Local group strives to use music to effect change, enrich youths' lives

A few weeks back, Raquel Hampton, representing Indy Playing for Change, an organization I had never heard of previously, dropped me an email to ask for permission to use a photo of mine she'd seen while hunting around the Internet for images of the Fountain Square area of Indianapolis.

She explained that the organization had recently opened and moved into an office in that neighborhood and was preparing to launch its first-ever website in tandem with that move. The group, which already had a page on Facebook, wanted some imagery representing the neighborhood included on the new website.

I did some research about the group and liked its primary objective -- effecting social change through the power of music -- as much as I liked its secondary goals, which is to bring music into the lives of young people. Since 2011, Indy PFC has hosted an annual Playing for Change Day in September, at which artists performed in the Mass Ave and Fountain Square cultural districts to raise money to fund PFC programs. I consented to the request to use my photos at the IPFC website.

This year, PFC partnered with Bob Marley's global unity organization, 1Love, started by Marley's children, and together they will produce the 2013 1Love PFC Day, which in Indianapolis is scheduled for Sept. 21. A list of artists scheduled to participate that day can be found at Indy PFC's website.

The image leading off the post is the photo Hampton chose for the page at PFC's website that introduces and talks about the Fountain Square neighborhood. It is the sculpture, referred to as Lady Spray, on the fountain that sits where Shelby and Prospect streets and Virginia Avenue converge.

This Lady Spray is a recasting of the original sculpture, which was installed in 1889 and replaced in 1924 with the Pioneer Family sculpture. When the fountain was deemed a traffic hazard in 1954, the fountain and Pioneer Family sculpture were removed and placed in Garfield Park on the Southside until public clamor brought it back in 1979. There it stood until being removed and put in storage in September 2009 in anticipation of the lengthy project to extend the Indianapolis Cultural Trail from downtown to Fountain Square. The recast version of Lady Spray was installed during that work.

When I took the image of Lady Spray on May 12, 2012, the cultural trail work was still incomplete, and I wondered what had happened to the Pioneer Family sculpture. I took the picture of the Pioneer Family fountain (left) during a visit to the neighborhood in July 2009.

By coincidence, I was in Fountain Square this week, and was delighted to see -- now that all of the construction was completed -- that the Pioneer Family sculpture and fountain are situated -- and functioning -- in an area along Prospect Street just west of the three-street intersection and directly across from El Arado Mexican Grills. Unfortunately, I had no camera with me, otherwise I would have taken pictures. I'll make a point to do so soon.

Yes, Thomas Wolfe, I went home again ...

One of the things I thought I'd be doing a lot more of after leaving my longtime job at The Indianapolis Star 15 months ago was travel. It hasn't quite worked out that way.

Last weekend, however, I made a modest dent into that goal. I drove to Milwaukee, Wis., where I spent most of the first 22 years of my life. I jammed a lot of visiting with school classmates, friends and family into the long weekend. I also did a little bit of leisure photography while there. So, Thomas Wolfe, I did go home again, although I concur with the premise of your 1940 novel: It just isn't the same.

My high school class scheduled reunion outings on Friday and Saturday nights, and on Saturday afternoon, I got to see one of my classmates play in a baseball league devoted to players his age. The facility where he played, a development at 76th Street and Rawson Avenue in Franklin, Wis., is not far from where I grew up in the neighboring suburb of Greendale. I did not take photographs while I was at The Rock Sports Complex, however.

After watching baseball, I drove to St. Francis, still another suburb, to visit the grounds that had served as our high school campus. The school, known as DeSales Preparatory Seminary, was built on 45 acres overlooking Lake Michigan in the early 1960s (this link is to a 1963 Milwaukee Journal newspaper article about the school's imminent opening). Its sprawling campus had beautiful facilities and was adjacent to St. Francis Major Seminary. Separated by 15 acres of woods, it also sat behind another private Catholic high school, then known as Pio Nono but since 1972 it has been St. Thomas More High School.

The DeSales buildings are still there, but it closed as a school in 1979, and for most of the period since then, the property had been home and headquarters of the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The priest sex scandals of the 1990s and early 2000s bankrupted the archdiocese, which had to start selling off assets to pay legal settlements. Sadly, the campus is caught in the middle of the assets-shedding process. Some photos of the campus during my visit appear here.

After taking pictures there, I walked across Lake Drive into Bayview Park, which I'd never set foot in during my days in high school. It had always been there, but for reasons I can't really fathom myself, I never made it there way back then. From the cliffs of Bayview Park, I grabbed some photos of the lake, the break wall, a sailboat, some gulls and ducks and a portion of the Milwaukee skyline. Photos from that shoot can be found in this post, beginning with the one leading off the post.

On Sunday afternoon, after lunching with a friend near Southridge Mall in Greendale, I drove to and through Whitnall Park, which I'd often visited on my bicycle in my youth. I came across Boerner Botanical Gardens there and remembered my late mother remarking, a long time ago, how much she enjoyed going there. So I stopped there and strolled the perimeter of the grounds, taking pictures with my iPhone5. On my departure, I came across some park landscapes that caught my eye, including the uphill access drive, where a lone walker made the ascent ... and where I saw a red barn I thought was picture-worthy. I photographed those with my Canon 7D. Some shots from there appear in this post, too.

