Washington Township Park in Avon: a spectacle in several ways

The second annual Hendricks County Park2Park Relay is Saturday, and in preparation for coordinating photo coverage of this event for the Indy Meetup Photo Club, I stopped in Washington Township Park in Avon, Ind., last week because this park ... and Harmony Baptist Church just west of it ... will play a special role in this year's event.

The park was the only one I did not get a chance to check out in any degree in 2011 for the inaugural running of Park2Park -- either before or during the relay -- even though the course did go through there. So when I noticed the church would be an exchange point for two consecutive legs of the race, I wanted to see this place. (An exchange point is where a runner on one team ends a leg, or turn, of the course and passes the baton he/she was carrying to a teammate, who then begins to run the next leg of the relay; it's similar to a relay event in a track meet).

I was impressed with the park. The most eye-catching spectacle in it -- at least to me -- was a gorgeous stone viaduct towering over the park access drive and spanning nearby White Lick Creek. I took pictures of it -- a monochrome conversion of one such frame leads off today's post, and its color version appears immediately below. I also photographed the park's amphitheater and a pond and the park community building, both near the amphitheater at the park's far south end.

My decision to check out the park was spur-of-the-moment; I ducked in as I returned home in the early afternoon after dropping off material at the Hendricks County Parks Department. I knew the mid-day lighting wouldn't be kind to single-frame photos, so I bracketed every shot with three exposures (-2/3, 0, +2/3) to give my shots some high-dynamic range (HDR) punch that the single-frame shots wouldn't give me. It was a good decision; the single frame "normal" exposure shots were high-noon unspectacular. Also key to the shots of the viaduct and amphitheater were the use of a wide angle lens (Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 on my Canon 7D) and a circular polarizing filter to enrich color and draw out definition in a sky that was filled with interesting cloud patterns.

The antique nature of the viaduct prompted me to explore monochrome conversions of all my shots of that structure. I'll provide several color/monochromes of each so you can decide which you prefer.

I'm sure I'll have more from Hendricks County sometime next week after the relay. A full gallery of images from the shoot at Washington Township Park on June 7 can be found at my SmugMug site. Just click on the link in the previous sentence. And as always, to see bigger versions of the images in this post, simply click on the image.