A final look at the Clifty Falls State Park, Madison and Scottsburg photo shoot

 

In the previous post, I re-presented photos I've recently re-processed from a 2011 shoot in southern Indiana. Today's post features more photos from that shoot at Clifty Falls State Park, Madison and Scottsburg, Ind., but not previously presented in a post in this blog, although they are in a gallery at my site at SmugMug.

The lead-off and second photos are looks at the same scene -- Indiana Highway 56 from the park's overlook perch -- but from different focal ranges.

A view down an access road in the park (above), and two more views from the park overlook (first two photos below). 

Above: A look down into the wooded area of the park from the overlook. 

Above and first six photos below: Several scenes on the Ohio River in Madison, looking toward the Kentucky side of the river. 

Above and below: Looking back toward the main merchants district in Madison. These views look north from the river. The second photo below is a bench in the park along the river.

Above and below: Slightly different views (both looking north) down a street (not sure which) leading to the river from the merchants district. 

The U.S. 421 bridge over the river to Kentucky (above) and another view down a street looking toward to the river (below). This view looks south. 

 

A view of the side of the Jefferson County Courthouse (above), this one along Indiana Highway 56, in downtown Madison. First two photos belows are views of the front (north) view of the Scott County Courthouse in Scottsburg along E. McClain Avenue (Indiana Highway 56). 

Above: A view of the back (south) side of the Scott County Courthouse. 

The handicap ramp at the Scott County Courthouse (above) and three views (below) of the Scott County War Memorial. 

Revisiting trip to Clifty Falls State Park, Madison and Scottsburg, Indiana

Several posts ago, I mentioned a project I've been working on involving a revisit of a previous shoot. I didn't identify the shoot then, but I'm presenting the results in today's post. 

The shoot occurred Feb. 17, 2011, and it entailed a morning and early afternoon swing through southern Indiana. Specifically, there were brief visits to Clifty Falls State Park, then to the nearby city of Madison, and, on the ride home, photographing the Scott County Courthouse in Scottsburg. 

The shoot, which came on a heavily overcast day, was one of my earliest experiments with high-dynamic range (HDR) processing. I wasn't entirely pleased with those early results, but the HDR processing technology I used then has changed over the years, so I wanted to see if I could come up with pictures with which I was more pleased. 

For those not acquainted, HDR photography is a way to enrich and introduce detail into compositions by taking multiple shots of the same scene using slightly different exposures in each frame. Most who indulge in HDR, including myself, use three exposures -- one at the metered exposure, and one each at a level above and below the metered exposure. The objective is to pull in optimum key (bright) and shadow (dark) detail in the final composition once all the frames are melded into a single image in post-processing. Photomatix is the software I use to do that. 

HDR was designed primarily to help photographers cull optimum detail in compositions where there was unavoidable contrasting light -- extreme lights and extreme darks, situations you'd find almost exclusively outdoors. And Feb. 17, 2011, was anything but that. As I mentioned above, it was heavily overcast. 

But in the years since, some photographers (myself included) used it in order to 1) get better detail regardless of light circumstances and 2) make colors more vibrant -- but without the resultant image looking like the colors were pulled from a clown suit. Or, as a member of a photo club I belonged to Indy termed it, "clown vomit."    

When I first started with HDR, the Photomatix software available at the time did not handle movement in an image very well, especially if a photographer wanted to freeze action. 

So back then, when I processed my shots of the ship traffic on the Ohio River at Madison, I begrudgingly settled for unwanted movement by river vessels in my processed images. I also wasn't entirely pleased with the coloring I ended up with in the originally processed images. That aspect could have been partly or even entirely my unfamiliarity with the tools Photomatix gave me to work with. 

In the years since then, updated versions of Photomatix have addressed the movement issue significantly. The software also had added new treatment options that made me happier about the final pictures, including and especially the color. 

So I recently reloaded the original RAW images from that 2011 shoot onto my desktop PC and reprocessed the whole batch of compositions I took in 2011. My findings from that experience are as follows:

1) Indeed, the current version of Photomatix I use (6.2.1) enables me to deal with the action movement much better than it did back in 2011. I froze -- to full satisfaction -- every one of the images that had disappointed me in 2011. 

2) This is the surprising one: The coloring did not change a whole lot, but I have learned through the years how to better control it, so I'm a little happier with the color in the reprocessed images.  

Almost all the images I had processed in 2011 were pushed through Photomatix's "Detail Enhancer" processing option. In the years since then, I've steered away from that option because more often than not it leaves the final image looking too surreal and/or unrealistic. My preferred treatment options today are "Contrast Optimizer" and "Tone Balancer." 

But throughout almost the entire recent reprocessing task, I ended up appreciating the "Detail Enhancer" option at least for those 2011 images involving clouds, which were those along the Ohio River in Madison and those taken by the elevated overview in Clifty Fall State Park. "Detail Enhancer" gave me much more satisfactory detail than "Contrast Optimizer" or "Tone Balancer." 

