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| Tennessee State Capitol from Bicentennial Mall State Park |
Travel/Photo Blog:
Nashville (Week 4 – NYJ@TEN)
By Andy Lopusnak,
AndysPictures.com
September 28-29,
2013
The Music City is where my true love of photography
began. I brought my first professional SLR camera in October of 2003 when I was
told by the Grand Rapids Rampage, an Arena Football League team that I had just
started working for at the time, that I had no budget for photography. Thus, I
spent my own money and got a camera, a used Canon D30 from one of my sports
photographers with my previous team – the San Diego Riptide. Though I used that
camera for three years shooting every Rampage road game while being the PR
director, I rarely pulled it out on the road for CBS games and I can only think
of twice that I used it to shoot various cities. That changed when I decided to
upgrade to the Canon 20D to get better quality shots a few months before the
2006 NFL season (I even used said 20D this week for one of my time lapse views).
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| Downtown Nashville at dawn |
It was by pure luck that my Week One game in 2006 was
Nashville or my passion for the clicking might not be as intense or I’d have a
little warm spot in my heart for another city. A chance web search for Grand
Rapids skyline photos in the summer of 2006 whetted my photo appetite that led
to my purchase a professional tripod (which I still use today) and eventually
making the Music City my first road city that I began photographing. I stumbled
onto the amazing shots on PBase.com, which is
like Flickr except that you need to pay to be on it (back in 2006, Flickr
sucked too). Thus most of the photography is from professionals and serious
amateurs. I found the site while looking for inspiration for some skyline shots
of Grand Rapids to use in the Rampage’s media guide and website.
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| Downtown Nashville as seen from Chestnut Avenue Overpass |
I was amazed by the “blue” tones of the night shots and
wanted to figure out how to replicate those shots. Through a lot of trial and error
as well as some help from some other PBase, I began learning the ins and outs
of photography and today I’m a full-fledged photophile and PBase.com is where
my websites is hosted – AndysPictures.com, SkylineShots.com and Lopusnak.com all go to my PBase account (PBase.com/andyshots); you can
find over 37,000 individual images on my site and nearly 1,400 different
galleries.
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| Nashville at Night on Broadway |
A twist of fate made Nashville my first road city I put
the tripod down to shoot and in an equally ironic quirk, I’m only now getting
the opportunity to shoot the Music City again. I thought my shots way back then
were great, but I was so new to shooting night shots and cities that
essentially I treated Nashville this week like I’ve never been here. My feet
can attest to that - I walked 19.7 miles (or nearly 42,000 steps) and climbed
88 flights of stairs on Saturday and Sunday (according to my Fitbit, a nifty
digital pedometer). I hope the Titans became a really good team so I can come
back here.
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| Silhouette of downtown Nashville at sunrise |
I was all over Nashville and here’s a few of the
highlights.
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| Panoramic photo of downtown Nashville from LP Field |
TENNESSEE STATE
CAPITOL
Seven years ago, I snapped my first state capitol when I
was in Nashville. Now today, I have 39 of 50 and it’s one of my favorite things
to shoot. When I clicked it back then, I just snapped it without any fanfare.
Not this time.
The Tennessee State Capitol was built from 1845-59 and is one of
just eleven state capitol buildings that doesn’t have a dome (the others:
Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon,
Alaska and Virginia). Check out my collection of 39 state capitol buildings BY CLICKING HERE.
POLK GRAVE SITE
On the grounds of the state capital is the grave of James
Knox Polk, the eleventh U.S. president. It makes my eighth presidential burial
site (CLICK HERE TO VIEW MY GALLERY).
Polk promised to serve just one term and he died of cholera three months after
his term ended. He was at the opening of the Smithsonian Institution and the
U.S. Naval Academy, the groundbreaking for Washington Monument, and the
issuance of the first U.S. postage stamps.
GRAND OLE OPRY
Since 1925, the Grand Ole Opry has been a weekly country
music stage concert. All the great country music stars have performed here. I
attended a show here back in 1997 when I was the videographer for the
University of South Florida football team during the school’s inaugural season
when they played at Western Kentucky. I
remember taking pictures (on icky film), but cannot sadly have lost the prints
and negatives.
The tour is about an hour and costs $19. You do get to walk onto
the iconic Opry stage and tour all the themed dressing rooms.
OPRYLAND HOTEL
Next door to the Grand Ole Opry is the legendary Opryland
Hotel. It is the largest non-casino hotel in the United Stated and is ranked as
the 29th largest hotel in the world.
It has nearly 3,000 rooms and 15
restaurants sprawled onto six floors. I went inside to shoot its large atriums and waterfalls. Next time, hopefully not
seven years from now, I’m going to shoot everything at night.
DUKES OF HAZZARD
MUSEUM
Across the street from the Opryland Hotel main entrance,
is Cooter’s Dukes of Hazzard Museum. It’s run by Ben Jones, who played Cooter
Davenport, the Hazzard County mechanic and sidekick to the Duke boys in the CBS
TV series that ran from January 26, 1979 to February 8, 1985. This place has
props, costumes, memorabilia and cars from the show, including the 1969 Dodge
Charger known as the General Lee.
It’s been almost 30 years since the show went off the air
and there’s three lasting iconic things from it: the cutoff jeans known as
Daisy Dukes (named after Catherine Bach’s character who wore them), the orange
General Lee car with a Confederate flag emblazoned on the hood and the awesome
Waylon Jennings’ theme song – “The Good Ol’
Boys.” Below is the opening credits…
THE PARTHENON
You don’t need to go to Greece to see the Parthenon, but
to Nashville. In 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, a
full-scale replica of the Athens was built. This building is awesome. It’s amazing to think that this is likely what the Parthenon in Greece looked like
when it was built 2,500 years ago.