The photos in today's montage conclude with a series of images I'd taken, also Saturday, of my childhood home in Greendale. We moved into the home in 1956, and my brother bought it from my father's estate after Dad died in 1989, where my brother then lived until moving out six or seven years ago. The property currently reflects the care of its current owners, who I do not know.

Above: One view of the divided-road entrance to my former high school, most recently the Cousins Center, home of the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese. The portion you're looking at is the exit side. 

Above and below: Close and closer views of the former front entrance of the school. The multi-level section on the left was the start of the faculty quarters; the tall section on the right the start of the very beautiful 800-seat Mater Christi Chapel. The archdiocese would eschew this access for its main entrance and instead use others to the side and back of the complex.

Above: This point on the entrace side of the divided access was where the city bus system would drop off and pick up students who commuted to the school and used city transportation. I was one of those students. I don't recall this bus sign being there when I was attending, however.

Above: This perspective shot along the entrance side of the main access shows the school's front and main access, the full Mater Christi Chapel (to the right of the main entrance), the area where bus commuter students entered the complex (in a door just to the right of the chapel and, in this photo, largely obscured by the trees) and the start of the high school dormitory (far right), where boarding students lived. Commuting students who drove in cars would turn right past the trees and turn left behind the dormitory and park in the lot you see in the next three pictures below.   

Above and below: The multi-level library (center) looked out at the woods (behind where I was standing in the parking lot when I took this shot). The library connected the two dormitories -- the start of the taller structure on the left is the high school dorm, the taller structure on the right ... and the one you see in its entirety in the first photo below ... was where college students boarded. The doors adjacent to the high school dorm is where commuter students who drove and parked in this lot accessed the school. Later, it served as one of the main entrances to the archdiocese headquarters.  

Above: The full high school dorm.

Above: A path from the side parking lot that leads to the 15-acre woods separating DeSales from Pio Nono/St. Thomas Moore. The green area you see in the right foreground extended all the way to Lake Drive and once had a track used by school cross-country and track teams and for intersholastic sports such as softball, soccer and tag football.

Above: The first in a series of shots taken from Bayview Park.

Above: The first in a series of shots taken outside Boerner Botanical Gardens in Whitnall Park.

 

 

Above: The walker, mentioned in the text above, ascending the access to Boerner Botanical Gardens.

Above: Just off the hilly access road to Boerner Botanical Gardens is this barn.

 

Above and below: The first of several shots of my childhood home in Greendale. Two changes I immediately noticed -- the newly revamped and widened driveway and the main window in the front, which used to extend all the way to ground level. Not sure who reduced it ... or why. Also, the tree in the front and on the side did not exist when I lived there. We had a crab apple tree in the front, but it was situated more toward the center of the yard, not to the far right and near the curb where this street is located. We did have a large evergreen tree in the side yard for quite a while, but it was situated closer to the front than where this side yard tree is situated.

Above and below: Neither of those trees on the right existed when I lived there. The crab apple tree on the far left, behind the utility pole, however, was there. At one point when I lived here, my dad planted a row of lilac bushes along the curb and along the back property line (which you don't see) to serve as a kind of natural privacy fence. But the bushes grew so large and difficult to maintain that he eventually had them removed.

 

Above: We never cluttered our backyard in all the years I was there. We had a cement walk connecting the back door to a patio approximately where the structure on the far left you see here. We rarely used that patio, though, although it was roughly "first base" for ballgames my brother and I used to play in the yard. The row of bushes in the background didn't exist either. My brother told me his neighbor installed those while my brother still lived there, and apparently after several heated discussions between them about where the line existed between their properties. My brother felt it was a way the neighbor decided to affirm where the neighbor felt the line existed.

Noblesville Street Dance treated to a memorable show by the Bishops

Even before I arrived in Noblesville, Ind., to photograph the Bishops' performance at the city's annual Street Dance, I knew what one of my first objectives would be when I reached the courthouse square: find an elevated place where I could best capture the swarm of people who would crowd the streets in front of the stage by night's end.

I'd never been to the Street Dance, so I didn't know how organizers positioned the stage or where it was set up. When I did get there, I saw the stage faced southwest, at the corner of Ninth and Logan streets, overlooking the courthouse at the northeast corner of the square.

That limited my options. The ideal point would be in the courthouse, but it is closed and locked on weekends. Buildings to the west along Logan Street would allow me good crowd shots, but the stage would be side-view, a profile, at best. So I focused my hunt on buildings to the east along Ninth.

My first stop was the Asian Grill, and the kind manager, Andrew Leonard, told me the front section of the two-story building's roof was inaccessible, but he offered me a spot through a window in a second-floor office. I took a look, and while the shot I wanted would require some contortion -- a position I would not be able to hold long -- it nevertheless was doable. Leonard suggested I check next door to the south, at Rosie's Place cafe.