Compare the images in the link in this sentence (which takes you to the 2011 blog post where I presented the original images) to those in this post. Hopefully, you'll see what I mean. There will be a few with different crops, and in one case, I used a different set of photos but it's essentially the same scene.

Above and below: At Clifty Falls State Park, a look down and up different sets of rock-based stairs. These are the more tame ones I came across in the park. The most dramatic gradients -- and extremely difficult to traverse -- were near the one waterfall (Hoffman) that I tried to reach. But I stopped short of getting there; I was lugging a lot of gear, including a tripod, and the radical-elevation steps on some climbs were getting too cumbersome. 

Above and next three below: These shots were taken from the Observation Tower in the southern portion of the park, near the Clifty Inn, a visitors lodge on the park grounds. Above is the Ohio River looking upstream, or east.

Above: A vista that, on this day, proved much more striking when viewing after HDR treatment than what I remember seeing with the naked eye. I captured this less than an hour after sunrise. On the other hand, this vista must be breathtaking in the heart of autumn ... and perhaps even in summer. 

Above: Including smokestacks from the Indiana-Kentucky Electric Co. in a river overlook from the Observation Tower.

Above: This vista of the river looks west, with State Road 56 curving into the horizon on the right. The one disappointment I had in the Observation Tower is that those trees on the left block a clear view of what would have been a gorgeous vista.  

Above: A view across the river from the Lily Overlook.  

Above: I actually preferred the original version over this, although this one is a bit sharper. This frame comes along one of the hiking paths and illustrates one of the dramatic gradients. 

The photo above and next several below were taken along the river banks on the Indiana side in Madison. The view above looks west.  

In the original of this coal-carrying barge above, I cropped a lot of the water out of the version I used in the post. I left more water in this time. 

Above: I liked this composition, looking west again, for the waves lapping the shoreline. 

Above: I'd seen this barge move downstream without the cargo auxiliary about 15 minutes earlier. It not was pushing the unloaded piece upstream. I waited to frame the vessel immediately between the two beams in the foreground. The same vessel is below only farther upstream (east), not far from the bridge.

I definitely prefer the new-processed version of this shot of a couple gentlemen relaxing on a bench in the park along the river. The photo lacks the color clutter of the original, and the crop is slightly different as well. 

Above: A monument not far from the Jefferson County Courthouse in Madison. 

Above: The downtown merchants' district of Madison is filled with many colors to the various structures. The architecture dates to the 19th century. 

Above: I enjoy photographing county and federal courthouses, and this is the Jefferson County Courthouse. I just happened to get there during a period when contractors were giving the structure a facelift, hence the fence in the foreground.  

The Scott County Courthouse in Scottsburg has an interesting front, back and east side. A gazebo (above) is situated on the back side, the white rails juxtaposed with red brick (first photo below) can be found on the east side, and an extensive war memorial (second below) devoted to soldiers who served in all of the county's major conflicts dating to the Civil War can be found on the front side. 

A return to Madison, Wis., to photograph... and to see the Badgers' basketball team

Until early this week, it had been almost 40 years since I had been in downtown Madison, the capital of Wisconsin -- and home of the university whose men's basketball team currently leads the Big Ten Conference.

The UW Badgers football team still plays in Camp Randall Stadium, which I visited on several occasions in the mid-1970s, although that facility has undergone some dramatic changes in the interim. But the basketball team no longer plays in the UW Fieldhouse, which had abutted the football stadium. Since 1998, the men's and women's basketball teams and the men's hockey teams have played their home games in the more spacious Kohl Center.

My trip to Madison this week was to see the Badgers' men's basketball, which is enjoying one of its best seasons ever. Going into Tuesday's game against the Indiana Hoosiers, the Badgers had a win-loss record of 19-2, including 7-1 in the Big Ten Conference.

Traveling anywhere in the north Midwest is risky during winter, and I checked the 10-day forecast two weeks ago before pulling the trigger on buying tickets to the game. The forecast looked harmless for the three days I had hoped to be on the road; I'd wanted to swing through Milwaukee to visit my brother on the Sunday before the game before completing the trip to Madison via I-94 the next day.

But by Friday, weather forecasters started changing their tune, and they predicted a heavy snow system would move through the Midwest on Saturday night and Sunday, and sure enough, it did. I decided to skip the Sunday trip to Milwaukee and hope that transportation crews would have interstate highways passable on Monday.

Since Milwaukee was no longer part of the itinerary, I wanted to avoid traveling through Chicago at all costs, so I took I-74 west to Bloomington-Normal, Ill., before heading north on I-39, which took me all the way to Madison. Roads were fine till hitting the stretch of I-39 between Normal and Rockford, Ill. Spot patches of iced snow were in both lanes of the highway for about 30 miles or so till close to the metro area of Rockford. Roads the rest of the way were OK, but temperatures started to plummet.

I reached Madison safely just as it got dark Monday, grabbed a bite to eat then called it a night. The plan the next day was to spend the late morning hours and all afternoon strolling through downtown Madison and some of the UW campus and make photographs in the process. Monday night's forecast, however, warned that another snow system would move through Madison the following afternoon, and the weatherman was on target again.

