CHAPTER 17Golden hour

All photos in this chapter are © by Joe Konz 

In photography, the term "the golden hour" refers to a period of the day that photographers relish -- and exploit -- because of how its dramatic, splayed or patch lighting falls on various objects. The golden hour is usually an hour or so right before or after sunrise or sunset. 

Truth be told, I did little -- if none whatsoever -- shooting in the morning golden hour in Garfield Park. I worked many of those years, so I was either in the office or on the way there in the hour after sunrise. All my golden-hour of shooting was in the late afternoon near, at or after sunset.

The golden-hour picture in Garfield Park about which I am most pleased is the first image you see below. I couldn't asked for better conditions -- a purplish sky and "golden" reflection on the Conservatory windows, topped with natural sparkling rays emanating from the lampposts (I did not use a light-sparkling filter enhancement, which some photographers will use to get that effect). 

The photo was taken in the Sunken Garden as the sun was preparing to drop below park trees just a few minutes before it dropped below the horizon on Sept. 1, 2008.

The conditions I described above -- the sky color, golden reflection, sparkling lamppost lighting and even the remaining available light that enabled a viewer to appreciate detail of the garden -- were fleeting that night. But they came together at the right time for me; I was at a great right place at the right time. More "golden hour" photos in the park appear below. 

Please note that you can click on any photo in this post to view a larger and sharper version of it.  

Above is a ground-level picture I took of some blades of grass, using the brilliant golden-hour sky for background -- and for backlight to make this silhouette. It was taken April 6, 2011, in the grassy area west of the railroad tracks not far from Emmerich Manual High School. The shot below was taken the same evening from approximately the same vantage point only about 10 minutes later, at which time the sun was fully below the horizon.

Over the years, I've come across sundry trash items as I did my various shoots. Technically, the shot above of an empty beer can was not in Garfield Park, but it was very close to it. I came across it as I walked home from a park photography outing one evening. The can was situated close to a curb along Allen Avenue just south of Southern Avenue. I particularly like how the flare from the setting sun in the background introduced a secondary element to the composition.

On Aug. 12, 2006, the men in the four photos below played some pickup basketball on the asphalt court next to Burrello Family Center in the hour or so before sundown. I made a point to grab shots both with the sun behind me (first two images below) and as a backlight source for silhouettes (second two photos below). You can hopefully detect the dramatic natural lighting on the players in the first two images. In the second two, I just moved to a position that was facing the sun, using the backboard to prevent the sun from impairing my vision so I could compose, effecting the silhouettes that you see. 

 

 

It was nearing sundown when I took the above shot (which you'll also find in the arts center chapter), an example of patch natural lighting. 

I was motivated to photograph the scenes above and immediately below on April 6, 2011, by the openings in the clouds that allowed sunbeams to seep through. I haven't come across that situation very often. I was near the railroad tracks on the park's west fringe. Manual High School is in the center and right.

Near sundown two days later, on April 8, 2011, I noticed another batch of heavy cloud cover and returned to this spot with my camera to see what I might be able to get. This time, there was a slight opening for the setting sun to make a brief, partial appearance, which is how I got the photograph above.

The photos above, another example of patch lighting, and the first three below are from Aug. 12, 2006, at a point in the shoot that I was focusing on how the dramatic late evening sun was creating these shadows on trees along the asphalt path behind Burrello Family Center. I really liked the contrast in the shot above and immediately below. I recently processed the second image below through high-dynamic range software for two reasons. One was to illustrate how HDR can pull out detail in dark shaded areas, which was the case on the bottom portion of the tree trunk as captured in the original frame (in the single-frame version, this portion was close to black). But more important to me was to use HDR to help me mute an annoying solar glare in the original frame in the tree knot in the sunny portion just below the first middle branch. HDR muted the glare nicely. The third image below might best illustrate how the sun's selective, or patch, lighting will create special "looks" in the golden hour. 

Above: On Oct. 21, 2011, I returned to the sycamore trees and captured this at 6:23 p.m.

Above and below: Two golden-hour captures from Oct. 21, 2010. In the one below, taken at the fork in the road on Conservatory Drive, notice the random patches of sunlight. 

Above: On Oct. 21, 2011, a year to the day after the two photos above this one were taken, I made this example of splayed lighting during the golden hour (6:44 p.m. to be exact). I positioned myself to stand so the sun was mostly blocked by the trunk of the tree left of center. I liked how the splayed rays illuminate portions of the grass ... but most of all how they reflect off the recycling drop-off bin on the right. This was taken from the open meadow adjacent to the rear of Garfield Park Arts Center. 

Above: I was ecstatic about being able to catch the setting sun in this manner, right next to the trunk of what I came to call "The Tree" in Garfield Park in my latter years of living in Indianapolis. It's located in the park's southwest quadrant, not far from Southern Avenue. High-dynamic range (HDR) software enabled me to cull the detail you see in this image, which was taken at 7:55 p.m. on April 8, 2011. All of the single frames of this photo that I took were extremely dark and barely showed detail in any of the subjects. HDR gave me something to work with. 

Next up, Chapter 18: The Interurban shelter

Previously in the Garfield Park in Pictures series:

Introduction

Chapter 1: “America, We Remember”

Chapter 2: The Garfield Park Arts Center

Chapter 3: Bean Creek and Pleasant Run

Chapter 4: New Bean Creek pedestrian bridge

Chapter 5: Blake’s Garden

Chapter 6: Burrello Family Center and James Garfield statue

Chapter 7: Conservatory Crossing yuletide decorations

Chapter 8: Conservatory proper

Chapter 9: Conservatory permanent tropical plants and rainforest exhibit

Chapter 10: Garfield Park Farmers Market

Chapter 11: Fire Station 29

Chapter 12: Fireworks

Chapter 13: Four Seasons: Autumn

Chapter 14: Four Seasons: Spring

Chapter 15: Four Seasons: Summer

Chapter 16: Four Seasons: Winter

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. 

Closeups of Christmas tree ornaments

Sometimes, when a photographer examines something long enough, a bulb with an idea light goes on. That's how this post evolved.

We have two artificial Christmas trees set up in our house. One is traditional and average size with short green pine needles.

The other is white (see photo above), and smaller and thinner than the other. It stands out when lit up in the corner of our sun room. I'll often pause to take it in from afar as it catches my eye when I'm walking about. Two days ago, I decided to do more than just let it catch my eye. I walked over to it and studied the decorations.

This tree is Lea's, Lee Ann's daughter. Lea studied Japanese in high school and college. She spent a year of her college time in Japan, so she has taken a liking to its culture. She decorated her tree with ornaments flavored in Japanese culture and items representing her favorite Disney characters..

I started taking closeup pictures of the ornaments, and when I finished, I went over to the other tree and did the same.

The pictures you see in this post is from that shoot.

Photo geek stuff: All of the images -- except the one of the green tree -- were taken with my Canon 6D and Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens. I bracketed each for three exposures to enable melding those exposures into one high-dynamic range (HDR) image using Photomatix software in post-processing. The green tree image was taken with my iPhone X.