FirstWA First Robotics Competition (FRC) Seattle Regional Competition at Qwest Field

During the last 3 days, I have spend my time commuting by bus and once my own car to seattle each day from 6 AM and leaving at 6 PM. Each day, I put on my shirt, my badge, bring my portable radio, computer, and my camera and do this all over again, but why? I was the volunteer and a photographer for the FirstWA's First Robotics Seattle Regional Competition at Qwest Field at Seattle, Washington.

The First Robotics Competition is a high school robotics competition that is designed for this reason: it combines the excitement of sport with the rigors of science and technology. Under strict rules, limited resources, and time limits, teams of 25 students or more are challenged to raise funds, design a team "brand," hone teamwork skills, and build and program robots to perform prescribed tasks against a field of competitors. It's as close to "real-world engineering" as a student can get.

This is an event that is not only fun to watch, but is also inspiring. The event is growing by each year as more teams joins into the competition. Each teams comes up with innovative minds and skills to play in this competition and earned a good marking.

Here are the 3 days worth of photos that I have shot at the competition. I wasn't able to spend that much time shooting photos on Friday due to the fact that I was in a hurry editing the best photos in a short amount of time before slideshow deadline for the awards ceremony (separate video), but I did spent some quality time on Thursday and Saturday.

You will see students and mentors working hard making changes to their robots, getting inspected by a robot inspector, the competition itself, awards ceremony, and even some pictures of some the volunteers and crews that worked so hard to make the event happens.

On the beginning part of the video, I decided to make a time-lapse of my drive on I-5 to Seattle as a intro special to my video, and at the end, since I got some dead space, I decided to add an Amtrak Cascades Train that represents the train heading north from Seattle at Edmonds, WA.

Out of this circumstance, I have shot more then 1,700 raw images in 3 days time frame, used up over 50 GB hard disk space on my laptop since I was sharing it to media, and also had 4 bottles of water per day. I would say it was all worth it because I have accomplished my goal and I felt that I did what I have to do.

Here is a KOMO-TV News Story about the First Robotics Competition that puts 100 high school robotics team through rigorous, challenging, but a fun competition.: http://www.komonews.com/news/local/118306814.html

KING-TV News of "Story of Brightest high school minds compete in FIRST Robotics Competition": http://www.king5.com/video/featured-videos/Brightest-high-school-minds-compet...

US First National First Robotics Competition Home Page: http://usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/default.aspx?id=966

FirstWA's Washington State's First Regional Competition Home Page: http://firstwa.org/

I would like to make a huge thank you to Kevin Ross and their volunteers for putting the best event that I have ever taken pictures of and to Zoë Burchard and Sophie Hopkins for being as great Media Coordinators of the event. It is a great pleasure to be as a volunteer and a photographer and I will be doing this again next year and into the future.

UPDATE: For those who are interested of the soundtracks I've used, here is the Track List:
1. Vivida - Orjan Nilsen
2. Into the Fire - Thirteen Senses (This song was used on very first episode of Grey's Anatomy)
3. In the End - Linkin Park
4. Bittersweet Symphony - The Verve

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• FirstWA
• Media
• First
• Washington
• State
• High
• School
• Robotics
• Competition
• QWest
• Field
• Seattle

[TotallyXDRandom]

TEAM 3037,148 and 2848 wins dallas regionals today this is are fisrt time to make it. are best match was 128 to 0

[NWPhotographyDirect]

@TotallyXDRandom That's cool to hear. Which team were you on?

[TotallyXDRandom]

@NWPhotographyDirect 3037

[NWPhotographyDirect]

@TotallyXDRandom Oh, OK. Well, Congratulations on winning the Dallas Regionals and I wish you the best of luck at St. Louis Nationals.

[mc10wp]

by the way, you spelled Kevin Ross's name wrong in your description--you wrote "Keven Ross"

[NWPhotographyDirect]

@mc10wp Thank you for letting me know. I'll be sure to remember that if I'm making another FirstWA video. :)

[driftapex]

Great job.

[NWPhotographyDirect]

@cdmpproducktions Ah, ok. Well, although I was assigned to cover the Cascade side of the field, there were a bunch of photographers covering the olympic field and if you go to the FirstWA Media Crew Flickr page, i'm sure you'll find some there.

[cdmpproducktions]

@NWPhotographyDirect i was on olympic

[NWPhotographyDirect]

@cdmpproducktions Were you at the Olympic or at the Cascade Field because I was assigned to cover the Cascade field?