Western Michigan at Eastern Michigan - In Pictures

Here are some of my pictures from the game last Saturday night.  If you want pictures of the game, go to Hustle Belt.

 the band starts to take the field.  Or at least the drumline does.

 The rest of the band takes the field.

 the Drum Major steps out.

 The color guard.

 The US flag.

 Standing at attention.

 The band's color guard.

 The eagle flies out on the field.

 For some reason, this reminds me of one of those things, "We were able to recover the pictures from his camera and as far as we could tell, this was the last one".

 The team breaking down the wall.

 And the team takes the field.

 My favorite shot of the game.  Shaq Vann stretching the field on a run.

 It was band night and that meant that bands from local high schools participated.

 The combined color guard.

 It was pretty cool.

 A majorette.

 And my other favorite shot of the game.  This was the game winning catch.

 The cheerleaders carrying their flags on the field.

 Eastern Michigan had every reason to celebrate.  They defeated their cross state rivals by a score of 34-27.

And one of the Eastern players singing the fight song.

Eastern Michigan Versus Toledo Football

So Eastern Michigan was at home today which meant I went to go take some pictures of the team.  They were facing the dreaded Rockets of Toledo.  For the past few years it didn't seem like Eastern Michigan could hang with Toledo.  As I looked at things, I thought that perhaps Eastern had a chance today.

 It's amazing what a 4-1 record can do for your attendance numbers.  It has been a while since I've seen it this crazy at Rynearson Stadium.  It would be nice to see this sort of thing sustained.  But I think that Eastern Michigan is going to need a few more seasons like this before these numbers are sustained.

 The Eastern Michigan Band at the beginning of the game.  They always look pretty good.

 The Flag Girls.  I kind of liked the way this picture turned out.

 Swoop!  Today was homecoming, so there were quite a few people wearing Huron gear.  I started at Eastern as a Huron but I graduated from there as an Eagle since they switched the name midway through my time there.   I would love to see them bring back the Huron but I don't think that is going to happen and in my time as a photographer at the games, I've come to grips with that.  The symbol isn't what's important, it's what the symbol stands for that's important.

 The Alumni band.

 The Color Guard during the Star Spangled Banner.  As the team marched on the field, they came out arm in arm and showed a display of unity.  It would be nice if we as a nation could do that.  There are many scary things out there and if we don't get over our differences, we won't be able to cope with them.

 The Eastern Michigan band leaving the field.

 The Eastern Michigan dance team looked pretty good too.

 The guy in the red hat is the media time out guy.  When he comes out on the field, the action stops and we have to wait for the commercial breaks.  Because it seems like there are more commercials, the games are lasting longer than they should. 

 This is my shot of the game.  Eastern Michigan's Nigel Kilby is reaching for the ball in the effort to score a touchdown.  He didn't get it.  In many ways, this picture is a good representation of the game.  Eastern tried to reach for the victory but couldn't quite get it.

 The band at halftime did some Frank Sinatra number.  If were still alive, he would have been 100 this year, so they were commemorating this.

 They looked and sounded really good.

 I really like this picture.

 They even started a kick line.

 I think this is my favorite picture of the bunch.

 They played "Luck Be a Lady" for the last piece and they were joined by the Dance Team.

 Again, they looked pretty awesome.

 Of these two shots, I think I like this one better.

 The Dance Team doing a kick line as well.

 The band ending the songs prior to marching off the field.  I will have to say this but the band has been looking and sounding better in the time that I've been photographing regularly at the Eastern games. 

 A shot of the student section.  I think the reported attendance was over 20,000 today.  Like I said, it would be nice if this would continue.

 A closeup of some of the students.

Might as well get the cheerleaders in here too.

So Eastern Michigan ended up losing to Toledo but it was a pretty close game for the most part.  The difference was when Eastern Michigan fumbled a kickoff.  This allowed Toledo to score back to back and pretty much kill any chance that Eastern had.  Despite that, they still fought pretty hard and I still thought they had a small chance.  Time will tell if this continues but I am really liking what I see.

One Picture From the Eastern Game Today

Normally I would post more pictures on the day of the game, however I am without cable until Monday.  I realize that I posted multiple pictures last night but I was using my phone as a mobile hotspot and there is only so much bandwidth I can use doing that.  I will post more pictures when my cable is hopefully restored on Monday.

Anyway, the story behind my cable.  I got a call from my mom stating that my cable was out.   So I gave Comcast a call to see if they could fix it.  Well they sent a signal to my box (or so they thought...something tells me they didn't receive the return ping then) and I thought I'd have cable when I got home.  When I got home, I saw an orange cable half assedly strung out across the front porch of my apartment building.   When I got in my apartment, I discovered I was still without cable.  So once again, I called Comcast to get my cable fixed and this time they realized they couldn't get the return ping from my box, so a service call was scheduled for Monday.

After that, I decided to trace the orange cable and discovered that it ran to a j-box.  There wasn't much I could do since it was dark.  So on Friday when I got home from work, I decided to trace the orange cable again.  It was think that I discovered the cable running to my apartment had been cut.  So I called Comcast again to see if they could improve upon the scheduled time since it was due to their incompetence that I was without cable.  No dice.

I will post more pictures from the game when my cable is restored......

And the Party

I couldn't do much shipwatching because I was going to a party with my mom.  We were meeting her cousins (they are my great aunt's kids and I'm not sure how they fit in with me...second cousins?).  One of her cousins used to sail in the Port Huron-Mackinac Race and we used to gather his sister's house to watch them pass.  He unfortunately died and we stopped having those gatherings.  I think this is an attempt to get something similar going.

I honestly had no idea what to expect but I was definitely not expecting to see a live band.

 The band was actually pretty good and it presented me an opportunity to take pictures of a band.  This is something I've wanted to do but I didn't want to run afoul of "no photography" rules.

 It was also nice to get pictures of a band in natural lighting.  Any concerts I've been to have used stage lights and that's not the easiest thing to shoot pictures of.

 This guy filled in for a song and was pretty good too.

 The bassist.

 One of the guitarists.

 Another guitarist.

 A full shot of the band.

 Singing.

I slowed the shutter speed down a bit to get some motion in the drumsticks.

All in all, I had a pretty good time.