I found a place to park under cover downtown then walked along State Street from campus to the capitol and back, photographing landscapes along the way. For the walk-around shoot, I used my Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens, bracketing exposures for later processing in high-dynamic range (HDR) software.

By the time I approached campus on the return trip, the snow started to fall -- heavily. In fact, I was in the University Bookstore shopping when it started, and I didn't get outdoors to resume shooting until about 15 minutes into the snowfall. To protect the lens glass from moisture, I slid my camera and lens under my jacket, pulling it out only to compose and shoot. So my images from that outing are a mixture of overcast, clear skies and very heavy snowfall. The campus served as the line of demarcation, as it turned out, but the snowfall made for pretty striking images.

Rather than risk the Kohl Center staff not allowing me to bring that camera and lens into the area (they had a policy limiting lens focal lengths at 100mm for spectators and others who were not credentialed media), I packed the gear into the locked car and used my iPhone the rest of the evening. Everything from a stop for dinner at the Nitty Gritty, which is just two blocks from the arena, to the photos taken outside and inside Kohl Center was taken with my iPhone 6s.

The post leads off with a shot of the University Presbyterian Church, known locally as the Pres House, at 731 State St., just inside the eastern boundary of the campus. Pres House is across the street from the Memorial Union and a half block from Bascom Hill, where I lingered for quite a few shots during the snowfall. Flakes had been falling for about 15-20 minutes by the time I took this shot. The remainder of the campus shots were taken during the falling snow.

The images below start with a series of shots in which I featured or integrated the state capitol in the compositions. As usual, click on any image for a larger and sharper version of the photo (especially important if viewing on a mobile device). For a full gallery of images, visit my site at SmugMug.

Time restricted me from getting a straight on shot of the statue atop the capitol, but according to a wikipedia entry on the Wisconsin state capitol, the statue on the top "consists of an allegoric figure reminiscent of Athena, dressed in Greek garb and wearing a helmet topped by a badger, the Wisconsin state totem. In the left hand, it holds a globe with an eagle perched on top. Across the chest is a large 'W' for Wisconsin." There is a straight-on picture of the statue at the wikipedia entry.

The image above begins a series of various shots taken during my walk along State Street, a pedestrian-friendly stretch on which Madison prohibits motor vehicular traffic except for buses and emergency vehicles. Many diagonal streets intersect the east-west State Street, creating some architecturally diagonal buildings at intersections.

Above: Peace Park, located adjacent to the downtown Madison information center. Across Gilman Street from the park, in the background, is Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel.

Above: This shot of University Club along State Street and across from the library mall begins a series of campus shots taken during the snowfall.

Above: The first of three shots looking at structures situated along Bascom Hill, climaxing with Bascom Hall itself, UW's primary administrative building, at the hill's apex.

Above and below: Views of Bascom Hill at the top, looking down.

Above: A pedestrian begins the Bascom Hill ascent.

Above: A few days after I came home from Madison, I glanced through a reader-contribution photo feature in a recent edition of Shutterbug magazine that used the category "the decisive moment," inspired by a phrase coined by 20th-century French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson. This image reminded me of such a "decisive moment." The female in the foreground, walking down Bascom Hill, passed me as I trekked up up the hill, and after I'd gotten about 20 yards from her I turned around to compose a shot to juxtapose her and the other walker with the buildings, pavement and the weather. Perhaps sensing what I was up to, the woman turned toward me just as I tripped the shutter.  

Above and next several below: A series of images in which the Memorial Union is the focal point. The series include three interior shots, including one of a fireside table in the cafeteria area where I remember sitting in the 1970s while enjoying coffee and doughnuts with friends I was visiting in Madison when I was in town see a Badgers football game.

Above and below: Leaving Memorial Union's east doors, one has this view above. At the bottom of the exterior stairs after leaving the building, you get the view below if you turn around.

Above: Two blocks from Kohl Center is the Nitty Gritty, where I dined right before the game. This image begins a series of photos taken with my iPhone 6s.

Above: Just before the game, we dined at the Nitty Gritty, a favorite stop for locals before going to Badgers' athletics games. I had some fried cheddar cheese curds, a Wisconsin favorite, as an appetizer.

Above and below: Exterior shots of the Kohl Center as I approached it after leaving the Nitty Gritty.

Above: The Kohl Center concourse.

Above: My first view of the Kohl Center near where I sat in Section 128.

Above and below: Back on the concourse, this artwork dons the north wall of the center.

Above and next two below: Shots of the Badgers during warm-ups.

Above and next several below: Pregame fanfare, presentation of colors and player introductions.

Above: Mascot Bucky Badger hamming it up for the videographer during a timeout.

Above: Cheerleaders go through a routine during a second-half timeout.

Above: Badgers coach Bo Ryan answers a television reporter's questions in the moments following the Badgers' 92-78 victory. 

Above: The writer/photographer, dressed in UW colors and waving in response to a text prompt from a friend who I visited at UW 40something years ago before a football game.