Autumn stroll at Yates Mill Pond Park

 

Wednesday was a day to decompress from Tuesday's unfortunate presidential election, so I spent an hour or so strolling the mile trail around Yates Mill Pond at the state park in Raleigh. 

Trees there were showing autumn colors, but I elected to lead with a photo of the wooden pedestrian bridge reflected in the almost-still waters of the pond (above), captured across the way while traversing the trail. 

We saw little wildlife Wednesday, other than squirrels, a few turtles and a beautiful blue heron. Sadlly, the heron flew over us quickly as we cross the bridge in the photo above and landed too far from us for our iPhone cameras to do it justice. Nevertheless, I gave it a try, and my best shot appears among the other shots below. 

Above and below: The pond, reflections and fall colors. 

Above: Wild, dried grass draped over the fence marking the park's southeastern perimeter. 

Above and below: Horizontal and vertical orientation shots of a root cluster and the corresponding tree trunks found along the trail. 

Above: A mix of yellow and red leaves from stacked branches of different trees in front of me along the trail. 

Above: A downed tree trunk off the beaten path, er, trail. 

A tree trunk whose branches of varying directions and configurations struck me as interesting.

Above and first two photos below: Shots of the trail I was on.

Above: Leaves with differing autumn colors.

Above: A short tree trunk stub that looks like it's been in this abbreviated state for some time.

Above: A few turtles not far from the trail on the far side of the pond.

 

Above and first two below: A few different framings of the mill, the first integrating foliage immediately in front of me across the water, the two others after I found unobstructed openings to grab shots without interference. 

Above: This shot shows the most autumn color, but unfortunately it was taken in a backlight situation. Hoping to add some definition and contrast, I ran a copy of the image from my high-dynamic range (HDR) software. After slight crops to the top and bottom and a slight enhancement to the orange, red and green colors, I got the photo you see below. One enhanced definition I was particularly pleased with was the reflection in the water of the red leaves from trees along the shore. 

Above and first six photos below: views of whitened branches and foliage on trees along the shore of the pond on the other side of the pedestrian bridge. I've always liked these tree shapes, whose appeal increases during autumn when they take on this white coloring. 

Above: Resting amid this foliage is the blue heron, but I was so far away from it, that my iPhone couldn't do it justice ... and cost me some sharpness to boot when I elected to use near maximum zoom. 

Above: A cool fall color combo on these leaves.

Crowder Park modest in size, attractions

Crowder County Park in southern Wake County, N.C., encompasses 33 acres of land that includes a very modest pond, recreational fields for softball, volleyball and soccer, a paved trail around the pond and dirt trails in the wooded area, a rudimentary amphitheater within the woods, three playground areas and three picnic shelters.

The park's website says the park also has a bird garden, prairie garden, shade garden and butterfly garden. I walked past an area that was labeled rain garden as well. I'm not sure what each of these is supposed to show for visitors; each is quite modest, and you could easily miss it if you weren't specifically looking for it.

The photo leading off the post is among my favorites at the park. It's a reflection of a very small section of the pond along one side of a wooded observation deck. The vast majority of the pond is on the other side of the deck.

The website also says the park's address puts it in the community of Apex, which is the fourth place I visited on this day (the three others were churches) that claims to reside in Apex ... even though in each case I was several miles from what I consider to be closest border for the town limits of Apex. So there's some geography I apparently need to study up on.

As always, if you'd like to view a larger, sharper version of a photo, simply click on the image. This is particularly helpful for those of you who access the blog on a mobile device. To view a full gallery of images from my visit to Crowder Park, follow the link in this sentence.

Photo geek stuff: For the entire shoot, I used Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens. I took three slightly different exposures (one as metered, one 2/3 stop over and one 2/3 stop under metered), which I blended into a single frame in post-processing using Photomatix high-dynamic range (HDR) software. Most of the shots were taken at 100 ISO or close to 100 ISO and f/8, although in extremely shady areas I needed to boost the ISO to much higher levels. I used the shutter as my variable for the differing exposures for each composition.

The park's offices (above) are just inside the main entrance, and not far from it is a feeding station (first below) and a bird bath basin (second below) that was empty ... except for these frog figurines. 

As one walks from the Cardinal shelter (above) and descends those stairs, he/she sees the playground shown below.  

The view (above) from the deck at the park's Upper Pavilion (there is a Lower Pavilion deeper into the park) looks out onto a wooded area. It's a good place to appreciate the sounds of the woods. Below is a look out onto the recreation fields, with a sand volleyball court in the immediate foreground.  

Above is a look at the pond from the observation deck. Below is the view of the pond and observation deck as seen from the opposite side of the pond. 

Above: A "reflective" composition featuring wood poles, their reflections and other reflections on the pond, all framed by the foliage in the foreground. 

Quite a few turtles make the pond and shore area their home. There is a raft in the center of the pond (above) for them. The first two photos below are closeups of some turtles that swam near and underneath the observation deck. 

Above: A swing -- and its shadow -- at the end of the pond opposite the deck. 

On a dirt trail en route to the amphitheater (below), I came across the unusual rocks shown above. 

Above: A couple walking the paved trail around the pond. 

