Visiting Hendricks County, Part III

McCloud and Sodalis nature parks are on opposite ends of Hendricks County, Ind. -- McCloud is in the northwest corner, right on the Putnam County line, Sodalis -- which just opened last month -- in the southeast corner, just outside Plainfield and not far from Indianapolis International Airport.

As nature parks, they are largely wooded and minimally developed. There isn't a lick of asphalt in McCloud; the snaky access road (pictured above) off Hughes Road is gravel, as are the parking lots. The pavilion has electricity, and the nature center has heat, air-conditioning, running water and modern plumbing. But after that, it's all rustic -- and trails provide access to the wooded interior. Sodalis is much the same, although its short access road and smaller parking lot is paved, and a very large fishing pond is near the access point on the east end of the park. A manicured grassy area sprinkled with picnic tables is adjacent to the pond, but beyond that to its western extremes, there is nothing but woods and trails.

These parks will be the start (McCloud) and finish (Sodalis) points of the inaugural Park2Park relay race, a 60-mile team running event on June 25. I visited them and Hendricks County points between on June 3. Today's pictures are from my visits to McCloud and Sodalis.

FROM McCLOUD NATURE PARK

FROM SODALIS NATURE PARK

 

Visiting Hendricks County, Part II

Yesterday, you saw the single-frame shots from inside the Hendricks County Courthouse. Today, as promised,  are the high-dynamic range (HDR) versions -- the melding into one of three different exposures of the same shot, using the HDR software Photomatix.

 

 

 

 

Visiting Hendricks County, Part I

Friday was a mini-epic day for me, photographically speaking. I spent nine hours on the road and in Hendricks County, the county due west of Indianapolis. I was on a kind of reconnaissance mission to scope out the 60-mile course for the inaugural Park2Park Relay Race on June 25. Members of the Indy Meetup Photo Club will be photographing the team-oriented event, a fundraiser for the Hendricks County Parks Foundation and Hendricks County Parks Department.

Teams of six runners in eight classifications (men, women, mixed, open, over 40) will take turns running 3- to 4-mile legs, starting at 6:30 a.m. in McCloud Nature Park, which is southwest of North Salem, and finish sometime in the afternoon or early evening in the new Sodalis Nature Park near Plainfield. There will be 18 legs in all, and each team will be allowed to have one team car to follow runners, to transport the inactive runners to facilitate the exchanges (switches) at the designated exchange points.

My posts over the next several days will reflect my shoots during the course of my recon mission, which actually started in Danville -- which I went through en route to McCloud Nature Park. I couldn't help but stop and photograph the county courthouse and courthouse square. Those have been on my list of things to do since I started in Feburary with the courthouses in Jefferson and Scott counties while making my sojourn to Hanover and Clifty Falls State Park. Since then, I added Hamilton County, and for fun, I'm going to see how many more I can amass when time permits.

Today's post is from inside the Hendricks County Courthouse, leading off at the top with a wide-angle view of the circular opening on the top of three floors ... and the mosaic rotunda above it. I bracketed all of my shots on this trip for treatment in high-dynamic range (HDR) software. In this post, however, I'll present only single-frame versions of the images; I'll present the HDR versions in the next post. You can decide later whether you prefer these or the HDR versions. Maybe you'll find merit in both.

 

 

Robin, rain & raindrops

I've been angling to get a nice, close bird photograph or two in recent weeks while on outdoor outings and had no real luck until this weekend. During one of the downpours Sunday, I caught a glimpse of a robin perched on a fence between my home and a neighbor's, so I grabbed my camera, stepped outside as quietly as I could, and managed to get off three shots before the robin flew away. All three shots were very similar; the one above is a slight crop of the first one, and the one below is a tight crop of the same frame.

I also grabbed some raindrop shots, which are included below the robin.