Site scouting

Of course I would do this on the coldest day of the year. Site scouting. I'm gearing up and getting ready to start shooting soccer and baseball for the season. I wanted to get a feel of the fields so I have started visiting. Sylvan Hills has a beautiful new field which was nicely protected. I'm excited about getting out there and capturing the Bears in action. Sylvan Hills always produces some good players.

Soon this scoreboard will be lit up.

I spotted a pipe and couldn't resist a little sun flare through the pipe shot.

College of the Ozarks

One of the hidden secrets of the Ozarks is the College of the Ozarks. I was told there were some nice photo ops there. It's just outside of Branson. The next exit actually. The college is unique because the kids who graduate don't have a debt if they work on campus. There was a sense of pride in the students we met. I got to see greenhouses, cattle and one of the crown jewels of the place, the restaurant. We were told to go to brunch on Sunday and boy were we surprised. It was out of this world. A student from Puerto Rico made my omelet. Our server was a Criminal Justice major. The furniture was some of the most beautiful handcrafted pieces. The service was 5 star as was the food. Very much worth the stop!

I took time to photograph around the mill that seems to be almost in the center of campus.

National Ice scuplting competition

We headed up to Branson for the weekend just to get away. Talk about a quite town. One guy told me, "You can lay in the middle of highway 76 for half the day and not get run over." He was right. No shows and even a lot of restaurants were closed until March. Now the sales were big time. We saw 85% off in a couple of stores.

The surprise of the weekend was there just happened to be the National Ice Sculpting Competition going on and it was free. The tents were packed and of course it was older folks or kids so I too it easy on getting great photos. One time I also started to wiggle on through the crowd to the front but I just didn't feel like this was the place for that.

These guys are great. One fast competition was 15 minutes and one guy had a beautiful fish done within about 10 minutes. He was a real showman. Dancing around and we all just waited for an arm to fly across the room. I mean the dude was slinging a chainsaw!