st birthday. It was a really fun party town with lots of bars and clubs to choose from. These two particular pictures were taken on the campus of the University of Georgia.



I've akways taken photos of everything up close, Pat's videos has given be a broader appreciation for photography. The following photo is an example of the rule of thirds. The photo was taken in one of the many parks around Lake Harwell, I took the picture of the duck as it was the biggest duck I have seen, it would easily be double if not triple the size of ducks from back home. The other photo is a picture of the lake, it is an example of horizontal photography.