Just like last week’s installment of my 2014 Project 52, I am working one bit at a time towards getting this past summer’s photographs organized and uploaded. On one weekend in-between a three-week sports camp photography gig, my family and I traveled only a few hours north to the small town of Nashville, IN just for the sake of going.
Nestled in the southern portion of Indiana, downtown Nashville is full of dozens upon dozens of artisan shops, stores, and eateries. Surrounded by trees and gardens, each block of the town looks something akin to this:
Shoppes and Stores
Zeiss 32mm, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/200
Colorful and varied decorations accompany nearly every building, from the artistic…
Maple Leaves
Zeiss 32mm, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/400
Garden Sculpture
Zeiss 32mm, ISO 100, f/1.8, 1/1600
…to the eclectic…
License Tree
Zeiss 32mm, ISO 100, f/1.8, 1/1600
…to the silly:
Pair
Zeiss 32mm, ISO 100, f/1.8, 1/1600
Surprises await every corner in Nashville, but even in the multiple small gardens a macro photographer could spend days photographing all that is small:
Another Hover
Nikon 200mm, ISO 100, f/2, 1/2000
Abundant
Nikon 200mm, ISO 200, f/2, 1/1000
With a large number of hummingbird feeders in the area, I even got my first chance at photographing these tiny, flitting birds around some sort of red-flowering vines:
In the Thicket
Nikon 200mm, ISO 100, f/2, 1/1600
Stretching Out
Nikon 200mm, ISO 100, f/2, 1/2500
It took a lot of trial-and-error to finally get the wings frozen at their apex mid-flight:
Frozen
Nikon 200mm, ISO 100, f/2, 1/1600
Not just filled with shops, Nashville has its share of street musicians that play on street corners…
Banjo
Nikon 85mm, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/640
…as well as a good number of historical buildings often converted into museums of some sort:
Old School
Zeiss 32mm, ISO 100, f/1.8, 1/1600
In addition to the tourist-y downtown area, the surrounding countryside is home to a large state park, the Brown County State Park, to be exact. Armed with primarily my 400mm, I went after some more birds as close as I could get without a teleconverter:
Blue Bunting
Nikon 400mm, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/160
Mockingbird and Crabapples
Nikon 400mm, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/160
More often than not, however, the scenery was void of birds, and landscapes turned to repeating fields of dense tree canopy:
Trees and Trees
Nikon 400mm, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/320
As the day went on and I hiked through some of the shorter trails, I came across some odd, tiny bird (about 3 inches long) that did not mind my presence even at 6 feet away. He let me get some great close-ups:
Grassy
Nikon 400mm, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/320
Standing Tall
Nikon 400mm, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/500
Finally, the park treated visitors at a certain curve on the road with a nice sunset against the treeline:
Brown County State Park Sunset
Nikon 400mm, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/250
The next day, we set out to see some of the many covered bridges in a loop that surrounds Brown County. There are bridges among dense forest…
Bean Blossom HDR
Zeiss 32mm, ISO 100, f/5.6
…double-wide bridges for two-lane traffic…
Dual Bridge
Nikon 200mm, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/400
…long colorful bridges…
Red and Blue
Zeiss 32mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/15
…bridges that allow for detail…
Beams
Nikon 50mm, ISO 100, f/11, 1/6
…and those that make for great symmetry in a panorama:
Reflections
Nikon 50mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/80, 3-stop ND filter, 65 images stitched
Once we stopped touring the wooden marvels, I wanted one last crack at some songbirds. A local guide suggested a shared path that paralleled a creek, and at one particular point there was an abundance of chirps and colorful birds flying around. Capturing them, however, was the hard part:
Cardinal
Nikon 400mm, ISO 400, f/4, 1/400
Indigo Bunting
Nikon 400mm, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/200
Scarlet Tanager
Nikon 400mm, ISO 200, f/4, 1/200
Indigo Bunting
Nikon 400mm, ISO 200, f/4, 1/200
Odd to see all of the birds looking camera left like this, but hey, coincidences happen. :D Following a rather long walk with a particularly heavy 400mm lens, we headed back home from a successful and brief two-day outing.
Bonus! While not in Nashville, I managed this shot just as the sun set behind a far treeline during our traveling:
Sunset at Treeline
Nikon 50mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/20
That’s all for this post, guys and gals, thanks for dropping by! I have got one more catch-up post I hope to get done within a few days or so, and it should be a fun one from a more tropical locale. :)
