Photo Potpourri: CHAPTER 14Four seasons: Spring

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

CHAPTER 14
Four seasons: Spring

All photos in this chapter are © by Joe Konz

For some Indy Southside residents, the arrival of spring each year is confirmed or validated by the flowering blooms throughout Garfield Park, whether it's the Dogwoods, Red Buds or Cherry Blossoms. Or maybe it's the annual Spring Bulb Show at the park's Conservatory.

Others keep a close eye on when green leaves start returning to all of the park's deciduous trees, as shown in the first photo below, which presents a spring version of one of the author’s favorite park scenes: the pedestrian roundabout at the south end near the former Confederate Monument to Prisoners of War.

Or maybe it's the return of outdoor tulips, hyacinths and crocuses.

Or perhaps just seeing a dad playing Wiffle ball with his small children or runners venturing out wearing T-shirts and shorts again is enough for some to signal the start of a new outdoor-friendly season.

One can wax poetic for much longer than these few paragraphs to mark such an important landmark as the end of snow and bitter cold. But pictures can tell the same story, perhaps even more easily, so here goes …

Above: This guy seemed incredibly fearless as he approached me near the asphalt path on the park's south end on March 21, 2009. Afterward, I remembered that I'd seen a lot of people feeding squirrels in this area of the park and that these squirrels have gotten accustomed to easy handouts from creatures who look like me. Unfortunately, I had no food with me, so this one went without.

In mid-March of 2007, after months of studying about macro photography, I bought myself an 85mm f/2.8 macro lens. A macro lens is a photography "tool" that enables one to see small and minute things closeup — and sharp — albeit sometimes at the risk of being unable to make out other things in the image because of blurriness, especially when using that wide-open f/2.8 aperture.

I spent a day roaming the park and Conservatory with the macro lens on the camera, seeing what kind of pictures it could get me. To end this chapter, I present a few of the results below. Some of these might seem a little ridiculous, such as the burrs or the interlocking fence post and nail ... but to a photographer exploring that new lens, it was an eye-opener. As for the very last photo below ... I did not stage that. That's exactly how I came across that scene.