A return to ... 15 miles from home

Two years ago, the Indiana Photographic Society photo club, for one of its monthly assignments, asked members to drive 15 miles in any direction from home and take photographs of whatever we'd find at that location. We'd then show our images at a meeting at the end of the month.

It was one of the first assignments I tackled after joining the club, and it remains one of my favorite to date. I elected to drive southeast from home, ending up in northeastern Clark Township in Johnson County, near the junction of County Roads 700 East and 1000 North. There, I used Pleasant Valley Church as my base ... and as the subject of many of the photographs I took that day. I posted images from that shoot at my blog in 2010 in two installments, one on Nov. 13, the other on Nov. 14.

After a two-year hiatus, the 15-mile out assignment resurfaced recently. This time I headed straight south and again ended in Johnson County, at the junction of 500 North and 400 West in White River Township, where I saw a striking building -- Risen Lord Lutheran Church and Montessori School -- on the northeast corner and decided to make it my base. The church has a remarkable, distinguished and color-rich mosaic on its front facade, illustrated in the photo leading off today's post.

There was also road construction going on there; Whiteland Road is being widened into a divided thoroughfare, so my photo opportunities centered on the church, the construction ... and yet a second church, Salem Missionary Baptist Church, about 100 yards southwest of the intersection.

For some time now, I've made a habit of bracketing exposures in triplicate for all of my landscape shots -- and lots of indoor, non-people shots. One reason is to give me options for selecting the optimum exposure for single-frame shots, but more importantly to give me an opportunity to treat these scenes in high-dynamic range (HDR) software. This has come in handy especially on days when timing is such that I cannot exploit dramatic early-morning or late-afternoon sunlight. HDR gives me a little edge in making a better picture than I would have gotten otherwise. All of the photos in today's post were bracketed for exposure to treat in HDR software.

Working with HDR software to the extent that I have has enabled me to stumble into a technique, in most instances, where I can achieve what I'm wanting to do -- cull maximum detail and add pop to the color and vibrance without having the result look too surreal or, as a fellow member of the IPS once referred to the look of many HDR shots in general (not necessarily my photos), "like clown vomit." (Quick aside: How clown vomit would look much different from that of anyone else's is beyond me, but the remark was colorful -- which I'm sure was his point, as it did conjure a chuckle from me).

The technique, or "trick," that I've hit upon using Photomatix HDR software is difficult to explain, but the key involves processing a merged image not once, but twice -- first through a somewhat dark (via the midtone slider) exposure fusion (EF) treatment, then again through the tone maping/details enhancer option (TMDE). And a note: You have to do it in that order -- EF first, TMDE second. Photomatix will not let you do it the other way around (i.e., a TMDE-processed image through EF).

Before doing any processing, you observe both EF and TMDE "previews." The darker the TMDE preview, the brighter you go on the midtone slider during the EF processing, and the brighter the TMDE preview, the darker you want the midtone slider during EF processing. Using this two-layer treatment allows you to exploit EF's ability to preserve more natural colors (the TMDE process on its own tends to distort greens and reds, especially), so you can avoid that "clown vomit" look. This process has worked successfully for me about 80% of the time, indoors and outdoors. The one situation where it falls short is in backlight situations, although it still can deliver an image looking better than processing it only through TMDE.

Also ... if, during the TMDE processing, your skies and clouds in an outdoor landscape tend to have unnatural colors (purple-ish) or display some dramatic color changes in a short amount of space or render bizarre color shapes, you can do one or both of two things in Photomatix -- select a higher or the highest light smoothing modes (unfortunately, that can lose you some nice highlighting), or go to your miscellaneous TMDE settings and move the highlights smoothness slider to the right end until those color/shape anomalies disappear or at least fade to levels you can accept. That, too, could cost you some detail, but if the unnatural colors or shapes are offensive or unacceptable, it might be worth the trade-off). A last resort is to accept the distortions and try to resolve them in Lightroom, Photoshop/Elements or some other image editing software using a blending brush.

All of the above is contingent on you having your other slider levels set at positions you've become comfortable with, and that varies with each photographer ... and that is why explaining this "trick" is complicated. I could tell you what levels I find comfortable, but you might not like those. It's one thing you'll have to figure out to your own satisfaction.

To see the full gallery of images from this shoot, visit my site at SmugMug.

Above: Risen Lord church's south facade, treated in an "antique" monochrome conversion.

Above: Closeup of a statue along the south side of Risen Lord church.

Above and next two below: Full views and closeups of the mosaic and signage.

Above and next three below: Road and infrastructure construction activity.

Above: A drainage mechanism on church property near the road intersection. I particularly liked the contrasting colors and criss-crossing pattern of the utility wires at the top. 

Above and below: Whiteland Road (County Road 500 North), as widened (above) and used by one resident to walk her dogs.

Above and next two below: Having some fun with traffic signs, using a Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 wide-angle lens. 

Above: Looking into the sun, a view of some homes along Whiteland Road, as seen from the south parking lot of Risen Lord church.

Above and below: A home at the northwest corner of the two county roads, with the colorful trees below lining its driveway. 

Above: Again using the wide-angle lens and looking northeast from the southwest corner of the intersection of County Roads 500 North and 400 West. This composition piqued my interest more for the utility-wire busywork, patterns and angles than it did for the church, construction and signage elements. 

Above: Trees separating the Risen Lord church's south parking lot from a drainage ditch and Whiteland Road (500 North). 

