Hanover College football: Game Day, Part I

I so much enjoyed my visit in February to Hanover (Ind.) College, where I took pictures of a men's basketball game and of the campus landscape, that before even heading home I resolved to return in the fall to shoot a football game ... and try to hopefully catch some of the campus autumn colors.

On Saturday, Oct. 22, I did just that. Hanover defeated Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference rival Manchester College 58-7 on L.S. Ayres Field on what turned out to be a beautiful day. I'm going to log my photos in three installments -- one, today, is a review of some game shots. The second installment will focus on game festivities, including halftime and the tradition tailgate activity by the Hanover community. The third post will focus on my shots of the campus landscape after the game, exploiting the dramatic, late-afternoon sunlight.

Panthers' sophomore quarterback Dexter Britt (16) is featured in the lead photograph of today's post, passing to junior wide receiver Colton Zeck (11), who made the catch for a modest gain in first-half action. Britt completed 21-of-36 passes for 349 yards and four touchdowns, helping the Panthers amass 594 total yards of offense. Hanover improved its overall record to 4-3 (4-1 in the HCAC) and hosts league foe Bluffton (Ohio) this Saturday. Manchester fell to 2-5 (1-5).

Zeck scored one of the Panthers' eight touchdowns, scampering 58 yards to paydirt on a third-quarter punt return. Senior running back Derron Bailey scored three first-half touchdowns, two rushing and one on a 15-yard pass from Britt. Junior receiver Dwayne Eubanks caught 8 passes for 165 yards, both personal bests; two of those went for long touchdowns in the third quarter -- one a school record 96 yards, the other 37 yards.

The Spartans' touchdown came with 33 seconds left in the third quarter. After Eubanks' 37-yard TD reception, Manchester's Corey Nelson fumbled and dropped the ensuing kickoff, recovered it quickly and scampered 83 yards for the TD.

A special nod of appreciation to Hanover sports information director Carter Cloyd, who facilitated both of my visits to Hanover this year. Cloyd also was responsible for assembling all of the game stats you see in this post.

To see a full gallery of images from the game, visit this link.

Above: In addition to his 349 yards passing, quarterback Dexter Britt (16) was the Panthers' second-leading rusher against Manchester, gaining 43 yards on 13 carries. In this photo, taken in the second quarter, he leaves the pocket on a pass play in search of a receiver on the left side.

Above: Sophomore defensive back Derrick Worden returned a Manchester fumble 29 yards in the first half. Not realizing he had stepped out of bounds several yards earlier, he tried to pass the ball over the goal line in a desperate lunge to score after being tripped up inside the 5-yard line. 

Above: Running back Darren Bailey (left) and receiver Dwayne Eubanks enjoy a celebratory leap in the end zone after one of Bailey's three first-half touchdowns.

 

Above: The Spartans' leading rusher, Corey Nelson (6), was held to only 28 yards rushing by a stingy Panther defense, exemplified here by defensive back Jason Chisholm, who made a lunging tackle to knock Nelson off his feet, preventing a long gain. 

Above: A tackle becomes more finite when more than one defender gets involved. Here, three Panthers -- (from left) Justin Magaw, Andy Dalton and Dylan Bostwick -- seal an end to a rushing attempt by Manchester's Corey Nelson.

Above: Hanover defensive lineman Ajani Jones hit the turf hard on this play -- enough so that pellets splayed from the foundation of the artificial turf.
 

Above and below: The Hanover defense gave Manchester quarterbacks Nick Williams (13) and Justin Minnich fits all afternoon. If a Spartan pass wasn't being blocked before it could cross the line of scrimmage -- as blitzing Panther defensive back Cord Dorsey (15) does above to Williams' throw -- then it might likely be intercepted, as defensive back Sam Louis did twice. In the case of the interception below, Louis (6) made a modest return.

Above: There wasn't a defender within 10 yards of Hanover's Dwayne Eubanks when he hauled in this third-quarter pass for a 37-yard score.

