As of last month, Photo Potpourri has been around for 15 years. The anniversary passed quietly; I’d actually forgotten about it until a few days ago.
Once I did remember, I tried to think about what I could do to mark the occasion. It occurred to me that I’ve never done a post about my favorite shoots over the years, so I thought that picking out 15 such outings would be a good way to mark the anniversary. So without further adieu, here are 15 shoots that stand out to me, and I present them in no particular order.
Hendricks County Park2Park 64-Mile Team Run — There were two of these that I participated in and organized for the Indy Meetup Photo Club, June 2011 and June 2012. The first one I remember the best because of the extensive prep work I did. I traveled the whole 64-mile course two weeks in advance of the event to gauge which points along the course would be the best places to assign club members to get pictures. Then I presented my plan to the IMUPC at a meeting the week of the run. Most club members were asked to stay in one location so they didn't have to expend a lot of time and vehicle fuel running around. I assigned myself to follow the full course in gradual increments throughout the day, and I found it quite a thrill. This was the only shoot ever in which I experienced my primary camera (a Canon 7D) overheating and refusing to perform. Fortunately, that didn’t happen until I had reached the finish point, and even better, I was smart enough to have brought a backup camera (a Canon 30D) to finish any shooting I needed to do.
The 2012 rendition was interesting because the Hendricks County Parks Foundation reversed the course direction (the 2011 finish park was the 2012 start point, and the 2011 start park was the 2012 finish point) it and added an ultra-marathon category, requiring a start of that competition before sunrise. One of my favorite shots from the 2011 Park2Park was the one above, a silhouette of three women on the open road, Hendricks County Road 650 North, early in the event just outside of the town of North Salem.
Garfield Shakespeare Company’s fall 2012 production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — I enjoyed all my shoots of community theater in Indianapolis, but this one was a particular delight for me because my son, Ben, auditioned for a role and was cast as King Theseus. Adding to the pleasure was that I was tipped off that there would be a surprise wedding proposal, involving two cast members, at a late-morning Saturday practice at Garfield Park's MacAllister Amphitheater. The plan was for the man to drop to his knee and propose during the rehearsal of a scene. It went off splendidly, a good time was had by all and practice was paused so all could enjoy some celebratory cake and camaraderie.
Below are two "Midsummer" photos. The first features my son, Ben, as Theseus, along with Lexie Brown (middle) as Hippolyta and Christy Walker as Hermia, from the Sept. 19 dress rehearsal. The second is from the moment Spencer Elliott dropped to his knee to propose to Ashley Chase on the Sept. 9 morning practice.
Neighborhood profiles of Lockerbie Square and the Old Northside of Indianapolis — In 2007, I took an advanced photography class through the adult learning department of Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. For our last project, teacher Greg Mitchell had class members do a photo walk-through of the historic and scenic Lockerbie Square neighborhood on downtown Indy’s near Eastside. I so much enjoyed the experience that I threw myself into a similar project that the Indy Meetup Photo Club decided to tackle in the Old Northside neighborhood of Indianapolis. Those experiences no doubt led to my current interest of visiting various towns and communities to do a photo documentary walk-through.
The first photo below was from a trip I made to Lockerbie Square about a week before the class outing. The two photos below it were two shots from my visit to the Old Northside in June 2011.
The Florida Keys — I've taken two trips to the Florida Keys, one in January 2017, the other in February 2018. On both trips, we stayed in Marathon in the middle of the Keys to allow for relatively short access to Key West on the far south end and Key Largo on the far north end, even though I suspected that we'd probably spend the bulk of our time in Marathon and Key West. And we did. However, we did spend a night in Key Largo halfway through the two-week trip in 2017, and that's where I captured my favorite photo of both journeys, the sunset shot over the Gulf of Mexico in the first image below. This is the original version of the photo, by the way. I've since made and saved a copy after erasing the two poles to the left of the sun. I go back and forth on which I prefer. Today, I was preferring the original.
The second shot below was during our trip to Bahia Honda State Park, which is south of Marathon on the far end of the Overseas Highway 7-Mile Bridge. I've never been as fortunate to recapture the open sea looking as stunning as the Atlantic Ocean appeared that day.
