One-Day Story

Photography

From left, Hannah Engler, 15, and Kaitlyn De Kan, 17, add styrofoam balls to their robot during the VEX Missouri State Robotics Championship in Rolla Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016. The purpose of their robot was to shoot as many balls into the net as it could before time ran out.

From left, Kaitlyn De Kan, 17, and Allie Floyd, 18, make final checks to their robot before they compete during the VEX Missouri State Robotics Championship in Rolla on Saturday. Kaitlyn expresses her excitement after receiving a GoPro from another team.

The Cyber Pirates compete during the VEX Missouri State Robotics Championship in Rolla on Saturday. The team demonstrates their computer programming skills during this portion of the competition, different than the head-on competing.

From left, Allie Floyd, 18, Hannah Engler, 15, and Kaitlyn De Kan, 17, strategize during their competition at the VEX Missouri State Robotics Championship at Rolla on Saturday. Their group, the Cyber Pirates, have four members but only three are allowed on the competition floor at a time. 

Kaitlyn De Kan, 17, talks with her teammates during the VEX Missouri State Robotics Championship in Rolla on Saturday. The team's robot sits on the table in front of them as they discuss strategy.

From left, Kaitlyn De Kan, 17, and Shannon Coupland, 17, celebrate after winning the Award of Excellence at the VEX Missouri State Robotics Championship in Rolla on Saturday. Winning this award means that they will have the chance to compete in the World Championship.

Work Report

The Robotics competition was a lot more boring than I thought that it was going to be. That's not to say it wasn't interesting, because it was. I was pretty amazed with the level of coding that middle school through high schoolers were accomplishing, something I couldn't do in college with coding training.

My GPS took me to the wrong location at first and it took me over 20 minutes to find the correct location. So I missed the opening ceremonies and the event had already begun when I got there at 9:30 a.m. I was a little disoriented at first, having never been to one of these kinds of things before (I was on math team, not science team). So I just watched at first, taking a few scene setter shots until I found interesting subjects.

I ended up with this really nice group of all girls a part of the Cyber Pirates high school team. They were the only all-girls group there, which also made them pretty interesting. So I approached them and they were really excited about the idea of me following them around for the day.

The first obstacle I faced while shooting was that I forgot a household plug for the Norman lights. I brought the lights to cancel out the lights in the rest of the gymnasium where the competition was being held. But I didn't notice that I needed household plugs until I was trying to plug in the pocket wizards. This could have been avoided if I had prepared properly.

The event was pretty repetitive and lasted a really long time, so I had to hold myself back from shooting too much otherwise I would have gone over the 300-frame limit. I only ended up going over by 40, which I think wasn't too bad.

Overall, I think that the shoot went pretty well. I got some shots that I'm pretty proud of. I don't consider it portfolio worthy necessarily, but I still did well considering the content.

Outtakes