On second thought, here's a reflection on 10 years of Photo Potpourri ...

In my introductory note when starting the recent travel series on my November visit to Savannah, I said I wasn't going to do much to mark this blog's 10th anniversary this month.

I've had a change of heart, considering that in 2013, when I marked the fifth anniversary, I dedicated a post to telling viewers a little bit about the statistics that a blog owner gets to view to assess whether he/she gets the traffic they hope for ... and to gauge what types of posts are the most popular.

It occurred to me this past week that maybe I ought to do that again to mark the 10th anniversary, which arrived a few days ago on Dec. 11. And so here goes:

By Dec. 11 in  2013, I'd composed more than 400 posts here, fueled largely by the 105 total posts in 2012 alone. The years 2009 (88) and 2011 (82) weren't too shabby, either, if you're speaking purely in terms of volume.

From that point on it seems, I must have made a subconscious effort to shift from volume to better quality. (At least, I hope the quality has improved). That's because years 2014 through 2018 were not nearly as prolific as the first five. Today, my number of total posts from launch day until today numbers 644, and, curiously, my most prolific year these past five years has been 2018, with 80 total posts so far.

One thing that hasn't changed since 2013 (and probably since a year or two before that even) is the post fetching the most views, or "hits." It remains the same: a Nov. 19, 2009, profile I did of wedding photographer Rich Miller as part of Photo Potpourri's former  "Photographer in the Spotlight" series (a series, I might add, that proved popular to viewers ... but proved to be a lot of work for me). The image leading off the post and the one at the right are Miller's images, by the way.

The "Spotlight" write-up about Rich, a former longtime staff photographer for The Indianapolis News and Indianapolis Star, had fetched more than twice as many hits than the No. 2 story at the five-year mark of this blog, and I can report that five years later ... not only is it still the all-time hits leader, but it also is still ahead of the No. 2 post by more than twice as many hits.

But in 2018, I have a new "No. 2" post. It's a tribute I did this past April for Garfield Shakespeare Co. co-founder and former artistic director Joe Cook, who passed away April 1. It amassed four-figure hits in a very short period and bumped to third place the previous No. 2, a Sept. 17, 2010, post I did about GSC's production of Macbeth presented in a U.S. colonial setting.

The rest of the current all-time Top 10 (in total visits over 10 years) as of this month are as follows:

4. A Nov. 7, 2010, post on then-Butler University freshman basketball player Chishawn Hopkins. That's Hopkins at right in his first game with Butler.

5. A Dec. 26, 2012, post on the unusually high number of oddly tilting trees in Indianapolis' Garfield Park.

6. An  Oct. 3, 2013, Indiana small-college football "Game Day" series post about the campus of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

7. A Nov. 12, 2013, post on the colors of autumn leaves I came across near my Indy home. (See photo below)

8. A Feb. 22, 2009, post on French master photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

9. An Aug. 9, 2016, post on UIndy baseball player Brendan Dudas' Wiffle Ball league and how he and his girlfriend stepped in at a critical moment to care for Brendan's two young nephews.

10. An April 27, 2017, post profiling a swamp preserve at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens near Charleston, S.C.  (See photo above)

And now, some observations about what these statistics tell me.

I'm pleased that the post on Joe Cook (left) was able to reach so many people. Cook was a lifelong theater enthusiast -- he co-founded three community theater groups in the Indianapolis area, all of which are still in operation. Plus, he welcomed anyone and everyone to participate in his Garfield Shakespeare Co. productions. GSC availed its productions to anyone and everyone because the troupe does not charge an admission fee. The picture of him here was taken from The Tempest, a fall 2013 show hamstrung by cast defections, forcing Cook -- who started the production as the production's director -- to fill one of the cast openings (he played the kindly Neapolitan courtier Gonzalo).

Cook felt that theater should not be something people can't enjoy simply because of affordability. He enthusiastically accepted donations, however, because it does cost money to run a theater troupe, but he and Bradley Jones, Cook's husband and GSC's chief costume designer, would often dip into their own pockets to pay for things they needed.

In much the same vein, I'm pleased that Brendan Dudas (pictured at bat in the photo above) and his girlfriend got the attention for how they stepped in to help his nephews. He also sponsors an annual Wiffle Ball tournament to raise money for Diffuse Intrisic Pontine Glioma, a rare form of brain cancer that claimed the life of his 12-year-old niece Whitley.

Below are key images from the aforementioned posts on the titling trees in Garfield Park, the striking landscape at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and a scene from GSC's 2010 product of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Wiffle Ball tourney -- and love -- fuels caring nature of young Indy couple

Almost a year ago, I did a post about a young man and woman on the Southside of Indianapolis -- college students -- who had made an important life decision to provide a home for the man's young nephews, who were in need of stability and a strong family support system.