Covering the Monon Bell Classic football game between Wabash College and DePauw University — I made a point to do this twice, once at each campus. The first came at DePauw in Greencastle, Ind., in 2011, and the second the following year at Wabash, a modest jog north of Greencastle on U.S. 231 in Crawfordsville, Ind. I could use any number of game-action photos to illustrate my shoot at these games, both of which were won by Wabash, but the games are played for the prize
— possession of the Monon Bell, which is why I present the one below from the 2012 game at Crawfordsville.
Butler University men's basketball team — I became a pretty dedicated Bulldogs basketball fan in the early 2000s, when head coach Brad Stevens molded one winning team after another and took consecutive teams to the final game of the NCAA tournament. I had the fortune to have photographed three Butler games at storied Hinkle Fieldhouse — one against Indiana State in 2007 and exhibitions against DePauw in 2009 and Hanover College in 2010. I got my best shots in the latter two, but my favorites are displayed below, both from the 2009 game against DePauw.
The first shows Bulldogs guard Shawn Vanzant (2) attempting a left-handed pass around a DePauw defender, while the second features future NBA player Gordon Hayward going up for a two-handed jam to climax a solo breakaway sprint down the court in the second half.
Indianapolis Cycling Criterium — Sticking to the realm of sports, I became a fan of cycling right around the new millennium, so in 2010, I decided to go to downtown Indianapolis for the debut of the annual Indy Criterium and see how well I could capture the sport in photographs. Personally, I think I did pretty good. I always found things to tweak and improve upon with my subsequent shoots of the 2011 and 2012 Indy Crits as well as the 2011 Mass Ave Criterium.
My favorite from the 2010 Crit isn't an action shot; it's this playful moment (first photo below) by one entrant as he was lined up to at the start line moments before his race began. I never went to these races looking (much less hoping) for accidents to happen, but in the 2012 Indy Crit, I was in the right place at the right time (second photo below). I got lots of shots of this accident on Market Street just west of Monument Circle when it unfolded as riders approached my position. My shots included some closeups of the unfortunate MacDonald's rider's bloodied face and left knee after he left the course, but I elected to present one of the action shots of the accident unfolding here instead.
Spectators at a show by Indy area band the Bishops — I had occasion to photograph many concerts in Indianapolis while I was living there. I eventually was hired to shoot The Bishops on several occasions, but none was as exciting or memorable as a performance at Mickey's Irish Pub in Carmel on Jan. 14, 2012. That shoot just so happened to coincide with my first occasion to christen a new L series Canon lens, the 24-70mm f/2.8. That's what I was using when I captured my favorite shot at the show (below), a few excited women who were dancing in front of the stage and, specifically, in front of lead guitarist Matt Ley. I got a lot of nice shots of the band in action, too, but I always come back to this one when I think of my sundry concert shoots through the years.
Indy Acoustic Cafe series — Also in the realm of music and concerts, I was able to photograph 17 artists who performed at the long-running Indy Acoustic Cafe series during a period when it was staging most of its shows in Fountain Square, a short jaunt from my home in the Garfield Park area. Artists in my Indy Acoustic Cafe portfolio include Tom Rush, David Lindley, Rory Block, Shawn Mullins, Jonathan Edwards, former Little Feat band member Patrick Fuller, Freedy Johnston and Darden Smith.
I saw Mullins twice there; the first was in 2011 with my children, who were acquainted with the stuff of his that reached the pop charts. I didn't photograph that first show, but I did get the second show, on Feb. 12, 2012, and that's where I got the first photo below, my favorite from that appearance. I loved the expression on Mullins' face as Patrick Blanchard, who played bass in Mullins' usual band and joined him on stage for this show, takes a lead solo.
The second photo below is from the Nov. 19, 2011, series show starring James House. I happened to catch House at a great moment in an intense point of a song's lyrics. In the Jan. 29, 2011, show by Darden Smith, stage lighting darkened to a point where I felt inspired to process a few images in dramatic silhouette. That's what I did in the third photo below. I also cast a copy of this in a blue tint to add to my "blues" monochrome collection.