Above: Darren Bailey rushed for 93 yards on 11 carries and two touchdowns Saturday. He also scored on a 15-yard pass from Dexter Britt.

Above and below: Manchester's one moment on the highlight reel came late in the third quarter. Corey Nelson fumbled the kickoff after Eubanks' 37-yard touchdown reception. Nelson remained poised, scooped up the drop (above) then scampered 83 yards down field (below), leaving several Panthers in his wake.

Above: Receiver, punter and kick returner Colton Zeck (11) had a busy day. In addition to catching three passes for 21 yards, he returned three punts for 64 yards, including a 58-yarder for a touchdown in Hanover's 24-point third quarter. He also kicked two punts for 97 yards, the longer of which traveled 61 yards. In this photo, he's shown during a first-quarter punt return. 

Above: Hanover's Ajani Jones (95) seems to be within reach of bringing down Manchester quarterback Justin Minnich. While Minnich eluded the tackle, moments later he was at the sideline and forced out of bounds by other Panther defenders.

Above: Manchester running back Corey Nelson (6) prepares to skirt around lineman Tommy Webster's block of Cord Dorsey (15) for a short gain.
 

Above: Hanover's Jacob Noger (85) hauled in this pass from C.J. Croft in front of Manchester defender Donald Ivey near the goal line in the fourth quarter. Noger thought he had crossed the goal line before his knee touched the ground. The officials, however, ruled Noger's knee hit the turf short of the goal line. Croft would rush for the Panthers' final TD moments later. 

 

Above: Backup quarterback Tanner Parker (14) gained 16 yards on this run in the fourth quarter, his only carry of the game.

Above: Parker was caught off guard in the fourth quarter when a long snap from center sailed over his head, hit the turf behind him then took a quirky bounce forward and out of his reach ... into the hands of a Manchester defender. The Spartan offense later lost the ball on downs.

Autumn in Garfield Park

A dry summer and recent rain made for a small window of opportunity to appreciate this year's autumn colors. Much like last year, where dry summer weather also bollixed autumn appreciation, leaves fell early this year and colors lacked the brilliance usually enjoyed with a normal amount of summer rainfall.

After three consecutive days of rain last week, we had a sunny Friday, so I squeezed in an hour's worth of early-evening shooting in Garfield Park in Indianapolis to capture some fall vista and sunset photographs. This post features those photos, my first attempt to play catch-up in posting images from a couple of recent shoots.

I followed the Friday shoot with a trip to Hanover in southern Indiana on Saturday to photograph the Hanover-Manchester college football game in L.S. Ayres Stadium ... and take some more images on the very scenic campus.

First, however, the Friday shoot in Garfield Park, leading (top) with a kind of revisit to a scene I first photographed in autumn about six years ago. This year's capture differs in three respects -- it's missing one of its trees, razed because of disease in the interim years; the scorching summer did not allow the grass to hold its rich green this late into the year; and I treated the image with high-dynamic range (HDR) software. The shot in 2005 was a normal, single-frame image.

With the light fading fast, I found myself chasing optimum or unusual light conditions, rather than the most brilliant color situations.

Above: A portrait (vertical) orientation of the scene at the top. 

Above: Another scene I recall capturing previously, although I believe I took the earlier photo in 2006, the year after I grabbed the one above. Like the previous capture, the leaves at the top were gone by the time I arrived.

Above: This critter -- feeling relatively safe -- allowed me to get pretty close, relatively speaking, anyway. Still, I use the maximum length on the Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD lens I had on my Canon 7D. It was hammering away at this acorn so fiercely that the noise of its teeth scraping or digging into the shell was audible from where I was standing.

Above: The west side of the Garfield Park Arts Center, with the setting sun reflected in the window on the far left, and a splash of the park's autumn colors providing a bookend on the far right.

Above: It might seem odd to photograph a recycling bin, but the reason will become apparent in the bottom two photographs. Even without those photos below, the artwork on this bin was impressive enough, I felt, to warrant a photo. The rusty color you see on the far right bottom corner of the bin is from a thin splay of setting sunlight, coming from the left.

