Revisiting 2008 shoot in Columbus, Ind.

 

Today's post is another in my periodic project to revisit photo shoots I did before launching this blog in December 2008.

Last November, I introduced Photo Potpourri readers to photos I took during a 2007 visit to Columbus, Wis., a town where I worked for a year editing a weekly newspaper not long after graduating college. That shoot occurred 14 months before I had launched this blog, so ... the photos were never presented in a post until I revisited them in November 2017 to do a fresh edit -- mostly to address the serious loss of detail in the darkened portions of scenes with serious light contrast.

As it turns out, less than a year after that trip to Wisconsin, I visited another Columbus -- in Indiana -- this time just four months before Photo Potpourri's launch, so those, too, never were presented in a blog post here. Today, I address that omission.

I'd heard about Columbus, Indiana's reputation for architecture long before I made it there in Aug. 30, 2008. Unfortunately, for various reasons, I didn't get there until late in the afternoon, but after grabbing a bite to eat at a place in the downtown area, there was a little daylight remaining to stroll around the downtown area and take in some of the architecture I'd heard about.

But the attraction that left the most lasting impression on me wasn't a building at all. It was the 25 forty-foot-tall limestone pillars positioned in a 5'x5' grid to comprise the Bartholomew County Veterans Memorial. The memorial, designed by Maryann Thompson Architects in 1997, sits on the Bartholomew County Courthouse lawn bounded by Jackson, Washington, 2nd and 3rd streets. Etched into each of the pillars are excerpts of diaries or last letters home to families of Bartholomew County soldiers.

A couple images of the memorial are featured in the photo leading off the post and first three below. The lead-off and first below were taken in a backlight situation, the sundown lighting casting amber hues on the pillars. I was catching the full sunlight off the pillars in the second image below. The third below was an attempt to amplify the height of the pillars, focusing directly skyward from the bottom of one of them. Below those images are two examples of the etchings in the pillars.

As always, to view a larger and (hopefully) sharper version of an image, simply click on the image. To view a full gallery of the shoot from my visit to Columbus, Ind., click on the link in this sentence.

Photo geek stuff: I shot everything in this post with my Canon 30D equipped with a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens.

Above and below: Different sections of the upper portion of the Bartholomew County Courthouse.

The volume of installation art in the area of the courthouse was striking. The installations above were near the courthouse lawn.  

Above: Most people seem to be familiar with the A-frame architecture on the Ind. 46 bridge entering Columbus from I-65. I would like to have spent more time exploring different photographic perspectives of the bridge, but I was losing light fast, and the bridge was several blocks from my car, so ... I grabbed what I could from afar.

There appeared to be a wedding and/or wedding reception on the eastern fringe of Mill Race Park the night I was there. That appears to be what was going on in the photo above, but I didn't want to get closer and intrude.

Above: Another piece of installation art in a media not far from the courthouse lawn and Mill Race Park. 

Above and below: Shots taken several blocks from the courthouse. As best I can remember, the photo below is a slice of the facade of Bartholomew County Public Library, but I'm not sure. By the time I reached this point, it was starting to get dark, and I was forced to using shutter speeds slower than I would have liked. I'm sure, using my Canon 30D, I was pushing my ISO to 800, which was not far from its maximum.

Above and below: Two shots from the commercial district near the courthouse.

Above: The top portion of yet another piece of installation art, near Mill Race Park, as best as I can remember.