It was made a permanent structure in 1931 and even has a
recreation of the Athena Parthenos statue inside that stands 42-feet tall.
Nashville’s official moniker is “the Athens of the South” and was likely the
inspiration for the building. Admission is $6 and well worth it to see the
statue and what the inside likely looked like to the ancient world.
THE HERMITAGE - ANDREW
JACKSON HOME & GRAVE
With the game being a 3:00 PM local kickoff, I decided to
drive out to The Hermitage, the home and burial site of the seventh U.S.
president: Andrew Jackson. The plantation is located ten miles outside
Nashville and is located on more than 350 acres. Adding Jackson and Polk to my
macabre collection of presidential graves makes nine I’ve photographed (CLICK HERE TO VIEW MY GALLERY).
The $19 admission charge is a bit steep for this place. It’s not like its Mount
Vernon. I was the only one there when it opened at 8:30 in the morning, which was great for the photos not having anyone in the shots. If you decide to go, just do a search for Hermitage discount
coupon. I saved $2.
Here’s one thing that most don’t know about Jackson – he
paid off the entire national debt by his sixth year in office. However, this
was very short lived because the country went through a severe depression in
his final year in office and the U.S. still hasn’t paid off its national debt
in full since.
MUSICA SCULPTURE AT MUSIC ROW
Built in 2003 as part of an urban revitalization, Musica is a bronze statue located in the center of the Music Row roundabout. It has nine nude figures dancing and stands 38 feet high. Five figures are at the base, four more are higher up and then a female figure holding a golden tambourine is at its height. It was created by Nashville-native artist Alan LeQuire, who also did the Athena Parthenos statue at the Nashville Parthenon.
TITANS 38, JETS 13
Tennessee quarterback Jake Locker threw a career-high
three touchdown passes on 18-of-24 passes for 149 yards before he was carted
off the field and sent to the hospital with a serious hip injury after a
no-call, late-hit with 11:14 left in the third quarter.
The Jets turned the ball over four times that resulted
into 28 Titans points – all four giveaways came from rookie signal caller Geno
Smith, who has turned the ball over a league-high eleven times. If Smith was a
team by himself, he’d have the second most turnovers in the league behind the
Giants. Tennessee didn’t turn the ball over for the fourth straight game to
start the season joining the 1995 St. Louis Rams as the only teams in the Super
Bowl era to not have any giveaways through the first four games.
This was my fourth Jets-Titans game. In my 213 NFL on CBS
games, I’ve covered the same teams four or more times eleven times. For
non-division opponents, only the Baltimore-Houston rivalry (I did that last
week) has more common games (five). Overall, my most common game are the
Cincinnati-Pittsburgh and Houston-Indianapolis division rivalries (I’ve done
seven of each).
For CBS, this is just my fifth game in Nashville and
first since 2007. That makes the Music City one of my least visited AFC cities,
which is sad since it’s a great place to shoot. Only Kansas City (four) has
fewer home games that I’ve covered for an AFC team. Overall, Green Bay (three),
St. Louis (three), Detroit (two), Dallas (one) and Chicago (one) have fewer CBS
home games that I’ve covered. This is my fourth Jets-Titans game and the third
played in Nashville. In fact, my last three NFL games here have been
Jets-Titans.
The last time I covered a Jets-Titans game, it was in
2009 when the NFL celebrated the 50th anniversary of the founding of the
American Football League (the game was at the Meadowlands. The Titans wore
their old Houston Oilers uniforms while the Jets wore their old New York Titans
jerseys. It was the old Titans vs. the new Titans in the game. The Jets won
that game 24-17. CLICK
HERE TO SEE MY GALLERY OF THAT GAME. Here's a shot from that game with the Titans wearing their old Houston Oilers uniforms.
THE TIME LAPSE
Since this is a venue that I’ve never done a time lapse,
I set up four cameras at various angles. I used both GoPros as well as my Canon
20D and 40D. This is the most different time lapse views I’ve taken since the
Final Four championship game.
The GoPro 2 lasted five hours and 24 minutes (1,943
images) and stopped less than a minute after the game conclude.
That wasn’t the
case for its big brother, the lousy GoPro 3, which sputtered to two hours and
59 minutes (1,066 shots) and died with 6:46 left in the second quarter.
Of
course, I don’t need to worry about batteries with the Canon DSLRs and both
went the distance and beyond.
I set up the 40D in the high end zone. It was hike up the
stairs to get to the location I put this, but worth it.
The 20D was in the high
sideline while the GoPro 2 was next to the CBS beauty camera in the right
corner and the GoPro 3 was in the broadcast booth at the 50.
With LP Field checked off my time lapse collection, I
have shot time lapses in 26 of the 32 NFL home stadiums (as well as in London).
The elusive six remaining home teams I need are: Carolina, Cleveland,
Jacksonville, New England, San Diego and Tampa Bay. There’s zero chance that my
crew is doing any home games in Cleveland, Jacksonville or Tampa Bay this year.
The last four weeks of the season are, in my estimate, the only time that I
might get the other three. Fingers crossed!
Click on the links below to see the home venues I've created time lapses...
UP NEXT: New
England at Cincinnati
I’m going to be flying into Charleston, West Virginia to
get my 40th state capitol, so I’m pretty stoked for this weekend. Then, after
getting into Cincy, I’ll drive 16 miles outside the city to photograph the
grave of William Henry Harrison, the ninth U.S. President, who died just 32
days into office. I have four different time lapses of Paul Brown Stadium (all
from last season); so I have to scout out a possible new vantage point.
BEST OF THE BLOG
Here’s a collection of my favorite photos from this
weekend. Don’t forget to check out my new Nashville gallery by CLICKINGHERE.
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