Above and below: I decided to compose this shot when I saw how the setting sun was lighting up the recycling bin below the tree on the right. I'm posting both compositions because I couldn't decide between the one above, where the sun and the bin reflection are more subdued, and the one below, where both are more intense as a result of a slight movement of my position in relation to the subjects. 

A Hoosiers fan gets his wish

I'm not one to bogart someone else's big moment, but on Thursday I did have a wonderful time sharing a great experience of friends who were visiting Indianapolis from Omaha, Neb.

Tom and Mary Adams, both college acquaintances from our years living in Wisconsin, are flat-out fun people, and even without the piece de resistance that lie ahead when we made our reacquaintance Thursday, I knew it would be a good time. 

Some quick background: Tom (left) has been a rabid basketball fan for years. He's loved to play the game (and has had his share of injuries as mementos) and loves to watch and follow it. Until the motion picture Hoosiers was released in 1986, Tom had not heard of the 1954 David-beats-Goliath story of the "Milan Miracle" -- the small-school Milan High School (enrollment 161) basketball team that captured the imagination of all of Indiana when it defeated big-school Muncie Central (enrollment 1,600), 32-30, in the finals of Indiana's then-single-class basketball tournament. The close score wasn't the only dramatic element to the game; Milan's Bobby Plump sank a jump shot with only seconds left on the clock to give his team the margin of difference to claim the championship.

Ever since the release of Hoosiers, a fictionalized account that loosely based its storyline on the Milan Miracle, Tom has been obsessed with all things Hoosiers, Milan and Bobby Plump. Indeed, until Thursday, Tom had just two things on his "Bucket List." One was descending one side of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and climbing up the other side, something he's planning to do in May 2012. The other was meeting Bobby Plump. I vaguely recalled Tom mentioning his "fascination" with Hoosiers, the Milan story and Plump in June 2008, when Tom, Mary and another two dozen people from our circle of college friends held a reunion near Columbus, Wis. I even remember him mentioning at that time that he aspired to meet Plump some day. 

Tom recently built up the nerve to call long-distance to ask Bobby if he would agree to meet Tom and Mary at Plump's Indianapolis restaurant, "Plump's Last Shot," if Tom and Mary came to town. Plump warmly agreed, so the Adamses set up a time and date -- 6 p.m. Oct. 6 -- to do just that. Mary dropped me a note on Monday, Oct. 3, letting me know they'd be in town on the 6th and asked me to meet them at the restaurant at 6 p.m. that evening. I've lived in Indianapolis for some time, so I was chagrined to admit that I'd never been to Plump's restaurant until that day. But the prospect of having a face-to-face meeting with Bobby Plump -- and one arranged by someone else -- was beyond belief, but it was very exciting. 

Tom was in hoops heaven the whole night. The excitement was readily apparent even as we waited for Bobby to arrive. The several quaffs of Stella Artois didn't hurt, of course. Bobby sipped on diet cola as he fielded each and every one of our questions -- stuff he undoubtedly had been asked so many times before -- as if it were being asked the first time. He answered with animation and detail, as if all of us were longtime cronies. He indulged us, in fact, for longer than we ever expected. He signed a copy of his book, "Bobby Plump: Last of the Small Town Heroes" (photo at the top), for Tom and even agreed to go to the basketball hoop that was set up behind the eatery to allow Mary and I to snap pitcures of Tom going "one on one" with Bobby. The 75-year-old Plump sank the first shot he took. We were astounded. Then he mentioned casually that he hadn't played any ball in a couple of years. Again, amazed. 

Given Tom's fascination with Hoosiers, I was surprised that he wasn't aware that the film's screenwriter, Angelo Pizzo, and director, David Anspaugh, and Maris Valainis, the movie's Plump-like character, Jimmy Chitwood, would be appearing this weekend in Nineveh for a reunion and celebration marking the film's 25th year anniversary. Alas, Tom and Mary had made other plans and would not be able to take a side trip to see any of the festivities. Nineveh's old school building was the structure that served as Hickory High School (the Milan-equivalent school) in the movie. It was razed shortly after vandals set fire to the building in 1994, but the Nineveh Heritage Committee is trying to buy up property around the site to create a small park and erect a marker commemorating its formidable role in Hoosier Hysteria lore.