I did do that, and the owner quickly told me that the roof was inaccessible and indicated there was no upper-floor option. None of the other businesses along Ninth was open, so I knew my hopes would be pinned to that office view at the Asian Grill.

When the crowd density reached its pinnacle, which didn't occur until after the sun went down, I returned to the Asian Grill's second-story office and grabbed a series of shots, first with the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens on my Canon 7D. One of those shots you see above, leading off today's post, and was taken at ISO 1250, f/2.8 and 1/250. Then I switched to my 30D equipped with the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS telephot lens and grabbed some closeups, one of which I'll include with the images below. The 7D's more expansive ISO options and its superior noise-reduction ability enabled me to boost the shadows on the wider angle shot in post-production and provide the definition that I knew I wouldn't get from the older 30D's more restrictive ISO. The 30D's ISO tops out at 3200, but quality is terrible at that setting, and even 1600 is, to me, more often unacceptable with that camera. I shot the 30D pictures at ISO 1600 and treated them in Noiseware to minimize noise.

Getting that elevated shot made my night, a shoot where I also grabbed photos of dancers of all ages and saw frontman Bryan Bishop in peak form, leading the sextet from one musical style to another. He used props (e.g., a baseball cap worn slightly askew a la hip-hop, a curly-haired wig, hand weights) to match the genre and amp the entertainment level. He brought several dancers from the crowd on stage, ranging from an energetic Brandon, a boy who looked no more than 6 years old and who matched Bishop move for move (and then some) during a hip-hop number, to five teens who grooved to the show's finale, "Play That Funky Music."

Perhaps the biggest crowd-participation moment came after dark, when the band played a country tune that triggered a massive line dance.

In the photos presented below, I tried to offer some shots different (or varied) from those I uploaded to an album at my page at Facebook. So if you've not seen the Facebook album, it'd be worth checking out ... and vice versa.

And if you're interested in seeing ALL the images I took, you can visit the Street Dance album at my site at SmugMug.

Above and below: Before the band took the stage, Street Dance attendees got to witness the ice-cream eating contest in front of the stage. The boy below got an unobstructed view of the stage.

Above: The girls in the front anchored the band's support section for the early part of the segment.

Above: Hair aflyin', this girl entertained crowd members early in the evening. When she joined the band on stage later on, she wasn't as interested in performing.

Above: Matt Ley during one of this two no-look behind the head solos on the night.

Above: Perspective and access makes it difficult to get a photo of all band members in a unit with five or more members. This shot of the six performers was taken while mixing with the crowd ... and holding the camera above to shoot over people's heads. From left: R.J. Johnson, Bryan Bishop, John Marque, Georgette Fraction, Eldon Hawkins and Matt Ley.

Above: R.J. Johnson on lead vocals for Montell Jordan's "This Is How We Do It." 

Above and below: A few more dancers during the early evening. Both frames are exclusive to this post; a different frame of the couple above appears at the Facebook album.

Above and below: Shots of the courthouse as seen from the stage at different times of the evening. Above, around 7:15 p.m., as the smoke from vendor grills floats across. Below, at late twilight ... just as a roaming golden light from an unknown source splashes against the lower portion of the frame.
 

Above: The band, seen from the second floor of the Asian Grill and through a 70-200mm telephoto lens.

Above and below: Two shots of Georgette; the one above, the original color, is a variation of the sepia used in the Facebook album. 

Above and below: Two shots of guitarist Matt Ley, the above a monochrome variation of the sepia used in the Facebook album.

Above: This teen, Jordan, was itching for something exciting to happen for the first hour or so of the show when he and some friends hung out and danced close to the stage. He finally got his 15 minutes of fame when the band invited him up ... and Jordan took full advantage, much to the entertainment of band members Johnson, Fraction and Bishop.

Above: Bassist Eldon Hawkins emerged from his usual post at the back to take the limelight during this solo when Bryan introduced all of the band members one by one.

Above and below: Two shots of drummer John Marque, above from very up close and personal (as in right next to the drum set) and, below, during his introductory solo.

Above: R.J. Johnson in a rare moment when both hands aren't required on the keyboards.

Above and below: An experiment to use Matt Ley's unused guitars (foreground) to juxtapose with band member R.J. Johnson (above) and to use to sort of frame Eldon Hawkins. Not sure it works, but ... there it is.

Above and below: Bishop and Fraction in a hip-hop duet that peaks with an intimate moment (below).

Above: Bishop sheds the rapper cap in favor of a curly-haired wig and hand weights. With this pose, he was thinking the Hulk; when I saw it, I thought of Saturday Night Live's long-ago "We want to pump ... you up!" sketch.

Above: This youngster dazzled everyone. So much energy, so many smooth moves.

Above: The line dance in full-throttle mode.

Above and next two below: For the finale song, three gals and two guys joined the band for "Play That Funky Music." At one interlude, one of the gals glanced over in Matt's direction (below) and appeared to be admiring his picking and fret work. When it was over, the guys (second below) helped the band salute the crowd for a great evening.