Moon over Yates Mill Pond Park

Sometime pre-2012, in the middle of the new millennium’s first decade, while I was still living in Indianapolis (and working full time), I was out for a very early morning run through Garfield Park, which was very close to where my house was. 

And on the tail end of the run, as I was climbing the hill on Pagoda Drive, I noticed off to my right that the moon was perched perfectly over the campus of Emmerich Manual High School, which sat on the park’s western border. The visual excited me, and for 30 seconds, I gave thought to sprinting home, grabbing my DSLR camera (I did not have a cell phone at that time), and running back to capture pictures. I even quickly came up with an alliterative headline on the blog post bearing the resulting photos: Moon over Manual.  

I was deterred, however, by the thought of possibly missing the moment in the time it would take me to run home and run back. But I also worried that doing so would make me late for work. 

So instead of throwing caution to the wind, I sighed and told myself I would get it the next time it happened. 

As you might guess, there was no next time. 

I later did some Internet research to try and learn how often the moon could land in the exact same visual position like I had seen that morning. And the response was demoralizing. Today, I don’t remember exactly what the answer was, but it basically foretold that years of waiting would be involved. 

On Aug. 31, when I arrived at Yates Mill Pond Park for my regular walk, I had my iPhone with me ... and an angel nudging me in the form of the man you see in the lower right corner of the photo leading off this post. 

I wasn’t looking up at the sky as I made my way down the main boardwalk over the pond, taking pictures of reflections on the perfectly still pond. But the man saw I was a picture-taker and directed my attention to the placement of the moon right over the short overhang on the boardwalk. I looked up, and there it was. I took three pictures integrating the moon into the landscape (the two others are the first two photos below). Below those are the reflection shots.

Twelve days later, on Sept. 11, I was again in the park for my walk and nearing an end when I came across the striking colors on a tree growing from the pond (first photo below). I took the other pictures closer to the tree. I wasn’t as impressed with those, but ... for the sake of wrapping up the story, I present them here, too.

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A Yates Mill Pond first for me: ice on the pond and minor patches of it on the trail

When I stopped at Yates Mill Pond Park yesterday for my daily walk, I had no intention of taking pictures because I’d done plenty of picture-making on other recent visits. But ... when you see something you hadn’t seen before, which happened Friday, it was hard not to pull out the iPhone camera and start snapping away.

The primary thing I hadn’t seen at the park before was ice on the pond, and there’s a bit of it in the lead-off photo. That murky, sheened section close to the shore was the only ice in this photo, which is the much larger section of pond on one side (south) of the main pedestrian bridge. 

I selected this photo to lead things off because of what I considered to be much more compelling compositional elements — silhouettes, reflections and cloud patterns — than the ice.

Ice on water was more prevalent elsewhere in the park, as shown in the series of photos immediately below this point. The first seven images below were taken on the smaller (north) side of the pond near the primary wooden pedestrian bridge. The remaining ice-on-water pictures were streams found on the early portion of the walking trail between the first and second pedestrian bridges.   

There were minor patches of snow (some mixed with ice) on the 2-mile trail itself. This was stuff that wasn’t able to melt from the recent warmer temperatures because of how tree branches sufficiently blocked the sun from the ground. 

But there wasn’t enough of the snow/ice to thwart walkers. I covered the full trail yesterday, and there was always a portion of path free of ice or snow that a pedestrian could land on to avoid the patches. I present a view images of that spotty white cover below. 

I returned to the park Saturday to walk, and many of the patches had disappeared or shrunk. But boy, the trade-off was a very gusty wind, dropping wind-chill temps to 20ish, making Saturday’s stroll the coldest-ever for me there. 

Fortunately, I’d checked the weather beforehand and added a layer of clothing, which turned out to be exactly what I needed. 

Much of the ice on the smaller (north) section of pond and on the streams near the second pedestrian bridge remained Saturday; almost all of it on the larger (south) section was gone. A curiosity Saturday: As I began my walk, there were scores of geese on the larger section of pond and a much smaller number — maybe a half-dozen — on the smaller section. They were all gone by the time I crossed the bridge on the return trip.

To see a larger, sharper version of a photo in this post, simply click on the image. To view a full gallery of images from the Friday shoot, follow the link in this sentence.

Four Days in Januaryat Yates Mill Pond Park

Day 2

Jan. 9, 2026

I told a longtime acquaintance that on my Jan. 9 visit to Yates Mill Pond Park, I felt unusually inspired as I encountered what seemed like unending appealing photo compositions. 

I was surprised because it was winter, and as I noted in the first installment of this series yesterday, I’d visited the park that day to walk, not photograph. I just blindly presumed that snowless winter just wouldn’t lend itself to photography in a park. 

Boy, was I wrong. This park has a woods of considerable acreage, and as I found out, its winter “look” is most definitely photogenic.

On this day, the compositions just kept jumping out at me. Such as the silhouette you see leading off the post. This presented itself on a lark; I happened to turn around on the walking trail to look back at that odd-shaped tree trunk, and lo and behold ... it gifted me a silhouette. 

Moments earlier, approaching it from the other side, I certainly saw the odd shape, but I’d come across it before while walking the trail, and I had photographed it. So it was not new. But I’d never seen it in this backlit form. For those of you who haven’t seen it in a previous post, I present it below in normal exposure. 

I was shooting in the same general direction when I took the gnarly branched tree trunk in the first two photos below, so the slight backlight make the tree trunk itself dark (as in the first photo). In post processing, I boosted shadow detail as show in the second photo below. Below that are a few other tree oddities I came across walking the trail.  

Another oddity I came across — and which apparently had not jumped out at me previously — were these grassy mounds (first five photos below) on either side of the loop portion of the trail. In summer, these areas are green grasses and foliage. The converted yellow-orange mounds of late autumn and winter are what caught my eye.

The next area of interest I ran into were striking streaks of shadows. The first five photos below are among those I captured. 

Woven into the landscape in areas where there were no off-season yellow mounds were clusters of green vegetation with elongated leaves, illustrated in the first five photos below. 

And then there were the trees where yellow or bright brown leaves still clung to the branches, presenting striking vistas when surrounded by many other deciduous trees bereft of their leaves. 

Then there were the oddities on the ground — the tree roots, rotted trunks or fallen branches forming unusual shapes: 

Next, the landscape itself ... starting with the tall, still green trees towering over a mini-shelter on a pedestrian bridge (first two photos below), tall bare trees lining the forest (next two photos), a couple of tree greens on the landscape (next two photos) and a rectangular show of sunlight along a path backed by more tall lumber. 

To view a full gallery of photos from this shoot, follow the link in this sentence.

Then we return to the pond and/or forest stream, where rippling reflections, geese and ducks, and tree shadows on water caught the eye.