Indy shoot, Part II: St. John's church

The second stop on the Oct. 13 photo swing through downtown Indianapolis and parts nearby was St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, 126 W. Georgia St. (see yesterday's post for photos at the first stop, St. Mary's Catholic Church, and background on this one-day shoot).

This morning, more than a month after the shoot, as I reviewed the photos from St. John's included here, I was reminded that I started chasing more creative shots with this stop. We'd started the shoot relatively early on a nippy morning, and I didn't feel that comfortable throughout the swing through St. Mary's church, the initial stop. But at St. John's, the ceiling and window patterns jumped out at me, and I felt excited about chasing those -- some straight on, others at angles that appealed to my "out of the box" side. That explains some of the "disorientation" you see at first glance at some of the images. But even today, again, more than a month later, I don't feel compelled to pull up these shots in photo editing software to "straighten" them, and I feel pretty comfortable about that.

For a few images, such as the one leading off the post, I did tilt the camera to effect the angle. But for others, it was a simple matter of shooting straight upward (first image below) or straight forward (second below); the vantage points where I decided to compose the shot gave me these angles naturally. I really liked the second image below, because even on my first glance, I immediately saw a sort of star-burst effect in the rounded ceiling support beams extending from the statue in the foreground and converging at the light the way they do. The halo effect in the center was exacerbated by the high-dynamic range (HDR) treatment in post-processing -- and added to the composition's distinctive nature, in my mind.

I was far less thrilled with my exterior shots. In fact, I preferred the few exterior partial-church shots on a sunny spring afternoon in April 2011. I think the difference between the two visits were the sky conditions (overcast on Oct. 13, sunny in April 2011) and the lenses. I used a Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 lens for almost everything on Oct. 13; in April 2011, I was using a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens.

The ultra wide-angle Sigma is a very useful option with interior shots, and it allows me to get full buildings into the composition, often from close up. But there is a trade-off: distortion. Distortion increases as you get closer to the wide end (10mm) of an ultra-wide, so if a photographer wants to avoid that totally, he/she needs to either re-compose or take a loose frame -- lots of negative space -- to allow for distortion correction in post-processing. (Distortion correction in post-processing robs photos of a lot of its content, so you compose with lots of space around the subject so you can save the core subject after distortion correction).

There are specialty lenses available -- called tilt-shift -- that cater to architectural photographers so they can correct such distortion at the point of composition, instead of in post-processing. These lenses bend and, well, tilt to keep structural angles looking natural to the eye. But they are expensive, and unless you do a lot of architectural photography, might not be worth it.

I used Photoshop's distortion correction filter when preparing to post the full shots of the St. Mary's exterior yesterday and the one of St. John's today. I'll turn to it again in a few days when I prepare my exterior shots of SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral, the last stop on this Indy outing.

I was OK with (not a rousing endorsement, but "acceptable" in my view) the distortion-corrected shot of St. Mary's exterior, not so much St. John's today. The one of St. John's was doubly hurt because of the lighting situation; at the time of day we visited there was serious backlight from most angles. I tried to approach the shot to compose to exploit that situation, and hence, you see the sun peeking around the right side of the church in the image presented today. So yes, that was deliberate. Again, I'm not saying it's a work of art; just an option I chose to try given the circumstances.

I include in this post, at the very end, a frame from the April 2011 shoot. It was late afternoon ... and also sunny. And even though I stood across the street from the church, I could not get the full church into a frame from any reasonable distance with the 28-75mm f/2.8 Tamron lens. But I did land a composition I liked, framing an afternoon moon between the church's two spires.

Next stop on the shoot: the Governor's Residence at 46th and Meridian streets.

Indy shoot, Part I: St. Mary's church

Today's post is the first in a series of five posts related to a recent, single-day outing, one of the most prolific picture-taking days -- in sheer volume of photographs taken -- that I've ever experienced (outside of my sports shoots, that is, when the volume of pictures taken is off-the-charts high because of the frequent use of the camera's burst shutter mechanism).

As such, this begins one of those "catch-up" posts you've seen me do periodically, when so many things happen in succession or simultaneously that a backlog ensues.

On Oct. 13, I was among three members of the Indy Meetup Photo Club that made stops at three downtown-area Indianapolis Catholic churches plus the Indiana Governor's Residence and former Governor's Mansion, now a private residence at 4343 N. Meridian St. The two other members in our group got on board for the outing, organized a bit on the run, because they were still needing pictures to consider using in the club's then-upcoming "Windows, Gates, Doors: Portals to Historic Indy" photo exhibit Nov. 2 for the First Friday Art Walk at the Indiana Landmarks Center.

I had my photos for the show pretty much set to go at the time, but I wanted to go along because I found the prospect of photographing these five Indianapolis landmarks so intriguing. And to be able to able to do it in one fell swoop? Yeah, I was in.

It turned out to be a very long day for two of us (one person in the party had to leave for another commitment after the second stop). We started early -- 9 a.m., as I recall -- at St. Mary's Catholic Church at New Jersey and Vermont streets, and by the time we stopped at St. John the Evangelist, 126 W. George St.; the two mansions; and SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral at 13th and Meridian streets -- it was pushing 5 p.m. I didn't get nearly all the shots I would have wanted to explore at any of the places (surprise!), but I did get a lot. We had access indoors and outdoors at the churches; only outdoors at the mansions. And as I have been doing for all my landscape and landmark photography of late, I bracketed all my shots for possible high-dynamic range (HDR) treatment in post-processing.

And as it turned out, I did include quite a few of the photos I took that day in the Nov. 2 show. Two ended up in frames hung on the IL's 1201 Gallery wall; the others used were matted, mounted on black foam boards and displayed on easels sprinkled throughout the gallery floor, offering a slightly different access to our club's work to the more than 200 people who turned up for that day's Art Walk.

So I present this series of posts in chronological order of our visits that today, which means today's focuses on St. Mary's.

The next post will be St. John's, followed by the Governor's Residence, the former Governor's Residence and, finally, SS. Peter and Paul. Many Indianapolis residents might not even have been aware there is a former Governor's Residence in Indianapolis. I wasn't ... until Oct. 13. The properties are about three blocks apart and on opposite sides of Meridian Street: the current site at 46th Street on the west side of Meridian, the former three blocks south on the east side.

The first image below was among those I included among framed hangings at the Art Walk on Nov. 2. Those hangings and the rest of the club's "Windows, Gates, Doors" exhibit, by the way, are still viewable to the general public, but not for much longer. On or about Dec. 4, the IMUPC will take down the exhibit so Indiana Landmarks can prepare for the Dec. 7 First Friday Art Walk. Until Dec. 4, you can stop by Indiana Landmarks during regular business hours, which are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Just ask the receptionist to guide you to the 1201 Gallery to view the club's exhibit.

Next stop on the shoot: St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church.