Shadows, light, lines, patterns ... plus a blue heron with a turtle at Yates Mill Pond

It wasn’t until I got home from Yates Mill Pond Park on Thursday that I realized the vast majority of pictures I had taken earlier (yes, while on my regular walk) had vertical orientations. 

Ordinarily, there is nothing wrong with that. But with this blog, I try to present in the lead-off position (at the top) a photo with a horizontal orientation so there is there not a lot of wasted space up there. Worrying about wasted space is a concern that goes back to my days as a newspaperman in Indianapolis. It’s not critical in blog world, I suppose ... but it’s still something I try to avoid. 

My photography mission Thursday didn’t occur to me until I was on the far west loop of the Creekside Trail heading back to the start, about a mile or so away from the start point. But boy, did I find lots of compositions to photograph for the category of shadows, light, lines and patterns. 

And as for the bonus — the blue heron and turtle — that’s something I had photographed the previous day. I’ll save those photos for the bottom. But I was intrigued by the proximity of the heron to the turtle in the pond. My photos were taken with my iPhone 13 Pro, so the quality isn’t the best because of the distance. 

But the first three shots of the heron and turtle were taken with 1) a brief light on the heron’s beak just before 2) dipping the beak into the water, presumably for a snack, and then 3) coming up. The fourth photo is from several frames later, about 30 seconds after the heron did a very slow strut to get closer to the turtle. 

By the time I decided to leave the two and resume my walk, the heron remained in this position; I don’t think it intended to do the turtle any harm. 

The final two pictures are from the forest landscape that I grabbed during my walk later that morning.   

Check out my traveling photographer blog, Travelin’ Shutterbug

Moon over Yates Mill Pond Park

Sometime pre-2012, in the middle of the new millennium’s first decade, while I was still living in Indianapolis (and working full time), I was out for a very early morning run through Garfield Park, which was very close to where my house was. 

And on the tail end of the run, as I was climbing the hill on Pagoda Drive, I noticed off to my right that the moon was perched perfectly over the campus of Emmerich Manual High School, which sat on the park’s western border. The visual excited me, and for 30 seconds, I gave thought to sprinting home, grabbing my DSLR camera (I did not have a cell phone at that time), and running back to capture pictures. I even quickly came up with an alliterative headline on the blog post bearing the resulting photos: Moon over Manual.  

I was deterred, however, by the thought of possibly missing the moment in the time it would take me to run home and run back. But I also worried that doing so would make me late for work. 

So instead of throwing caution to the wind, I sighed and told myself I would get it the next time it happened. 

As you might guess, there was no next time. 

I later did some Internet research to try and learn how often the moon could land in the exact same visual position like I had seen that morning. And the response was demoralizing. Today, I don’t remember exactly what the answer was, but it basically foretold that years of waiting would be involved. 

On Aug. 31, when I arrived at Yates Mill Pond Park for my regular walk, I had my iPhone with me ... and an angel nudging me in the form of the man you see in the lower right corner of the photo leading off this post. 

I wasn’t looking up at the sky as I made my way down the main boardwalk over the pond, taking pictures of reflections on the perfectly still pond. But the man saw I was a picture-taker and directed my attention to the placement of the moon right over the short overhang on the boardwalk. I looked up, and there it was. I took three pictures integrating the moon into the landscape (the two others are the first two photos below). Below those are the reflection shots.

Twelve days later, on Sept. 11, I was again in the park for my walk and nearing an end when I came across the striking colors on a tree growing from the pond (first photo below). I took the other pictures closer to the tree. I wasn’t as impressed with those, but ... for the sake of wrapping up the story, I present them here, too.

Check out my traveling photographer blog, Travelin’ Shutterbug