Above and next two below: The "other" church near the intersection -- Salem Missionary Baptist Church. The second image below was another backlight composition ... and also a monochrome conversion using the "antique" filter option.

Above: My way of saying, "The End." 

A few more ... from 15 miles out

I decided to post a few more frames from the "15 Miles Out" shoot, one to assure those of you bothered by the basketball hoop composition in the previous post. I actually did grab a shot or two (included in this post) with the composition set up as one might primarily expect. And yeah, even with my contrarian mood, it still gnawed at me a little that I didn't go ahead and just use that one with the original post, so ... I'm making up for that here. But rather than simply swap it out as an edit to the previous post, I'll include the "properly aligned" one here and let the viewers judge.

Also in this post are another shot of a jet stream as it appears to make contact with the church tower. Again ... a mere juxtaposition. Not to worry; no 9/11 disaster intended or suggested.

And, a color shot of the neat glow (from backlight) behind the Pleasant Valley Church steeple (the lead image above), and a black-and-white conversion of the solitary, leafless tree (can the color version be far behind?). I had provided versions of each of these images treated with an antique filter in the previous post.

Finally, I'm also including a frame featuring a fortuitous natural sun spotlight on harvest foliage from the field near the church. I did no playing with this in post-processing; this is exactly how the light fell on the subject.

To view a full gallery of images from this shoot, follow the link in this sentence.

Above: The juxtaposition of jet stream and church steeple. The jet was miles and miles away. 

Above: The sun-spotlighted harvest foliage.

Above: A black-and-white monochrome of the leafless tree.

Above: The basketball hoop and Pleasant Valley Church sign, "properly" aligned.

Images from ... Fifteen Miles Out

 

The challenge was to head out in any direction from home and drive 15 miles, stop, and get out and shoot whatever struck me as photogenic right there and then.

I chose to head southeast, and when I hit the 15-mile mark, I was in the extreme northeast corner of Clark Township, Johnson County (Ind.), and two-tenths of a mile north of Pleasant Valley Church. I was southbound on two-lane Acton Road (County Road 700 East) with no shoulder, so I spied the church ahead and decided that would be a safe terminus. The church address is 9990 N. Johnson County Road 700 East, which is at a "T" intersection with East County Road 1000 North (Watson Road), which ends at 700 East.

Moments earlier, as I hit the 13-mile mark while southbound on Acton Road still in Marion County, I grumbled in disappointment. I was passing Acton Cemetery, a small community graveyard that I imagined would have presented a goldmine of photo possibilities. But I stuck to the letter of the challenge and continued driving south, crossing into Johnson County shortly thereafter ... and worrying I'd end up with nothing but open fields. I would have pushed myself to find something photographic even with that, but I held out hope I might get a bit more to work with come the real 15-mile mark.

So when I saw the church, my frustrations about missing out on the cemetery lifted. I pulled into a gravel spillover parking lot at the church, got out of the car and started to find things to shoot. The inventory of what I had to work with at this largely rural spot: On the west side of the highway, there was the church; a modest-sized red-leafed tree next to the church; some interesting shadows from a white picket-like fence along a stairs on the south side of the church; a flag pole; a basketball hoop; a separate, solitary tree virtually bereft of its leaves (featured at the top of this post); a tiny, first-quarter moon in the sky; a septic tank behind the church; five or six tires stacked on their ends that gave me a "window" to the highway when I lay on the ground; a nice-sized farm field north of the church where the seasonal crop had been harvested clean; and a large, brick home north of that field. There also was some playground equipment behind the church, but I decided not to include it in any of the images.

On the east side of the road there was a sign for Broken Wheel Ranch, directing traffic east down County Road 1000 North. Oh ... I also saw some jet streams from aircraft; the polarizing filter I used helped bring out the definition of those streams in the shots.

What you see here is what I came up with from the above. To view a full gallery of images from this shoot, follow the link in this sentence.

Above: Some wild growth amid the remains of the harvested field of corn.

Above: A home north of the church with trees sporting red foliage. 

Above: Pleasant Valley Church tower wrapped by backlight.

 

Above: A backlighted perspective shot of the church, the tree and flagpole.

Above: The flagpole and church tower juxtaposed with one of the jet streams.

Above: The red tree and church.

Above: Lines, shadows and angles near some stairs on the south side of the church.

Above: The basketball hoop and a church sign. An initial thought was to compose so that the pole would be on the right of the sign so the hoop would curve over the sign. Alas, I was in a contrarian mood this day, and chose to compose against convention. That tiny white dot in the sky to the right of the backboard is the first-quarter moon.

Above: Using the burst mechanism to capture a passing motorist through the eye of the tires.

Above: A different angle of the shadows of the stairs on the church facade.

Above and below: I was struck by the bright glare on the side of this holding tank in the original color image above. I turned around to confirm that it was the sun leaving its brand there. To better define the "sphere on sphere," I made a copy of the original color version, converted it to black and white, pulled up the image's illumination sliders on my photo editing software, lowered the image shadows to virtually zero and reduced the mid-tone and highlight levels about 25%, resulting in the image below. You should make out the sun a little easier now.

Above: I applied an antiquing filter to this backlighted image of the red-leafed tree and its shadowed trunk. I used this same antiquing filter on the leafless tree at the top of the post and of the church tower wrapped in backlight.

Above: The sign for the Broken Wheel Ranch.

Above: A closeup of the wheel's "broken" section.

 

Above: The Broken Wheel Ranch sign's arrow, pointing the way.