Water Lily leaves
Waterlilies in Meteer Lake at Pine Knob Park, LaGrange County, Indiana.
Pine Knob Park is a 254-acre county-owned park with a lot of natural diversity including woodlands, two lakes, and numerous buttonbush swamps. There are ambitious projects going on there to restore and diversify oak savanna, prairie and wetland habitats. One very significant project yet in its early years is restoring sedge-dominated wetlands around Duff Lake over many acres in a muck and marl filled basin that had been drained many years ago. So far, it appears successful beyond expectations. This park is remarkably user-friendly with numerous trails, many with boardwalk access through or near habitats where visitors would normally never go due to deep water.
On the west side of Meteer Lake, there is a short fishing pier into the lake that gives visitors access to both emergent and submergent vegetation that is normally in water too deep to access without hip or chest waders. And along much of the west side of the lake, a boardwalk takes you through forested and shrub swamp, and for a couple hundred feet goes along the edge of an open waterlily and bulrush marsh. Photographic opportunities are not necessarily optimal from these spots, but at least opportunities are possible that would not be otherwise due to inaccessibility.
The morning after photographing the small purple fringed orchids elsewhere in LaGrange County, I went to Pine Knob Park at daybreak hoping for lovely landscapes at Meteer Lake against the backdrop of an awesome, colorful sunrise. The awesome sunrise failed to materialize. Apparently, the sunrise gods found out ahead of time that I was coming and convinced the clouds and colors to take a day off. Since I was there, many hours from home, I decided to try making lemonade from the lemons I had been served. Let’s just say the lemonade was not all that good despite a reasonable amount of effort!
The photo here is perhaps the best I got from my attempt to make tolerable lemonade from a sunrise that did not meet expectations. It was taken from the end of the fishing pier. This is one of those shots that I like, yet I don’t! It begs for something besides the waterlilies to be the focus of attention, like a waterlily flower, a frog’s head poking above the water line, or even a tuft of bulrushes in just the perfect spot.
I processed two different versions of this. In one, I removed the hardly visible underwater stems of the waterlily leaves. THAT was interesting! I think this shot has a bit of an abstract quality to it but at least the stems give it a somewhat visible anchor point. The one with the stems removed had no point of reference for an anchor point so the leaves looked like they may have been floating in the air or outer space.
So, to end this long, goofy narrative, do you think this photo has any redeeming qualities whatsoever? As lemonade goes, is it good, mediocre or just plain bad?
Water Lily leaves
Waterlilies in Meteer Lake at Pine Knob Park, LaGrange County, Indiana.
Pine Knob Park is a 254-acre county-owned park with a lot of natural diversity including woodlands, two lakes, and numerous buttonbush swamps. There are ambitious projects going on there to restore and diversify oak savanna, prairie and wetland habitats. One very significant project yet in its early years is restoring sedge-dominated wetlands around Duff Lake over many acres in a muck and marl filled basin that had been drained many years ago. So far, it appears successful beyond expectations. This park is remarkably user-friendly with numerous trails, many with boardwalk access through or near habitats where visitors would normally never go due to deep water.
On the west side of Meteer Lake, there is a short fishing pier into the lake that gives visitors access to both emergent and submergent vegetation that is normally in water too deep to access without hip or chest waders. And along much of the west side of the lake, a boardwalk takes you through forested and shrub swamp, and for a couple hundred feet goes along the edge of an open waterlily and bulrush marsh. Photographic opportunities are not necessarily optimal from these spots, but at least opportunities are possible that would not be otherwise due to inaccessibility.
The morning after photographing the small purple fringed orchids elsewhere in LaGrange County, I went to Pine Knob Park at daybreak hoping for lovely landscapes at Meteer Lake against the backdrop of an awesome, colorful sunrise. The awesome sunrise failed to materialize. Apparently, the sunrise gods found out ahead of time that I was coming and convinced the clouds and colors to take a day off. Since I was there, many hours from home, I decided to try making lemonade from the lemons I had been served. Let’s just say the lemonade was not all that good despite a reasonable amount of effort!
The photo here is perhaps the best I got from my attempt to make tolerable lemonade from a sunrise that did not meet expectations. It was taken from the end of the fishing pier. This is one of those shots that I like, yet I don’t! It begs for something besides the waterlilies to be the focus of attention, like a waterlily flower, a frog’s head poking above the water line, or even a tuft of bulrushes in just the perfect spot.
I processed two different versions of this. In one, I removed the hardly visible underwater stems of the waterlily leaves. THAT was interesting! I think this shot has a bit of an abstract quality to it but at least the stems give it a somewhat visible anchor point. The one with the stems removed had no point of reference for an anchor point so the leaves looked like they may have been floating in the air or outer space.
So, to end this long, goofy narrative, do you think this photo has any redeeming qualities whatsoever? As lemonade goes, is it good, mediocre or just plain bad?