Assorted shots from a late-March visit to Yates Mill Pond Park

 It had been almost a month since I was last at Yates Mill Pond Park, so I made a point to stop there Sunday to do my 2-mile walk ... then went an extra three-fourths of another mile to encircle the pond on the mile-loop, a familiar trail in my early days of visiting the park. 

The lead-off photo is an HDR software enhancement of a single iPhone 13 Pro image I took during my visit. So that you can understand why I explored the HDR version, simply check out the first image below, which is the original, unedited image. Look how dark the waterfall detail is. 

I tried to temper the blue in the enhancement, which Photomatix software allows, but the consequences are one of those “one for all” things. If I tinker with blue color, it affects all blues in an image. There’s no way to isolate it in just one portion of the frame. So if I lower the saturation in the waterfall, I lose the natural blue in the sky. You can see how much sky blue I lost in the lead-off photo with just a slight tinker. 

While I took a lot of shots of the falls, thankfully, it wasn’t the sole subject of my shoot. There were geese close to the pedestrian bridge, AKA pond boardwalk, and turtles resting on logs near the shore along the one-mile loop. The turtle shots didn’t turn out too well because I was shooting into back light. But I did get a few nice shots of geese. 

There also were interesting tree/wood formations. A lot of new fallen lumber was evident in the forest housing the two-mile trail, and even though it had been a while since I was last on the one-mile trail, there seemed to be a lot of new fallen trunks and branches there, too. 

The first shot below is an edit-enhanced version of a network of branches, limbs and trunks near the shore along the one-mile loop trail. The photo immediately below it is the original version for comparison. And below that is a version from standing a little further back than the ones immediately below.  

In the first images below, you see some of the geese closeups. The first shows two, one busy in the water, the other serving as lookout. As far as the lookout was concerned, I apparently stuck around too long for comfort this close, so the lookout start honking and slowly swam away from the other (and me), eventually sticking out its long neck while honking outs its alerts. 

Below the geese is my best turtle shot of the day, and below that is a series of shots reflecting a curious rust-color in the water near the shoreline, something I'd never seen before. The last shot of that series contains a short piece of driftwood on which a couple turtles are resting. 

The last time I was at the park, the driftwood in the above photo had been populated by multiple birds each and every day I was there. Today, there was this solitary fowl. The image kind of looks like a monochrome, but it it isn't. I think it was just the time of day and how the sun was falling on that portion of the pond.

Next up below are a couple more striking tree branch and limb shots followed by shots of the mill itself, which on this day was being used by a photographer as a backdrop to shoot pictures of a woman decked out in a stylish dress. It look like she was wearing some kind of crown, too. I’m presuming the shooter checked in with Yates Mill staff and paid his required professional photographer’s fee before doing the shoot. A few close shots of the photo subject appear after the long shots of the mill.

I’ve never really pursued a shot of the far left end of the falls as you see above, so I include this. I decided to treat this one in Photoshop Elements to see if the shadows slider there would give me some detail on the darker elements on the far right, and it helped. The right portion of the wall was much darker before I pulled it up in PE.

I pulled off on a short path to the park’s field classroom (first photo below). I hadn’t photographed it a long while. Below that are shots of new pedestrian paver paths leading to the mill and waterfall when the clay path ends. 

The post ends below with a shot of the spring azalea bushes in bloom. 

Remembering work colleague Lynn Ford

It is possible that people who are hard-line, milestone traditionalists might frown on my decision to write and publish this post here and now, but I decided to do so anyway.

Last month marked the 24th anniversary of the passing of a good work colleague and friend of mine, Lynn Ford, shown in the picture leading off this post. The photo graced the cover of a program for a memorial service held for Lynn after his death in February 2002. It was when I recently came across the program while going through a box of mementoes that I got the idea to toast Lynn here.

A shared, enthusiastic interest in pop music served as a bonding tool for Lynn and me in The Indianapolis Star newsroom in the 1980s. We particularly enjoyed reminiscing about Motown artists of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s — the Temptations, Four Tops, Jackson Five, Supremes, etc. And during the Motown discussions, one of us would almost always pause to utter a “yeow” lyric from Rick James’ 1981 hit Super Freak, which was released on the Motown subsidiary label Gordy.

Over time, our discussions gravitated to other subjects, such as politics and current events in the world, country, Indiana and, of course, the workplace. 

Some might call the latter gossip, but neither of us started such conversations with gossipy intent. At some point in these chats, one of us would usually break a serious tone with an aside conjuring a guffaw or snicker, helping to ease the transition to exchanging biting wit, sarcasm and, yes, occasional newsroom gossip.

Before joining The Star in 1984, Lynn had worked for six years at The Indianapolis Recorder, a news publication that served the city’s black community and today is the third-oldest black newspaper in the U.S.

Lynn reached his apex at The Star when he was invited to write a column that ran every other Saturday on the cover of the local and suburban news section. In the newsroom, we called this part of the newspaper “the split page.” (I think early on in my tenure I once asked why it got that nickname, and I’m sure someone explained it to me, but I’ve since long forgotten it.)

