Singling out 15 favorite photo shoots to mark this blog's 15th anniversary

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) 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 been 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 universities 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. 

Fountain Square Grand Prix debuts

It's fun to be able to say I was on hand for the inaugural running of something that turns out, years later, to be a popular event. In 1991, I participated in the inaugural Shamrock 4-mile run held on St. Patrick's Day in downtown Indianapolis. I ran it for three years more before I broke my streak. But the race is still going strong, and marked its 21st observance last March.

In June, I photographed my second annual Hendricks County (Ind.) Park2Park Relay. I had also shot the ground-level staging of the fundraising event for the Hendricks County Parks Foundation in 2011.

It's more poignant if the "first-ever" event you attend turns out also to be the last. In 1995, I went to an outdoor blues festival in Crawfordsville, Ind., in the height of my blues-clubbing years. I remember thinking not only how wonderful it was that a community the size of Crawfordsville would attempt to stage something like this, but also how neat it would be to drop in on this every year thereafter. It was sparsely attended, but I figured that was normal for a fledgling wannabe. But apparently attendance was way too sparse. The event T-shirt I have from that day -- an artsy one that remains one of my favorites -- is the only one of its kind. There was no second Crawfordsville Blues Festival. I just did a Google search to see if I could even come up with any references at all to the fact that it ever existed, and had no luck. The Gate2Gate 5K Run, which started and finished at the gated entrances to Garfield Park Sunken Garden in Indianapolis near where I live, fared only marginally better. I registered for both the inaugural, in 2010, and the one last year and have T-shirts from each. But both had sparse participation, and there was no Gate2Gate this year.

The above, I admit, is a long-winded transition to today's post about Saturday's inaugural Fountain Square Grand Prix cycling criterium, an interesting competition over a figure 8 course that with luck could materialize as a key third leg in a "Big Three" of Indianapolis summer cycling criteriums, joining the Mass Ave Crit and Indy Crit. I missed the inaugural Mass Ave in 2008, but made it to the past two. I made it to the inaugural Indy Crit in 2010, but almost missed the Fountain Square debut Saturday. That's because I wasn't even aware of it until less than a week before it was held.

I asked someone at Saturday's criterium whether the FSGP was pulled together at the last minute, and he said that no, it had been planned for the past year. But he acknowledged that publicity really didn't begin until three weeks ago. At first, I was incredulous. But then I realized that it should be expected that a first-time event ... with limited resources and budget (and without its own website, as best as I can determine, although Joe's Cycles (run by Joe Cox, who also lives in the Fountain Square area) is a good place to start to find out information) ... might have to pick its spots to spend on publicity and to raise awareness.

Attendance was sparse in the early morning hours at the FSGB; there was probably a handful or so people around to see off racers in the first competition, the Men's Category 5, which was scheduled to start at 10 a.m. but really didn't get off till almost a half-hour later. And the one and only women's competition -- a women's open -- had all of seven riders in it, not a very encouraging statement. (A quick note: Last week's Mass Ave Crit Women's 1/2/3 winner Sierra Siebenlist also won Saturday's inaugural FSGP Women's Open. Combined with her fourth-place finish in the 2012 Indy Crit in July, Siebenlist stands heads above other cyclists -- men or women -- in this first summer of three Indianapolis cycling criteriums.). The good news for the FSGP is that attendance picked up in the early afternoon, and there were 20+ riders in each of the men's competitions, topping off with 40 who registered for the main event on the bill, the Men's Category 1/2/3.

It's possible that some of the attendance pick-up was attributable to people straying from the nearby second annual Cataracts Music Festival, a two-day staging of live outdoor entertainment. The Cataracts Fest began Friday with a modest lineup at the Murphy Arts Center in the heart of Fountain Square. On Saturday, the musicians yielded the merchants' district to cyclists, and performances featuring more than 30 bands moved to house shows along Morris Street, south and west of the Murphy Arts Center building.

