Palladium pictures, Part III

Today brings the third and final post from my shoot Sunday at the Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Ind., the centerpiece of which is the striking limestone 1,600-seat Palladium (above), which I referred to as a "concert palace" in the first post two days ago.

The first day's post focused on the primary concert hall interior, yesterday's post was about the areas in the building adjacent to or surrounding the concert hall. Today, the attention is on the Palladium's exterior and the landscape nearby, and to accomplish this, I bracketed my images for purpose of processing the photos for high-dynamic range (HDR). HDR is the melding of two or more images of the same scene, with each image exposed differently for the purpose of culling maximum detail from each image to form one image of optimum, dynamic range of detail during the melding process. I used three exposures in each case, varying the degree of exposure by 1 to 1.5 stops (i.e., one shot at normally metered exposure, one shot underexposed by 1 to 1.5 stops, one shot overexposed by 1 to 1.5 stops).

Almost all of my shots at the Palladium were taken with a wide angle Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 lens. I swapped it out at the very end, when I ventured across 3rd Avenue to start shooting in Carmel Clay Veterans Memorial Plaza. I used my Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens for those. The wind was blowing hard at that point of the day; you can even detect some "ghosting" around the heads of the plaza statue in the closeup/detail shot at the very bottom. That no doubt was from the tripod shaking from the wind. Notice the how animated the flags look in the vertical shot of the statue and flags; the wind was having its way with the fabric. I fully expected that shot not to work out because of the movement involved with multiple layers. I used Photomatix's automatic ghost correction feature during the HDR conversion, and it did a marvelous job stilling the ghosts. 

To view a full gallery of my shots from the Palladium, follow the link in this sentence.

And without further adieu, the rest of the images:

A wide shot of the south CFTPA structure, across the green from the Palladium, is above; below is a development east of the Palladium, on the other side of the Monon Trail. 

Above and below: A straight-on shot from afar, exposing the construction activity still going on in the mall-like "green" separating the Palladium from the south structure, where the 200-seat Studio Theater is located. 

Above and below: Detail shots from the facades of the structure forming the south portion of the CFTPA complex, located across the green from the Palladium, which is on the north end of the complex. The south structure houses the 200-seat Studio theater. The 500-seat Tarkington proscenium theater -- the third piece to the CFTPA complex -- is scheduled to open in late summer.

Above and remainder below: The Carmel Clay Veterans Memorial Plaza, across 3rd Avenue from the Palladium.