Last weekend, I drove down to Naperville, IL to watch a drum corps competition. (If you’re confused and unawares, drum corps are elite college-age marching bands consisting of 150 brass, percussion, and color guard members. They compete all summer and possess an indescribable level of awesomeness. By definition, I can’t explain it, and neither can this video, but it tries.)
The weather forecast included a chance of thunderstorms – 30% in the morning, but rising to 80% when I left that evening. Regardless, the corps arrived and carried on as usual, unloading semi trailers and buses and donning uniforms. As the first ensembles began performing, I headed out to the buses to meet up with a friend in Phantom Regiment (2008 World Champions, woot!). They were finishing their stretching as the storm front moved overhead.
They managed to finish their warmup and were about to head to the stadium when an event official arrived and ordered all the corps back to their buses. The rain swept in within minutes. I headed back to the field. Officials had cleared the stands and were herding fans under cover. I bypassed the men with bullhorns and hid around a corner to watch the storm develop. Under the stormclouds, the sun set, creating a rather eerie glow behind the lightning.
This shot almost makes up for not being able to watch any corps perform. Well, …, it’s better than nothing. But, it reminds me of something I have meant to do for months. Months ago, at CPW, the shutter actuation counter on my camera passed 10000. Being the sort of person who adores highly composite numbers and despises primes and numbers that pretend to be prime (I’m looking at you, 51), I appreciated the roundness of 10000, and I thought it was a decent milestone after 4.5 months to look back at some of my favorite pictures. Number 10000 itself isn’t one of those.
This picture is from a panorama series of the sunrise on Sunday morning over Boston. I hadn’t slept. However, I probably didn’t include that picture, as it’s pretty blurry.
If you’re hip with your number theory, you might have noticed I pulled a fast one on you up there. Ten thousand is not a highly composite number. However, 10080 is. However, there’s an entire region surrounding that number which is completely devoid of pictures. I was probably testing out some camera setting and deleted the junk pictures. However, I like this one, and 10043 is as close as it gets.
The wonderful thing about CPW is being able to to bask in prefroshly immunity. This is from the same sunrise, somewhere on top of campus. I honestly don’t remember where.
So, 4:16am is about the cutoff for my brain’s ability to function, and this is enough pictures for a first part. I plan to continue this series, either starting at the beginning or working back from 10000. More likely, pseudorandomly.