My friend Becky and I went to the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art today to see what there was to see and photograph. 
Flowers were still in bloom.
But it was clearly autumn.
As often happens, I found one area more satisfying than others. In this case it was a small pond.
If you’ve been following my posts, yes, that is another leaves in water shot.
Nothing like a nice curve once in awhile.
And back-lighting. Gotta have back-lighting.
Who knows that tomorrow will bring?
Mom patted me on the shoulder and said to the aide: ‘He’s a good boy.’ I turned 71 last week and I’m a good boy. Well, Mom is 94.
This ‘boy’ doesn’t walk as fast as he used to and that’s good. The faster you walk the more you have to treat the rest of the stuff in the world as potential obstacles to be avoided. Walking slower, moseying, means you can see what else is there and perhaps appreciate it more.
One’s eyes don’t have to be old to see what is nearby though. I ran into a librarian friend of mine this morning who had a young teen-age girl with her. While we were talking the girl spotted a dead mole and a six inch garter snake and who knows what else within a six foot radius of where we were standing. My friend tells me the girl is interested in photography. She indeed has a good eye.
The cycle of the year is approaching its last quarter and if the year is aging it doesn’t appear to be slowing down. We have defined time in an objective way in hours, minutes and seconds counted off by an atomic clock. But the experience of time is anything but objective. It does seem that days rush past faster as we get older but walking more slowly helps bring a bit more sanity to it.
And we can see more interesting stuff.
It’s a time for wondering.
Our camera club went down to Fountain Square last night for a shoot. Fountain Square is one of the eight cultural districts in Indianapolis which, after a period of decline, is picking itself up and thriving.
I don’t know what it is, but while it is good to visit an area that is coming up in the world, there is something more alluring about the alleys and out of the way places.
A lot of our people had the same idea and while some were on the streets, more seemed to be in the alleys.
Perhaps these areas, roughened up by life have stories to tell.
People live here. They have lives, they have dignity.
And they have stories.
Last day of the year. My photography buddy Becky and I went to the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art to see what was up for shooting. We stopped next to the tree with these leaves because they looked interesting.
There are lots of interesting areas at the IMA and I don’t know that this one is intrinsically any more interesting than any other except that these leaves caught my attention. Neither one of us anticipated that we would spend all of our shooting time this morning within a 30 yard radius of this tree.
I liked these tree tops.
And this leaf.
The day was quite overcast but I have found that a gray sky can be a plus. I shot these oak leaves and branches and then forced the gray sky to white in Photoshop. It produces a somewhat painterly effect. I removed some of the branches; it seemed to want to be a simpler image. I may remove more before I’m through.
By many criteria – it was muddy, cold and damp – it was not very pleasant but it was well worth it to cap off the year with a shooting day like this one.
I was on my way over to my friend Becky’s to pick her up and go shooting this morning. I passed Marott Park, one of Indianapolis’s nature preserves, and for the first time noticed it. Driving by, I only saw it for a few seconds but it looked like a good place to wonder around. I got to Becky’s and the conversation was along the lines one expects when going out to dinner with friends – she jumped in first and asked where I wanted to go. I answered with the standard “I don’t know” and she said “I noticed Marott Park the other day, would you like to try that?” Wow! We were obviously on to something here.
Marott Park is not large, it only had three picnic tables today and although there was a fair size field and then paths through the woods and down to Williams Creek it would be difficult to say it is any more than a modest size park or nature preserve. But so what? We discovered (again) that size of the park has little or nothing to do with it. 
The sky was overcast but that didn’t matter either. It would be more profitable to think of the lighting as indirect and diffuse rather than weak. The sun did come out after awhile and I got the shot of the leaves above.
My favorite shot of the day though, was of three trees standing near one another. 
This was a special day for me and I think it was for Becky too. You can see some of her work, although possibly no images from today, in her galleries on photo.net.
Wondering around. Nothing beats it.
The plan yesterday morning was to go out and shoot, come back in and write about it. I did go out and shoot and I did come back in but that’s when the disappointment started. 
The images were ‘nice’ but not something I would want to hang on the wall or even show anyone. (So why am I showing them to you? Stay tuned.) It wasn’t as if there were no subjects. Black raspberry leaves in the fall are gorgeous and backlit golden leaves can be treasures.
But that just didn’t seem enough. These were standard, garden variety fall pictures. Big deal.
I went to the camera club meeting last night and didn’t have great hopes for that either. We were going to shoot indoors. There would be models and good lighting, as well as a set up for macro photography. These were some fine opportunities but I thought instead I would take my camera and tripod outside. It was dark and lights were showing up some interesting opportunities. 
This was a lot better. I was not able to previsualize what I would get before I opened the shutter, I was just hoping for something interesting (and undefined).
And that made it a lot more fun.
I wrote a couple of days ago about a walk through the walnut plantation at the Fort Harrison State Park and how I ended up shooting little things instead of big things such as walnut trees. I have a bias toward little things but in my defense there is a lot of distracting underbrush around the walnut trees, as beautiful as they themselves are.
I went back today and much as I would like to say that I was determined to shoot big things and big things only, I just went to shoot. It occurred to me to try a technique I learned reading William Neill’s ‘Impressions of Light’ which is available as an ebook at his website. I regularly go back to this book for inspiration.
The technique is simple. Slow the shutter speed and move the camera while the shutter is open. I had done this before with images of water (I’ll cover that in a later post). I put a four stop neutral density filter and a polarizer on the lens and shot at f/11 and ISO 100. This slowed the shutter down to 1/13th to 1/6th of a second for various exposures.
The camera was on the tripod and I simply moved it up and down more or less vertically to emphasize the trunks of the trees. The brush is still present but instead of being distracting, it now it adds a bit of color.
Camera motion can be an artistic tool. I can’t say that I know how an image is going to turn out as I am setting up the shot; I can’t previsualize with any accuracy what it is going to look like. The ‘take’ rate, the percentage of images that turn out well, is small but I do like what the technique can do. And the bonus is that parts of the image that are potential distractions, such as underbrush, can, with some luck, turn into desirable features of the image.
In looking at these images, I get the sense that we are seeing something about the scene that we wouldn’t see any other way. Somehow, to use Wordsworth’s phrase, we are seeing into the life of things. We are seeing something for which there is no immediate verbal label, something that for a short while at least, we can treat as new. That is something we expect of art and something we hope for as spiritual seekers.
Spirit and Seeing 