Well, this is the last week of my semester at school, and my adventure begins on Saturday morning at 5am. I have a few exams to knock out this week and then I’m on the road for the next 11 days to visit New Mexico and Arizona with a group of students from school.
The Southwest Adventure is a program at Catawba Valley Community College where are group of students are chosen from an application process to participate in two classes that end up in this 11-day adventure at the end of the semester. The first class is History 227 (Native American History) and the second class is Sociology 230 (Race and Ethnic Relations). Our last class meeting in this program is tomorrow afternoon.
I’m excited about this trip. There are going to be some difficulties, but I believe the overall experience is going to be life-changing. We have a total of 14 people piling into a 15-passenger van early Saturday morning. We will put 800 miles on the van on Saturday and another 800 on Sunday before arriving at our first destination Albuquerque, New Mexico. Part of my responsibilities on this trip include photo documentation. Some of the places we are going to visit look phenomenal. I have listed a few links to photos of some of our destinations during the seven days we will spend in this area:
- Acoma Pueblo
- Canyon de Chelly
- Chaco Canyon
- Grand Canyon
- Mesa Verde
- Glorieta Pass
- Petroglyph National Monument
- Loretto Chapel
When I get home I expect to have a ton of photos from this adventure. We will be blogging our adventure as we go, and I’ll provide a link to that blog later this week.
Until then…
Hickory Crawdads - Angel Gonzalez
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
I have been busy lately trying to finish the semester at school and complete a set of photos for the Hickory Crawdads first set of 2007 baseball cards. I thought I was going to have plenty of time to complete the first set. When I initially inquired about when they had to have them, I was told the end of May would be my deadline. That was going to work out well because I’m going out of town between May 5 and May 15. The Hickory Crawdads front office called me on Friday and informed me that they need the photos by this coming Friday, which is the day before I leave. As of today, the Hickory Crawdads have only played six home games. They should have played nine, but three of them were rained out and could not be made up. I couldn’t attend one of the six due to a schedule conflict of my own. We have one more game tomorrow afternoon, and that will be my last opportunity to shoot these photos before the deadline.
Unfortunately, I’ll have to shoot a few stand-up shots of a couple players rather than on the field during a game. I hate having to do this, but I guess we gotta do what we gotta do :)
I have exams this week and a few minor projects to complete for the school semester. My last exam is Thursday and then I’ll be off for the summer while I wait for the verdict on my acceptance or rejection to the Radiography program at Catawba Valley Community College. I should find out sometime in June.
2007 SWA - Bakers Mountain Hike
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
This group of people makes up the Catawba Valley Community College 2007 Southwest Adventure program. The Southwest Adventure is a program offered at CVCC where the students apply for acceptance through a competitive process in which ten students are chosen to participate. The program is worth six credit hours and is comprised of a History (Native American History) and Sociology (Race & Ethnic Relations) class. The program finishes with an 11 day trip out to New Mexico and Arizona to visit sites related to Native American History.
Today, we participated in a group hike to the top of Bakers Mountain. We met at the college at 9:30 this morning and traveled up to Bakers Mountain Park. We hiked one of the loop trails up to the top of the mountain and back before having a picnic lunch at ‘base camp’ :)
I shot this group photo after we had lunch as a commemorative of the event, and as the first photo of many that will arise from this project.
On May 5, we leave for New Mexico and Arizona. We’ll be taking a two-day drive out there where we’ll spend 7 days visiting locations such as The Grand Canyon, Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Acoma Pueblo, Four Points, Petroglyphs National Monument, just to name a few. After all that, we will spend another two days driving back to North Carolina.
It’s gonna be an experience :)
Carlee Carpenter - Bandys
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Sorry I haven’t been blogging lately. The end of the semester is near and Minor League Baseball has started, so I’m busy. The baseball team is on the road until the 28th, so I won’t have a lot of extra work to do again until then.I had two sports assignments today. The first one was a softball game between Bandys and Maiden, two local rivalries. I have always been amazed at how these girls can sling this ball with any accuracy at all. I didn’t notice this little tidbit until I looked at the photos a little closer, but this pitcher (Carlee Carpenter of the Bandys Lady Trojans) is throwing a knuckleball! If you click on the photo to view the larger size, you can see it clearly.
The Bandys girls went on to win today’s game 3-2 in 9 innings.
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Fred T. Foard’s Aaron King set a few records in tonight’s semi-final play of the annual Easter Classic baseball tournament. He got four hits in one game (one of which was a 3 run dinger out of the yard) and he also has eight hits on the tournament, which ties a record. He still has one game to go in tomorrow night’s final against the Cougars of Alexander Central High School.
The weather man is calling for rain tomorrow, so the final games of this tournament will likely get postponed until Thursday evening…
Today begins a five-month busy season for me in sports photography. The Hickory Crawdads (Low-A Pittsburgh Pirates Minor League Affiliate) kicked off the upcoming season with an exhibition game against the Bears of Lenior-Rhyne College tonight at L.P. Frans Stadium in Hickory, North Carolina. When I’m not shooting a high school event for the newspaper, I’ll be covering these games throughout the season. I provide photography to the team and to Minor League Baseball throughout the season.The Hickory Crawdads start regular season play on Thursday with a four-game road trip to Hagerstown, Maryland before returning home for eight consecutive home games. I won’t be blogging much here about the Hickory Crawdads. I may make an occasional post, but I am blogging Crawdads material at another site:http://pirates.mlblogs.com
This is part of a larger group of Pirates blogging.
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Golf is a sport I don’t get to shoot very often. In fact, today was only the second time I have ever shot it. My first time was at the Greater Hickory Classic Seniors Tournament last August. Today’s assignment was a local high school conference tournament at the Rock Barn course. I’m so used to the fast-paced action of the other sports I shoot. This is quite different. Golf isn’t so fast-paced. I think the above photo goes a long way to promote golf as a thinking-man’s (woman/person/whatthehellever) sport. I found it rather relaxing though. Well… all except the part where I had to haul my fat ass back up to where I started. I followed a group of golfers through a few holes and I didn’t even notice that it was down hill all the way. It was up hill all the way back :)