The occasion for my photography outing last August was Branden Dudas' fundraising Wiffle Ball tournament, Wifflin' for Whitley, named for Branden's 12-year-old niece who had contracted and died from a rare form of brain cancer.

Dudas, a University of Indianapolis student and member of the baseball team (in the patriotic T-shirt in the photo at the left and watching one of his fly ball clouts sail below), had converted the back yard of his parents' home into a couple of wiffle ball diamonds to launch the Indy Southside Wiffle Ball (ISWB) League.

The 2016 tournament I attended raised a modest $400, boosting to $2,000 the total Brendan and the ISWB League have raised to battle Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG) and to fund the Whitley's Wishes Foundation that helps support a passion dear to Whitley -- the humane society.

That was last year.

Last weekend, Dudas and his girlfriend, Maddie Harris, brought a lot more fans and attention to the foundation when they hosted a ISWB all-star game that raised $1,300 for the cause.

Indianapolis Star sports columnist Gregg Doyle, whose profile of Brendan and Maddie last year, hooked me into checking out the 2016 Wifflin' for Whitley tournament, came out for the ISWB All-Star game last weekend, and wrote a follow-up piece that appeared in The Star this week. Gregg did a nice job encapsulating the weekend festivities ... and he updated changes that Dudas has made to the wiffle ball complex on Epler Avenue in Perry Township and the latest news on Brendan and Maddie's efforts to become guardians of the two boys. It's worth checking out.

Note: The photos in this post were taken in my 2016 visit to the Wifflin' for Whitley Tournament. 

UIndy baseball player invests lovinglyin diamonds to honor, help his family

In the eight years or so since I launched this blog, I've occasionally pursued photo shoots of things that piqued my interest after reading or seeing something in the media. Today's post is one of those instances.

On Aug. 1, Indianapolis Star sports columnist Gregg Doyle wrote about University of Indianapolis baseball player Brendan Dudas who, with his girlfriend, Madison Harris, obtained legal guardianship several years ago of two of Dudas' nephews whose mother was unable to care for the boys, then ages 5 and 3.

In the previous paragraph, I provided the link to Doyle's column, who far better than I can provide the background of this fascinating story. It's a tale that also involves Dudas' 12-old-niece Whitley, who contracted and died from a rare form of brain cancer.

On two occasions recently Dudas, a Perry Meridian High School alumnus who played catcher as a redshirt sophomore for the Greyhounds this past season, and Harris opened their hearts to young relatives. One time it was to help care for the two very young boys, and the other is an ongoing endeavor to raise money to battle Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG). This past Sunday, Dudas hosted the annual Wifflin' for Whitley Summer Classic open Wiffle ball tournament at his parents' house in Perry Township on the Southside of Indianapolis.

In addition to being a fundraiser, the tournament is an offshoot of the Indy Southside Wiffle Ball (ISWB) League, which Dudas launched in 2009, the year after he carved and developed a baseball diamond -- complete with dirt infield and warning track -- out of land in his parents' backyard on West Epler Avenue. Why? The answer can be found at Dudas' brief Twitter account bio: "Baseball is my way of life," he says.

Gauging by a welcoming sign hanging from one of the chain-link outfield and foul line fences on the diamond property, Dudas has dubbed his version of Field of Dreams "Baseball Land."

I have vivid memories of Wiffle ball play as a child. Parents of the kids in my neighborhood encouraged us to use plastic Wiffle instead of rubber and traditional hard balls -- primarily to safeguard their properties from damage caused by the more destructive balls. Most of the time we played in our yards, and none of us had the expansive real estate to lay out a decent-sized diamond like there is at the Dudases' home. I also used Wiffle balls for my personal home run derby I played. It was a derby that involved "real" Major League Baseball players -- (OK ... it involved just the real names of baseball players) -- which I played inside my parents' garage. Ah, but I digress ...

When I contacted Dudas by email last week to see if there were any ISWB games left in the season that I could photograph, Dudas told me the regular season and playoffs had ended. But he mentioned there would be a fundraising tournament in Whitley's honor all day on Aug. 7, so I decided to stop by, even though I had family coming to visit from out of town that afternoon. Neither of Brendan's young nephews, Kevin or Tristan, nor his girlfriend Maddie, were at the tournament while I was there. But if you read the Gregg Doyle piece in the Indy Star, you'll learn that players on all eight teams in the ISWB league know Kevin and Tristan and reach out to them in friendship and baseball kinship.

Ideally, I would have preferred to have camped out at the tournament for the daylong duration, but I could stay only two and a half hours before leaving to tend to my own family. Unfortunately, my pictures are not representative of all the teams that participated, but on Monday, Brendan provided me the following information that helped tighten loose ends from the day's competition:

-- Fourteen teams (of three players per team) registered for the double-elimination tournament; each team played at least two games.

