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.

Check out my traveling photographer blog, Travelin’ Shutterbug

Splayed lighting on neighborhood tree

Back in 2011, when I was still living in Indianapolis, I became keen on a tree I came across on the southwest end of Garfield Park, which was very close to where I had lived. 

I'm sure I photographed the tree — and yes, I referred to it as “The Tree,” — on several occasions. It had a proud stature without being extraordinarily large, nor plentiful of branches or garish.

While out on a morning walk in the neighborhood this week, I had a similar experience after spotting a selective amount of sunlight highlighting an extraordinary rust-colored trunk and branches (see photo leading off the post and a closeup below). 

The tree’s wood looked to me to have the texture of a Crepe Myrtle, but those trees’ wood normally is a dull gray. I later did a deeper research dive and determined that the tree is an arbutus andrachne, whose trunk bark is smooth and exfoliates in summer, leaving a pistachio green color before turning into this color in autumn.

The tree was in the front yard of a home about two-tenths of a mile from my house. It wasn't so much the tree that caught my eye, but the light that was striking it. I used my iPhone 13 Pro to capture these pictures.

I was immediately was thrown back in time to all the lessons I'd had about the importance of light in photo composition. Many skilled photographers will tell you that no matter what a person points a camera at, what he or she is capturing, first and foremost, is light. 

I don’t quite agree with that, but I do agree that lighting is extremely important. A photographer has to be conscious of his/her light with every shot. Almost as important is background; the more solid and less cluttered, the better. 

When I did my walk along the same route the following day, there were heavy clouds offering no sunlit highlights like the first day. But I took a few pictures of the tree anyway to use for comparison (below).

Anatomy of a red bud tree in autumn

Last week, Lee Ann suggested I do a photo shoot focusing on the leaves of one tree -- the one in my backyard. She was taken by how striking the leaves looked dangling side by side in order ... and pointed out the heart shape of the leaves.

I'd come close to doing an autumn shoot on just one tree before. It was a few years ago and involved a tree with red leaves in Garfield Park near the arts center that had piqued my interest. But I went on to shoot a few other trees that day before calling it a shoot.

But last Sunday, it was all about the one red bud trees, whose leaves turn yellow, by the way. As it turned out, I liked the closeups and/or cropped versions more than I did the broader view/perspective shots, so that's why you see a lot of closeups in this post. Also, the perspective shots tended to included possibly distracting neighbor property in the background (e.g., fencing, house, garage, etc.), so I'm sure that had something to do with my preference as well. Nevertheless, I did include some of those shots here, too.

One exception to the closeups is the photo leading off the post; there are a few others below, including one of just fallen leaves clustered on the lawn, which I immediately contrasted with a composition of a solitary full leaf -- a bit father away from the tree than the cluster -- and a smaller curled leaf. Finally, I provided a full-view shot of the tree at the very end of this post so you can appreciate what I had to work with ... and what I had to work around.

All of these shots were taken with my Canon 6D equipped with a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens. A full gallery of the red bud tree shoot can be found at my online site at SmugMug.com. As usual, to view a larger and sharper version of a photo, click on it. This is particularly helpful when accessing the blog on a mobile device.

A tribute to Garfield Park's tilting timber

A couple days ago, I uploaded one of the pictures you see in this post to my wall on Facebook. In the accompanying note, I half-joked that Garfield Park in Indianapolis would be wise to promote its handful of weirdly shaped trees to draw more visitors, not that the park is lacking patrons.

I'm sure any heavily treed area has its share of odd tree formations. But Garfield Park's niche might be that people, if they had access (online or somewhere in the park) to a brief printed guide and/or map, could find, view, enjoy and photograph a select number of odd-shaped treess, and do so within a relatively contained area and within a short amount of time.

The tree featured prominently in this post was a new "find" for me when I was out shooting Dec. 21. By its size, it's obviously been around a while, so somehow I've either missed it or didn't go near it on the visits I've made there in the past few years.

I add it to my growing list of odd-shaped or otherwise distinguished trees (the others appear at the bottom of this post). For those of you interested in finding and seeing this one, it's on Conservatory Drive, south of Fire Station 29, along the west rim of the curved hill that sledders use after snowfalls.

To view a full gallery of shots from the Dec. 21 shoot in Garfield Park, visit my site at SmugMug.

Next up: Other bridges in Garfield Park.

Above and next several below: The "new" tree (new to me, anyway), beginning above with a perspective shot as it appears to someone southbound on Conservatory Drive. The monochrone version immediately below also entailed erasing/cloning out some branches of the tree adjacent to it and to the left from this view. You see that tree in the other, normal-stature tree in the frame below the monochrome shot. 

Above: The "new" tree, on the west rim of the curved sledding hill, is in the far background -- almost straight ahead -- of this shot, taken from the peak of the Ticklebelly Hill bridge over Pleasant Run on Conservatory Drive. 

OTHER ODD-SHAPED OR 

DISTINGUISHED TREES IN GARFIELD PARK

This photo dates to Jan. 8, 2005, and was taken following one of my most favorite snowfalls in recent memory -- the type where the snow sticks to branches and buildings. This tree is near the bend, or nook, of the "L" shaped Garfield Drive, greeting westbound pedestrians and motorists on the Drive's south leg as the road turns north.  

Above and below: Two additional views of the conifer pictured previously. These two, which look north and slightly east toward the residential area east of the park, were taken Dec. 24, 2004, not long before the other.

Above: The former "V" shaped tree at the north end of the park with the so-called Ticklebelly Hill in the background. This was taken in February 2006; the tree has since fallen or been felled, although a good share of the downed trunk and branches remains at the site. 

Above and below: Two views of unusual ornamentation on a tree in the picnic grove at the south end of the park, not far from Pagoda Drive southwest of the MacAllister Center for the Performing Arts. The one above was taken in February 2011 on the first shoot in which I experimented with high-dynamic range (HDR) imaging; the one below about a year earlier.

Above: This tree might be the most unusual of all in the park. It is situated along the pedestrian path outside the west end of the Sunken Garden and just north of the pedestrian bridge over Bean Creek. This photo was taken in October 2010, and I devoted a post to it at the time. Click here to see other pictures of the tree from different angles. 

Above and next two below: These trees fall into the category I'd call "distinguished trees" in the park. The first (above), a monochrome conversion of a silhouette composition, is the one I dubbed "The Tree" in a post in February 2011. It is situated in a grove at the park's south end, not far from Southern Avenue. The one immediately below, another HDR rendering, is a stately maple that greets visitors to the aquatic center and motorists, cyclists and pedestrians along the Pagoda Drive hill. Unfortunately, this tree has been slowly dying over the past few years. I'm glad I caught photos of its colorful orange and yellow leaves while it was still relatively full and healthy in 2005; it has not been the same since. I include the final tree, a victim of storm damage, because of its interesting post-damage shape and white trunk.