Today, I was provided one of the greatest ideas for a photo and quickly brought it to life.

Woke up, worked out. It’s game day.

It’s been a long time coming. Purdue set to face IU for the first time during the 2016-17 NCAAM basketball season. Unfortunately, my press credentials were denied for a lack of space – but I was still determined to make something memorable today.

I was eating breakfast and got a direct message on Twitter from my friend, @BLRMKRdave.

It read:

 

That was it. This was the memorable thing I was going to make today. I instantly called my good friend and fellow photographer, Tom Crockett.

We had just driven up to Folk Field to take aerials of the fresh snow around 9:30:

hi-res/prints: photos.tmahlmann.com

I said to Tom, “We need to back out to Folk Field and write IU Sucks in the snow.”

Initially, this sounded like a great idea.

Tom grabbed his shovel and left to come pick me up.

I started to think that doing it at Folk Field might not be the best idea. Though it would be more recognizable as being done at “Purdue” tt would also do just that – tie it directly to Purdue, and I did not want that. If done, it would have looked as if Purdue endorsed it, with or without permission.

Though it is just playing on the rivalry, and something I agree is fun and playful – it has recently come under fire from the University for being unsportsmanlike and is being discussed if it should be kept.

Plus, there is likely no way to get onto Folk besides jumping a fence.

For these reasons, I told Tom: Folk was not where we should go, and we opted to find an open area in the intramural fields to write it out in the fresh snow.

We arrived and began to plan out the letters. CGT 163 with Craig Miller taught me all I needed to know about spacing, drawing, and visualizing things in 3D.

We opted to do ‘IU’ on the top and the ‘SUCKS’ below it. Each letter was to be 10 steps wide and 15 steps tall.

I started with the center letter ‘C’ and after finishing the lower level, centered the I between the U/C and the U between the C/K.

A few short flights with the drone to check the boxes we had laid out:

and we began to write the letters, one by one in the middle of the intramural fields

It took Tom and I a little over 45 minutes to complete, but once done – looked phenomenal.

and finally, here’s the GIF I made from the little flyby video I took.

Whether or not Purdue wins tonight, IU still sucks. Always has, always will!

Boiler up.

See you tomorrow for another daily photo story, with tons of new snow photos I took here on campus!

For all interested, I am a Part 107 certified remote pilot and permission was obtained for this quadcopter flight.