-- All of the teams that made the final four had at least two players from the ISWB. The Skeeters won the tourney, and Dudas' team, the Sand Gnats, was runner-up. Also in the final four were ISWB's Seawolves and Naturals.

-- Two of the teams in the tournament consisted of Dudas' connections at UIndy -- one team of coaches, the other of players.

Wifflin' for Whitley 2016 raised $400 on the day of the tournament, bringing the three-year league fundraising total to $2,000. I say "day of the tournament" because anyone can still contribute financially. If you'd be interested in doing so, visit https://www.gofundme.com/wishesforwhitley

Leading off the post is a shot of Brendan belting the first of two home runs he notched in his first two at-bats in the Sand Gnats' first pool game. Just below the lead-off picture is a shot of Dudas watching the homer clear the fence. He told me that there is about 105 feet between home plate and centerfield on the primary diamond, where this homer was hit; the distance is about 85 feet from home to the left and right field foul poles. The plate-to-fence distances on the secondary field are a bit shorter, he said.

While ISWB fosters fun and competition, the league is serious enough about its competition to keep stats and dish out awards. Indeed, ISWB devotes a page of its website to the annual pitching and batting leaders and honors winners. This past season, Dudas led the league in all of the batting categories and has been the league most valuable player the past two seasons.

Photo geek stuff: I shot the tournament with my Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens. Because I knew I'd be moving around a lot, my primary interest about gear Sunday was versatility and mobility. I had two options -- the relatively light, long zoom Tamron on one camera body, or two heavy L quality Canon lenses (24-70mm f/2.8 and 70-200mm f/2.8) on two bodies, I chose the light and compact route. I used shutter priority mode (1/800) and ISOs ranging from 100 to 320. However, for my non-action landscape shots, I bracketed three exposures (normal and 1 stop over and under normal) for processing in high-dynamic range (HDR) software, using a constant f/stop (f/8) and boosting ISOs a bit to ensure three different exposures. My biggest challenge Sunday was working with significant light contrast on the main diamond. There were huge amounts of large-tree shade swallowing chunks of the diamond alongside bright sunshine everywhere else. HDR helped me close the light disparities with non-action shots, but it was a battle for any of those single-frame action shots where tree shade appeared. Most of my time in post-processing was spent trying to resurrect detail in the heavily shaded areas. In Camera Raw software, I pushed the shadow detail recovery slider to the hilt in images where you see heavy doses of shade -- and in some cases, I boosted it again in Photoshop Elements 13 when converting the images to JPGs.

To view a photo gallery of all my shots from the tournament, visit my site at SmugMug.com.

A grounder skips past a fielder as a baserunner rounds third base to score easily. A photographer's note: I was virtually shooting into the sun here, and luckily, the shadow-detail recovery editing tool on my Camera Raw software provided a welcome assist ... especially bringing out details in the baserunner's face.

Above and below: Freezing a ball in flight coming right at me is a favorite pursuit and challenge when I shoot baseball (or, in this case, Wiffle ball). 

Above and next three below: Brendan plays a mix of contemporary music (well, a lot of '90s stuff) from a boom box during play, and I caught him unable to resist grooving in the outfield while the opponent was at bat. 

Above and next two below: Family, friends and other ballplayers comprise the tournament spectator galleries. 

Above and next three below: The Sand Gnats had this runner on first base caught dead to rights while heading to second after the pitcher (left) snagged a come-backer and turned to throw to Brendan covering second base. But the throw hit the runner, who reached second base safely. These photos are a perfect example of the radical light contrast from shade cast by large shade trees hovering over the main diamond. 

Above: Gary Vaught, head coach of UIndy's baseball team, took a swing in his first visit to the diamonds to see what Brendan had developed.  

Above and next three below: A sort of Keystone Cops performance emerged from this Texas league pop-up on the main diamond. It did not end well for the defense ... well, unless you want to award points for the one-legged ballet dip in the last photo of the series. 

Above and below: This snag of a long fly ball at the fence was among the better defensive plays I saw. 

Above and below: These photos taken behind the netted backstop required strategic cropping and intense touch-up work to minimize distracting streaks caused by foreground net. 

Above and next two below are various perspective shots of the diamond and grounds. The first below was taken on top of an elevated slab of concrete adjacent to a wooded buffer at the end of the property. 

Above and next three below: Another defensive miscue on a grounder that hugged the third-base line. 

These flags (from left), Indiana state, Old Glory and Perry Meridian High School battle cry ("Don't Give Up the Ship") fly in a fenced-off area between the fences separating the two diamonds. 

The tournament bracket (above) early in the morning before any games were completed and (below) at the tournament's conclusion, when the players on the winning Skeeters posed. Photo below provided by Brendan Dudas.