My second published photo: Cathy Morris playing the Garfield Park Sunken Garden — In June 2005, I'd had my first DSLR for almost a year and decided to walk over to the park and see what I could capture during a concert in the Garfield Park Sunken Garden by Indy electric violinist Cathy Morris and her jazz ensemble. Cathy stood on the garden's overlook while the audience sat below in the Sunken Garden itself. The photo below was beyond what I hoped to capture, using my digital Rebel (300D) and a standard 75-300mm f/4.5-6 lens at maximum focal range from below in the garden. I decided to offer it to my employer, The Indianapolis Star, to use in the next day's newspaper, and they used it in black and white (there was no color available) on Page 2 of the City/State Metro news section. It was the second time The Star had published a photo of mine; the first depicted extensive damage along Troy Avenue on the Southside of Indianapolis after a 2004 Memorial Day tornado swept through the city. The editors like that photo so much that they ran it five columns wide on the jump page of the main storm story for the first edition. The sweet thing about that picture was that I shot it on color film and had to get the film processed and prints made before scanning the image onto my computer.
Savannah, Georgia — I've made more trips to Savannah than any other place outside of my home state except for Myrtle Beach. But Savannah holds a special place in my heart. Every trip there, I come back with pictures I treasure for days. So it's difficult to single out any one shoot from my days days venturing out into this beautiful and historic Southern community. So I'll present three.
The first below is a shot looking south of the gorgeous fountain in Forsyth Park, the largest and southernmost of almost two dozen neighborhood squares in the historic district. My first visit to Savannah came in March 2017, and March is prime azalea season in Georgia. Beautiful and (again) historic Bonaventure Cemetery (where "Moon River" songwriter Johnny Mercer is buried) has many, many azaleas that give its premises a visual lift in spring, as evidenced in the second photo below. I haven't written a whole lot about the City Market in downtown Savannah, so in the third photo below, I present a look at the City Market down Saint Julian Street in March 2017.
Myrtle Beach — As noted previously, I've to Myrtle Beach quite a bit since moving to North Carolina. It's the place where I've photographed the vast majority of the sunrises I've amassed over the years. So in addition to the photo leading off the post, I'll present the following Myrtle Beach photos below, captured at various times.
Visits to Indiana small-college campuses — During my "Game Day" project, which encompassed shooting football along with campus landscapes at small colleges and university in Indiana (the shoots for the Monon Classic mentioned above were part of this), I found myself pleasingly surprised at what so many Indiana small campuses had to offer. I started at Hanover College, whose campus overlooks the Ohio River in southern Indiana, and with so many others after that, I kept being impressed by what these schools did to make themselves visually and aesthetically appealing. I probably was most surprised by my visit to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute. I'm not sure why I went there with low expectations, but I did, and boy, was I way off. It's up there with Hanover and Anderson University among the top three that impressed me most.
For Hanover, I could go the easy route and show a shot I took of the Ohio River from the campus bluffs, but instead, I'll present the first photo below, a backlit image of a campus fountain, which was among my favorites of the shoot. The second photo is a section of The Valley, Anderson University’s hilly "substitute" for green open malls found at most campuses. The third photo is Speed Lake at Rose-Hulman, with Percopo Hall in the background on the left and White Chapel on the right.
Lakes Wheeler and Benson in Raleigh — Within relatively close driving distance from my home outside Raleigh are Lake Wheeler and Benson Lake. Within a few days of each other in 2018, I visited both up close for the first time, and enjoyed both shoots for difference reasons. At Wheeler, I found a second body of water, Simpkins Pond, kind of hidden from the big lake. Simpkins had lots of interesting elements to photograph, although my favorite shot of the day was actually taken from just outside the park — along a street guard railing looking back toward the big lake and its spillover, where the serendipitous scene with the geese in the first photo below unfolded. I happened to be there at just the right time. Right below that image is a shot from the many I took as I circled the "hidden" Simpkins Pond. As for Benson, I went there early enough on a day when the water was still, the sun was shining, some clouds were out and I got great cloud reflections on the water.
Garfield Park, Indianapolis, in winter — Many of my favorite shots in this "go to" park during my days in Indianapolis were taken in winter. Below, wrapping up this anniversary post, are several of these.
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