So here's a salute to Joe's Cycles/Cardinal Bicycling Co., 1060 Viriginia Ave., in Fountain Square, the major driver of Saturday's inaugural Grand Prix ... and a toast that this thing grows in future years. And, oh yeah, I picked up an event T-shirt. There's no date on it, and I asked about that when I purchased my copy. The person who sold me the shirt outside Joe's said they were aware of that, but that a date stamp will be considered in future years. She then smiled and mentioned that my newly acquired shirt would be one of a kind.

One of the impressive experiences I had while shooting Saturday's FSGB were the shots of riders coming down Virginia Avenue in each of the two directions on the figure-8 course. On the north end, you had the downtown skyline, including the Chase building (Indiana's tallest skyscraper), to compose as a backdrop. Two examples of that are the muted approach seen in the photo leading off this post and the more inclusive shot immediately below. On the south end of Virginia Ave., there was the heart of Fountain Square -- the fountain and theater marquee -- in the background, such as the second image below.

One big difference between the FSGP and the two other criteriums is that aside from Virginia Avenue, the FSGP is run on small, neighborhood streets. The Indy and Mass Ave crits use relatively wide downtown streets. And oh, the FSGP was run with hardly any construction signage to dart around. As many Indy residents know, the heart of the Fountain Square merchants' district has been under siege by construction for three years as its infrastructure is upgraded for integration into the new Indianapolis Cultural Trail. I don't think the work is 100% done just yet, but the light at the end of the tunnel can be seen.

Like at the Mass Ave Crit, I didn't stay for all of Saturday's races. Photos of what competitions I did shoot, as well as a gallery devoted just to the event's atmosphere, can be found at my SmugMug site.

Above: The exterior of Joe's Cycles, 1060 Virginia Ave., Indianapolis, a driver of this year's inaugural Fountain Square Grand Prix.

Above and below: Cycling as artforms.

Above: The figure-8 course took riders like this participant in the Men's Category 5 off the beaten path, such as this area along Leonard street flanking I-65, a section that served as the left upper loop of the "8."

Above: Indianapolis residents Sierra Siebenlist and Sydney Hatten were 1-2 at this point of the Women's Open category, and they would finish in that order as well. Placing third was Luanne Murray of London, Ohio.

Above: I used the Fountain Square Grand Prix to explore some monochrome conversions, such as the shot above which has Sieblenist drafting behind the lead rider here.

Above: I also tried a straight-on leg-shoe-wheel crop for the first time. I'm not sure this is a remarkable success, but I do think it's worth exploring more. 

Above: More of the Fountain Square business center in the background.

Above: Jeffrey Meade of Carmel celebrated early before crossing the finish line first in the Men's Category 3-4 race. He and Joe's Cycles team member Benjamin Weber of Indianapolis broke away relatively early in the race and were still together at the start of the last lap. Meade has more gas in the tank at the end, however; he won with room to spare. 

Above: Because of trees and spotty shade, the portion of the course traversing neighborhood streets presented an interesting -- and difficult -- challenge: dealing with dramatic difference in lighting in the same scene. That's what the shot above illustrates. I did very little in post-processing to resolve the radical difference in exposure between the rider in open sunlight and the foreground cyclists in shade. But the blown-out highlights on the former were impossible to remove, so ... I decided simply to work with it. This isn't noteworthy artistically, but I do like the contrast.  

Above: Leading off a series of atmosphere shots is this image of a toddler with a "window" to the action through the bars of the street rails along Virginia Avene. 

Above and below: Jeff C. Williams said he came from Springfield, Ill., to display his bicycle paintings and prints. He set up along Virginia Avenue, not far from Joe's Cycles and the race staging area. Check out more at jeffveloart.com

Above: Bright colors are what motivated me to take this photo of a man preparing to cross Morris Street on the west side of Shelby Street. His finger gesture, intended for a volunteer cross guard, was to confirm that it was safe to cross the street.

Above: Because Fountain Square is known for its art galleries and influences, I tried to compose something for my contribution to the inaugural (and unofficial, in the sense that I just made it up) Fountain Square Grand Prix Art Fair.

Above: A nod to one of the wall murals that can be found within the district.