 

Above: Tom and Mary, near the end of dream night at Plump's Last Stand.

Above: Tom getting his picture taken with Bobby Plump. 

 

Above: Bobby agreed to pose with me, and I wasn't going to miss the opportunity. It was a thrill for me.

Above: The first of several shots outside and behind the eatery, when Tom and Bobby briefly shot at a basket attached to the building's roof. While I really don't know what Tom and Bobby were discussing, I joked to them afterward that this shot struck me as Bobby doing a Babe-Ruth-like "calling his shot" thing.

Above: Bobby following through on his first shot, which got nuthin' but net.

Above: I'd asked Tom and Bobby to pose for this, and Tom -- without any direction -- put a hand in Bobby's face, much to the Hoosier legend's amusement.

Above: Taken moments after the shot immediately above this. Tom's faux hand-in-the-face notwithstanding, Bobby got off a shot.

Above and below: Just two wall mementos in Plump's Last Shot. Bobby said the wood flooring framed above was from the actual basketball court at Milan High School where Plump and the Indians played their home games in 1954. Plump didn't take the piece until after the gym closed and a new school was built. Below, a newspaper spread marking the Milan Miracle, which occurred on March 13, 1954.

Summer 2011 in the Sunken Garden

Since 2004, I've tried to make a point of documenting, in photographs, the annual summer floral arrangements in the Sunken Garden at Garfield Park in Indianapolis. The Garden is adjacent to the conservatory on the park grounds, and the conservatory staff normally tries to present spring bulbs outdoors (in addition to the indoor annual bulb show) and on occasion, weather permitting, swap out the summer arrangement in fall with chrysanthemums.

My mission in recent years has been made difficult by enthusiastic park rangers/security staff who improperly enforce the policy that regulates use of the Sunken Garden as a backdrop for professional portraiture work. For those instances, the park wants photographers to purchase a permit, which costs somewhere in the range of $250, figuring that ... if the photographer is going to make money, why not the park? Park staff have told me repeatedly the policy is not aimed at people wanting to take pictures of the flowers. Unfortunately, the security staff has been coached to look for people with "expensive" or sophisticated equipment, and that a tripod is a good tip-off. Unfortunately, a tripod should not be a telltale sign; I've been in the Sunken Garden at night, using a tripod to steady the camera for night scenes -- no portraiture. So, when the security staff sees what they believe is nice camera gear or tripods, they instantly deduce that person is doing professional portraiture work, even if there is no portrait subject with the photographer! I'm not alone in experiencing these frustrations; I've talked to other shooters who've gone through the same thing. So I've not been nearly as enthusiastic to continue my streak of recording the arrangements. 

I tread carefully Saturday when I made my venture to photograph the Garden. There were no security staff when I got there, so I started shooting, fast and furious, hoping to get it done and then get out before it became an issue. Rushing is no way to do a memorable shoot, and I suppose my pictures probably reflect that. As I neared completion of my rush job, I noticed ... barely more than 10 feet away on the overlook ... a gentleman in a security uniform. I held my breath preparing for "the confrontation."

Thankfully, it didn't happen. Could it be -- they know better now? Someone has sat them all down and gone over exactly what entails professional portrait photography? I don't know, and I decided not to ask. Thankful I didn't have to run through the annual "I'm not doing portraiture photography; I'm taking pictures of flowers" defense mantra, I made a quick exit.

Today's post carries some images from the shoot; the final four were taken outside the Garden, during my departure in the park and, in the instance of the sedum and the juliet tomato, in my yard. The two vertical orientations of the trees are high-dynamic range (HDR) treatments, captured hand-held using my Tamron 18-270mm Di II VC PZD lens.