Yates Mill Pond: A visit proving to be serene, memorable ... and picturesque

On Oct. 25, I took a short drive from home to Yates Mill Pond, a 174-acre park in Wake County, N.C., which operates as a wildlife refuge developed around a fully restored 18th-century grist mill and -- as the park's name suggests -- a 20-acre lake.

The water-powered grist mill is the only remaining one left in the county, which is home to North Carolina's capital city, Raleigh, the state's second largest city (behind only Charlotte).

Raleigh is Wake County's only city, but the county of 857 square miles is home to several incorporated towns -- Cary, Apex, Holly Springs, Garner, Fuquay-Varina, Zebulon, Wendell, Knightdale, Rolesville and most of Morrisville and Wake Forest.

Despite all of that urban development, there are plenty of open, rural/rustic areas -- and county parks, not to mention one state park and portions of two others (I had visited, William B. Umstead State Park -- the one wholly inside Wake County -- in December 2014 and did a post about my shoot there in this blog).

Yates is the third county park I've visited; I didn't do any photography during previous stops (both short) at Lake Wheeler and Lake Benson parks, but those are on my list. They, too, are relatively short trips from my home.

I've mentioned the grist mill and lake at Yates Mill, but not the water falls, which doesn't get a lot of mention in official writeups of the attraction. The falls, positioned alongside the mill, is the most fascinating of the park's features. One view of the falls is depicted in the photo leading off the post.


As usual, click on any photo to pull up a larger, sharper version. This is particularly helpful when accessing the blog while using a mobile device. A full gallery of images from my shoot there Oct. 25 can be found at my site at Smugmug.com.

Photo geek stuff: I shot photos during my visit with my Canon 6D equipped with a Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di PZD VC lens. The lens was capped with a B+W polarizing filter. I bracketed all compositions for three exposures to allow me options to use single frames or meld all three exposures into a single shot using Photomatix high-dynamic (HDR) software in post-processing. I used a mixture of single-frame and HDR photos for this post.

Above and below are a couple shots (there will be others in this post) where bracketing my exposures and processing them through Photomatix software saved the pictures because of the back-lighting I was battling. I visited the park in the early afternoon -- not ideal by any means -- for dramatic landscape images -- but on this day, it was a necessity because of time management that day. The wall you see above, which flanks a path descending to the falls area (see pictures below), came out dark in all three of the exposures, showing a hint of detail in the +2 version. That hint of detail in the +2 image (along with a little help with the shadow slider in Photoshop Elements) catapulted me to recover the detail you see above. Same situation with the "front" side of the mill below. It was almost all dark on the individual images except for a hint of detail in the +2 exposure. Again, the melding and shadow slider boost in PE enabled me to get to this. 

Above: This is a single-frame shot of a building near the mill. I was pretty pleased with it, although it helped that the sun lighting angle was ideal in this case.

The grist mill (above) from the side of the power-generating wheel and waterfall. Next three shots below are various looks and/or detail cuts of the waterfall, followed by a shot of the mill from the trail that circles the lake.

Above: On the path leading to the mill from the parking lot, you come across these antique turbines. I recalled seeing similar implements at the grist mill that is a hallmark feature at Indiana's town of Metamora.

Above: A look at the lake, or pond, from the start of the circular trail not far from the mill. On Oct. 25, you were seeing only a hint of leaves changing color at Yates Mill.  

Above: I can't say I've ever seen a waterfowl feeding station in water like this before. Could be because I haven't been to enough wildlife preserves. But I liked the reflection it gave me for this composition. 

Above: At just about the halfway point around the lake along the circular trail, one comes across this structure, identified by signage as an instruction center. I'm guessing guests (many of which might be schoolchildren) who take tours of the grounds stop here for a short spell to learn things from their tour guides. I would not have been able to pick up the detail -- and color -- in the roof that you see here without processing it in HDR software. A couple other angles of this building can be found in the full gallery. 

Above: I photographed this long pedestrian bridge -- from which visitors can start their trip around the lake (I chose the opposite the direction, ending the trip at the bridge) -- from several perspectives, all of which you can see in the full gallery. I present this one in the post, taken through brush along the lake on the circular trail opposite the bridge, because of its (attempted?) artsy effect. 

I suppose the highlights of my shoot can be found in the photos above and next two below, where having the reach of a 300mm lens enabled me to get close enough to photograph the blue heron and turtle sharing space on a branch (above), a swan (and its reflection) appearing to guard its nest (first below) and a different log on which three turtles were resting (second below). I shared info on where to find the heron and swan with two women I met on the trail right after I photographed them (but before I got to the log shown in the third photo below). In return, they told me about the turtles log ... and said the log at one point had been loaded with turtles until another individual came by, made a noise and scared them all away. By the time I got there (quietly so), three of the turtles had climbed back on.  

Above: I'm about three-quarters around the lake at this point. You can see a small bit of the mill on the far right ... and some of the tree reflections in the lake. 

This tree, which I came across while crossing the wooden pedestrian bridge, jumped out at me. 

Above: I photographed the park's modest amphitheater from several angles (all of which you can find in the gallery), including several showing the whole facility. I liked this the best because you get a neat grouping of trees in the background with a slice of amphitheater seating.

Above: If you start the trail from the start of the pedestrian bridge not far from the parking lot and amphitheater, you began with this view of the park. Again, I encircled the lake from the opposite direction, and came upon this by turning around at the end of my journey.