Suffice it to say that in house, the split page was regarded as a prestigious spot for any staffer to have a bylined story displayed. And Lynn’s column — accompanied by a photo of him — ran the length of the left side of the split page, the same spot where noted scribe Tom Keating’s daily columns had appeared for 14 years until early 1985. 

Lynn used the column to write about issues or events important to the African-American community. He occasionally wrote people profiles and delved into lighter yet important topics such as the fine arts, which remained a key interest of his to the very end.

He always had a smile and good cheer to share when we crossed paths. But doing that became difficult for him in the first few months after he returned to work following hospitalization and extended time off to recover from a serious stabbing outside his apartment in February 2001. He was assaulted by a man police identified as the former husband of a woman Lynn had been dating.

Lynn and I had a lengthy talk about the experience not long after he returned to work. I recall the conversation vividly because this usually upbeat individual was speaking from a dark place, and he admitted that he was having trouble getting past lingering post-trauma fears in the aftermath.

I’m happy to say I saw the Lynn of old by late summer of 2001, and we had a few more good months of interaction thereafter until his sudden death, which authorities attributed to a heart attack unrelated to the assault a year previous. I do remember that he seemed occasionally fatigued and out of breath in the latter months, but I knew his right lung had been punctured by one of the stab wounds, and I guess I thought that what I was observing was the lung still in the process of healing.

Today, I often think of him when I hear a Motown tune. And I think of him every time I hear Rick James’ “yeow” in Super Freak.

A Yates Mill Pond first for me: ice on the pond and minor patches of it on the trail

When I stopped at Yates Mill Pond Park yesterday for my daily walk, I had no intention of taking pictures because I’d done plenty of picture-making on other recent visits. But ... when you see something you hadn’t seen before, which happened Friday, it was hard not to pull out the iPhone camera and start snapping away.

The primary thing I hadn’t seen at the park before was ice on the pond, and there’s a bit of it in the lead-off photo. That murky, sheened section close to the shore was the only ice in this photo, which is the much larger section of pond on one side (south) of the main pedestrian bridge. 

I selected this photo to lead things off because of what I considered to be much more compelling compositional elements — silhouettes, reflections and cloud patterns — than the ice.

Ice on water was more prevalent elsewhere in the park, as shown in the series of photos immediately below this point. The first seven images below were taken on the smaller (north) side of the pond near the primary wooden pedestrian bridge. The remaining ice-on-water pictures were streams found on the early portion of the walking trail between the first and second pedestrian bridges.   

There were minor patches of snow (some mixed with ice) on the 2-mile trail itself. This was stuff that wasn’t able to melt from the recent warmer temperatures because of how tree branches sufficiently blocked the sun from the ground. 

But there wasn’t enough of the snow/ice to thwart walkers. I covered the full trail yesterday, and there was always a portion of path free of ice or snow that a pedestrian could land on to avoid the patches. I present a view images of that spotty white cover below. 

I returned to the park Saturday to walk, and many of the patches had disappeared or shrunk. But boy, the trade-off was a very gusty wind, dropping wind-chill temps to 20ish, making Saturday’s stroll the coldest-ever for me there. 

Fortunately, I’d checked the weather beforehand and added a layer of clothing, which turned out to be exactly what I needed. 

Much of the ice on the smaller (north) section of pond and on the streams near the second pedestrian bridge remained Saturday; almost all of it on the larger (south) section was gone. A curiosity Saturday: As I began my walk, there were scores of geese on the larger section of pond and a much smaller number — maybe a half-dozen — on the smaller section. They were all gone by the time I crossed the bridge on the return trip.

To see a larger, sharper version of a photo in this post, simply click on the image. To view a full gallery of images from the Friday shoot, follow the link in this sentence.

Fuquay-Varina converts former golf course into a much-needed town park

While reading the local metro daily newspaper one day about a year after moving to North Carolina, I found interesting a story about how the Wake County Commissioners had purchased the property of the former Crooked Creek Golf Club, an 18-hole golf course near the town of Fuquay-Varina in the southern portion of the county. 

In the months afterward, there was discussion about what Wake County — where Raleigh also is located — would do with the land. One idea floated was to develop the land for much-needed housing in the fast-growing area of the state. But there also was interest by Fuquay-Varina to take possession of the land and make it a largely open-air park.

The latter idea eventually won out, and in late October 2022, I got around to checking out Hilltop Needmore Town Park. And by “checking out,” I mean I took photographs of it. I only recently discovered that for some reason, I never did a blog post on that shoot.

So here I am, some three plus years later, correcting my neglect of doing a post from that shoot. 

My visit was timed wonderfully in the sense that I was able to capture my landscape images while autumn colors were still vivid in the area. It might seem odd to present a post of autumn landscapes in the throes of winter, but given how North Carolina recently experienced two uncharacteristic winter storms (Fern and Gianna) a week apart, maybe it’s something that can help boost spirits and morale.

While perusing these photos, take note of the rolling hills and winding paths, characteristic of challenging golf courses. To view a larger and sharper version of a photo, simply click on the image. To view a full gallery of images from this shoot, follow the link in this sentence.