Out in the country ...

Re the headline: Anyone for a little Three Dog Night? OK, I thought not, so I'll just move right along.

I had an opportunity to shoot landscapes, flowers and nature on Sunday on some private property near Martinsville in Morgan County (Ind.). It was an outing of the Indy Meetup Photo Club, so I used the occasion to capture multiple exposures on most of my landcapes to later process in Photomatix, the high-dynamic range (HDR) melding software I acquired a couple months ago.

My "nature" shots were limited; there were birds all over the place, as the property owner maintains quite a few birdhouses and feeders. But the birds must not have trusted or liked me; I could hear them quite a bit, and on several occasions, I camped out on a bench where the property owner suggested I wait because, she said, eventually they will come. But, no such luck for me there, except for a shot or two of a bird on a tree branch, no where near any of the feeders. Nor did I see any frogs at the frog pond, a man-made basin the owner installed at the foot of a steep hill in the back of the property that helps collect runoff and leave the remainder of the property relatively dry in damp weather. 

Now ... I did get a shot or two of a baby alligator in the west pond ... except that ... well, the gator isn't real. The owner has it there to dress up the scene -- and perhaps for comedic effect. So I shot it in HDR to try and help make it seem real. I did grab a few shots of lady bugs on flowers and some floral macros sans bugs or other insects (mostly early-season blooms like crocus). I'll post those on another day. 

This post is about the HDR shots from Sunday. The shots I was most excited about were the tree reflections on the southwest pond, the shots of the landscape along the road on the property's south perimeter and -- leading off the post at the top -- the one of the silo in the distance, a vista visible from the end of the property's owner's dead-end street.

To view a full gallery of HDR images from this shoot, follow this link.

Above and next two below: Different shots of the southwest pond, where I was struck by the reflection of the trees in the background. 

Above: the "alligator" that isn't real. 

Above and below: Portrait (vertical) and landscape (horizontal) perspectives of a scene in the property owner's peace garden. I tend to prefer the portrait version; it doesn't have the distraction of the foreground birdfeeder.

Above: A two-layered birdhouse. Upper- and lower-class housing?

Above and below: Views of a wheelbarrow, whose color and shape provide a nice change of pace to a bucolic scene. Rustic ... and rust.
  

Above: A closeup of the dead -- and contorted -- tree in the background of the wheelbarrow photos. 

Above and next three below: Scenes from the creek that forms the east property line. The bridge is part of a road that forms the south property line.

Above: The frog pond that produced no reptiles for me to photograph during my visit. Instead, I tried to focus on some tree reflections in the small pockets of clear water on one end of the pond.

Above: Another birdhouse.

Above and next three below: Views of the look east along the road that flanks the owner's property. The bridge you see in the distance is the one pictured above from creek bank level.

 

Above and next two below: Western views of the same road, a vista I enjoyed mostly because of the tree on the road's horizon.

Above: A bark-stripped tree in the wooded portion that dots the ravine leading to the lower level.

GSC presents 'Pygmalion'

Last Sunday, I shot a dress rehearsal for "Pygmalion," the 1912 play by George Bernard Shaw that Hollywood first turned into a movie in 1938 (starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller) then later blossomed into a Broadway musical and Oscar-winning motion picture under the name "My Fair Lady." The play is being presented this weekend by the Garfield Shakespeare Company at the Garfield Park Arts Center in Indianapolis. Sunday's 2 p.m. matinee is the final show.

As I did last September, when I shot pictures at a live presentation of the troupe's presentation of "Macbeth" after doing a photo shot at an initial visit, I returned a separate time Friday to enjoy "Pygmalion" without taking pictures. I did so last night, and was glad I did. I had the benefit of knowing a little bit of what to expect, but enjoying a drama for the pure enjoyment of it is rewarding.

The GSC did a great job with the show, despite some adversity during the weeks of rehearsing, bumps in the road that director Joe Cook helped the troupe survive although the company had to condense the number of performances to just a weekend's worth instead of the usual two. A special nod to the show's two lead actors (featured in the lead photo at the top), a married couple -- Maria Souza Eglen, who did a wonderful job portraying flower girl Eliza Doolittle, and Kyle Eglen, who played the stern and demanding phonetics professor Henry Higgins.

Show times are 7 p.m. today and 2 p.m. Sunday; the company will be back in September to present the Shakespeare classic "Hamlet," only it will be staged -- as was last year's "Macbeth" -- in the park's outdoor facility, the MacAllister Center for the Performing Arts.

Cook mentions, in the "Pygmalion" program handed to people who attended this weekend's shows (I made it to Friday's opening), that Shaw so detested his first name that he never used it during his lifetime. In deference to Shaw's wishes, Cook respectfully refers to the playwright as Bernard Shaw in the show billing. I use the author's full name here because, I feel, that's the way -- even if Shaw didn't care for it -- most people today know of him. It has instant recognition. I think some people might pause and wonder if they ever heard someone talk of Bernard Shaw, especially if out of context with any of his works, and they might even be thrown for a loop even if it were in context.

These pictures are from last Sunday's dress rehearsal. All but two were taken with a Canon 7D and Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens. The very last photo actually was taken on a separate dress rehearsal Wednesday, March 16, 2011, and with a Canon PowerShot G12; the ninth from the bottom -- the wide-angle shot of the group of six people (all seated except for an animated Henry Higgins) -- was taken at the Sunday rehearsal and with the 7D, but with a Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 lens.

A full gallery of images from this production is available at my online site at SmugMug.com.