Thursday, December 6, 2012

Photo/Travel Blog: Double Dip (Baylor at Kentucky; New England at Miami)


Photo/Travel Blog: Double Dip (Baylor at Kentucky; New England at Miami)
By Andy Lopusnak, AndysPictures.com
Nov. 30-Dec. 2, 2012

Talk about déjà vu. Exactly a year ago, I had a double dip with a game in college basketball game in Lexington on the first Saturday of December, then an NFL game Sunday in Miami. The road opponent was different as Kentucky hosted Baylor and the Dolphins hosted the New England Patriots. You can read my post from last year by clicking here. Three of the past four years, I've had a double dip on this weekend with a basketball game in Lexington being the first contest.

I originally planned on driving from Cincinnati, where I landed a non-stop, red-eye from SFO at 6:30 AM to Charleston, West Virginia to add another state capital to my list. However, I was exhausted though I slept on the plane and decided to just drive the 90 minutes to Lexington. The drive to Charleston then Lexington would’ve taken over seven hours. Sadly, there’s no WVU games on CBS this year; so I don’t know when I’d get another chance to take West Virginia off my list (click here to see my state capital collection – I have 36 of 50). 

When I got to the Hyatt Regency in Lexington, which is attached to Rupp Arena, I checked in and slept for nearly five hours. Last December, I got some great day and night shots of Lexington; so this time I wanted to add UK’s football stadium to my stadiums collection. Commonwealth Stadium is newest built stadium in the SEC (1973).

FOOD FIX – THE PARKETTE (LEXINGTON)
This is a new part of the blog dedicated to affordable local restaurants. I recently Food Network’s Diners, Drive-ins and Dives a segment on Lexington’s food icon The Parkette; so I decided to that’s where I’d eat dinner.

The Parkette is a Lexington landmark and dates back to 1951. In 2007, it fell into disarray; but was purchased by fellow University of South Florida alumni Jeff Kaplan, who with his brother Randy, renovated the building to look like it did when it opened.
For dinner, I had a triple bacon cheeseburger ($4.89) with a “heap of fries” (add $1). The bacon was crisp and the burger was good. It kind of reminded me of Steak ‘n Shake, only cheaper. The soda was a bit pricey at $2, but it did have free refills.
I went for the Parkette Colossal Car Crash ($5.59) for desert. It had three moderately sized scoops of vanilla ice cream along with two wedge brownies (with fudge icing), hot fudge, whip cream, six funnel cake fries and a cherry. The brownie and funnel cake fries stole the show. It was a very good way to end a rather large meal.

BAYLOR 65, KENTUCKY 55
The Wildcats’ 55-game home winning streak ended when the Baylor Bears beat the defending National Champions 64-55. Five Bears scored in double figures with Pierre Jackson leading the way with 17. Freshman star Nerlens Noel posted a career-high 16 boards to go along with eight points in a losing effort. It was Baylor’s first win over Kentucky in eight tries, including the 2012 Elite Eight. Here's my favorite shot from the time lapse you'll see a little later. 

BEHIND THE BACKBOARD TIME LAPSE
For the first time, I set up a camera behind the backboard for a game. I put the GoPro Hero 2 right behind the glass in the lower side of the backboard. I found two action shots on the web that show where I set it up.

I set it to take a photo every five seconds in the hopes of getting a possible slam dunk or layup. It took a total of 3,208 images. It’s an interesting view, but I learned that I will need to figure out how to set the ISO of the GoPro to attempt to “freeze” the action. In this time-lapse, you cannot tell that the action shots are not “frozen,” but it’s clear in the individual stills. I have some time before my next basketball game to figure it out.

PATRIOTS 23, DOLPHINS 16
The Patriots (9-3) became the first team in 2012 to clinch a playoff berth and their fourth straight division title (and tenth in the last 12 years) by beating the Dolphins 23-16. New England quarterback Tom Brady extended his streak of games with at least one touchdown pass to 44, which is the third longest in NFL history.
Receiver Wes Welker grabbed Brady’s score to go along with 12 total catches for 103. Welker set an NFL record with his 16th game with at least ten catches and at least 100 yards (his 17 total games with 10 or more receptions tied Jerry Rice for the most in league history).

NEW HOOPS FOR 2012-13
This year, I will be on the top crew for CBS Sports' coverage of men's basketball. Looking ahead at the NCAA Tournament, here's where I think my crew will be in Austin for the Second/Third Rounds and Dallas for the regional final. This year's Final Four is in Atlanta, which makes this the fifth straight season the event has been held at an NFL stadium. Looking at CBS Sports' regular season schedule, I'm hoping to get either the Duke (1/26 vs. Maryland) or North Carolina (3/3 vs FSU) games so that I can drive and add the state capitals of North & South Carolina. My fingers are crossed that somehow I get to double dip the first weekend of January and get the women's game at Nebraska (vs Purdue); so I can knock off two other capitals (Nebraska and Iowa, which is 3 hours from Lincoln). 


BAYLOR & KENTUCKY PHOTO SHOOTS
If you're a regular reader, then you know that when my crew was in Houston and Cincinnati that I did photo shoots with Baylor and Kentucky for this broadcast. Now that my images were used on-air, I can show you some. The ones used by CBS were manipulated in New York by someone in CBS' graphics department from my original images. The two below (one from each team), I modified these with the black & white with color splash that all of my "sportraits" have been done, then added the burnt film border to give the images some more depth.
Kentucky's Nerlens Noel, who according to Jonathan Wasserman of BleacherReport.com is his #2 pick in the 2013 NBA Draft.
Baylor's Isaiah Austin is Wasserman's #11 pick. In this game, there were five total "first rounders" according to Wasserman's latest mock draft. 

UP NEXT: HOME SWEET HOME
Next week, I’ll be doing another Dolphins game, but this time it will be a lot closer to home (at San Francisco). The blog won’t be very long next week since it’s home; but I’ll try to get some new shots of San Francisco.

BEST OF THE BLOG
Here’s a collection of my best shots from this weekend.






























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