A Photographer’s Guide to Ohio, Volume 2: Volume 2

By Lucy E. Salyer and Guy L. Denny

Ian Adams is perhaps the best-known landscape photographer in Ohio, and in the first volume of A Photographer’s Guide to Ohio, he shared his knowledge of what to photograph in the Buckeye State and how to photograph it. Now, in this second volume, Adams expands on his previous work, adding over 120 natural features, scenic rivers and byways, zoos and public gardens, historic buildings and murals, and even winter lighting displays to the list of places to visit and photograph in Ohio. In addition to advice on photographing landscapes, he offers tips for capturing excellent images of butterflies and dragonflies.

Recognizing the rapid development of new technologies, Adams includes pointers on smartphone photography, lighting and composition, digital workflow, and sharing images across a variety of platforms. The book is illustrated with more than 100 color photographs.

Comprehensive and concise, these two volumes make up a travel and photography guide to almost 300 of Ohio’s most noteworthy and beautiful outdoor places.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Release date: May 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9780821445198

Lucy E. Salyer

Ian Adams has twenty-one photography books and more than sixty-five Ohio calendars to his credit. He conducts nature and garden photography seminars, workshops, and slide programs throughout North America and teaches digital photography at Ohio State University’s Agricultural Technical Institute in Wooster.

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A Photographer’s Guide to Ohio

Volume 2

Ian Adams

Foreword by Guy L. Denny

Ohio University Press

Athens

Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

ohioswallow.com

© 2015 by Ohio University Press

All rights reserved

To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at [phone] or [phone] (fax).

Printed in the United States of America

Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper ™

25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1

Display photos: page i, Lincoln Theater, Massillon; page ii, Triangle Lake Bog State Nature Preserve; pages iv–v, Lake Erie, Headlands Beach State Park; page xv, Pumpkins, Circleville Pumpkin Show.

Maps by Brian Edward Balsley, GISP

e-ISBN: 978-0-8214-4519-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Adams, Ian

A photographer’s guide to Ohio / Ian Adams ; with a foreword by Guy L. Denny.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8214-1960-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Ohio—Guidebooks. 2. Ohio—Description and travel. 3. Landscape photography—Ohio—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 4. Landscapes—Ohio—Pictorial works. 5. Ohio—Pictorial works. I. Title.

F489.3.A43 2011

917.7104--dc22

2010054479

Foreword

When the pioneer settlers arrived in the Ohio lands, they found a remarkable living tapestry of wild and diverse landscape types. These included primeval forests, pristine waterways, extensive marshes, bogs and fens, lush tall grass prairies, and numerous other such natural wonders blanketing the state from the banks of the Ohio to the shores of Lake Erie. Today, as a leading agricultural and industrial state, little remains of Wild Ohio. Yet, pockets of fragmented, but high-quality, natural areas, remnants of a once vast and pristine wilderness, survive tucked away here and there throughout our state.

Ian Adams, with his exquisite photos that have been extensively published in numerous books, posters, calendars, and other media, has made it his life work to ferret out these natural wonders and bring them to life through his photographic expertise for all Ohioans who haven’t had the opportunity to discover them on their own. There are few such natural gems in Ohio that Ian hasn’t visited, studied, and photographed.

In his first volume, A Photographer’s Guide to Ohio, Ian shares his wealth of knowledge as one of Ohio’s foremost nature photographers and naturalists, giving in-depth information about each site featured, as well as sharing the secrets of his trade as a photographer. Now, in Volume 2, we continue that journey with his introducing us to many marvelous new sites and features that beg to be examined and photographed. Ian provides a wealth of fascinating information about each feature and shares photographic tips that he has learned over the years. His new book is a treasure trove of in-depth information for both amateur and professional photographers alike who want to explore and share the natural wonders of Ohio with others. Ian is not just an accomplished naturalist, he is a highly skilled professional photographer with a keen artistic eye that sees not only the beauty in nature, but also the beauty in texture, color, and structure of man-made art. He shares this journey with us as we explore natural areas, scenic rivers, scenic byways, waterfalls, state champion trees, zoos and public gardens, and many other scenic features in the Ohio landscape.

As the eminent Harvard scholar and author Stephen Jay Gould wrote in Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History, Yet I also appreciate that we cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature—for we will not fight to save what we do not love (but only appreciate in some abstract sense). . . . We really must make room for nature in our hearts.

Or, as Baba Dioum, the internationally renowned conservationist from the West African nation of Senegal, simply stated in 1968 during a speech he gave in New Delhi, India, at a gathering of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, For in the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, we will understand only what we are taught.

It is through the photos of special scenic landscapes and other scenic features we take and share with others that we teach others about the value of conservation and the need to protect rarity and beauty. It is with this effort, sharing what we know and love with others through the lens of a camera, that we, in turn, teach others so they, too, may understand, love, and fight to conserve these special places and features. For, after all, in the end, that is what scenic landscape photography is really all about.

Guy L. Denny

Guy L. Denny is the retired chief, ODNR Division of Natural Areas & Preserves, and has served as the executive director of the Ohio Biological Survey. He is president of the Ohio Natural Areas & Preserves Association (ONAPA).

Acknowledgments

I am especially indebted to the staff of Ohio University Press for their continuing support of my Ohio photography. In particular, Gillian Berchowitz, Beth Pratt, Nancy Basmajian, and Chiquita Babb have guided my efforts, carried out painstaking editing of the text, and designed and produced a beautiful book. Brian Balsley designed the excellent regional maps.

Fellow Ohio photographers David FitzSimmons, Jennie Jones, Don Iannone, Gary Meszaros, Jim Roetzel, Randall Schieber, and Art Weber have provided insight, valuable advice, and suggestions about places to include in this guide. Special thanks are due to Karen Pugh, gallery manager at the National Center for Nature Photography in Berkey, Ohio, for hosting two exhibits of my Ohio photography.

I would like to thank Terry Lanker, Chair of the Division of Horticultural Technologies at Ohio State University’s Agricultural Technical Institute (ATI) in Wooster, and Laura Deeter for the opportunity to teach a horticultural photography program at ATI.

I have been privileged to know and work with many of Ohio’s finest naturalists, including Linda Gilbert, Bob Glotzhober, Cheryl Harner, Jim McCormac, John Pogacnik, Rick Nirschl, Larry Rosche, Judy Semroc, and Peter Whan. I am indebted to Guy L. Denny for the foreword to this book, and for his friendship and support for my Ohio photography for more than twenty years.

Many friends and professional colleagues have provided encouragement, good company, and support, including John Baskin, Lisa Bowers, Bob Gable, Shyna Gawell, Alice Goumas and Keith Misner, Paula Harper, Marcy Hawley, Mike Hocker, Nancy Howell, George and Katie Hoy, David and Elsie Kline, Elaine Marsh, Mary Ann and Tom Romito, Valerie Strong and George Faddoul, Jack and Barbara Renner, Bert Szabo, and Hope and Bob Taft.

Finally, I am always thankful for the ongoing support and encouragement of my family: Margie and Tony McCarthy, Neil and Sandi Adams, Kelly and Matt Schron, Stacy and Eric Boise, and my fine feline companions, Fuji and Spicer.

Introduction

During the past forty years I have been fortunate to travel more than half a million miles in Ohio, exploring the natural, rural, historical, and garden areas of the Buckeye State. These travels have produced thousands of color photographs, on film and memory card, the best of which have been published in more than fifteen books and sixty-five Ohio calendars. I’m often asked at slide programs and workshops to name my favorite places in Ohio for taking pictures. My response: Wherever in Ohio I happen to be at the time! My answer never changes, because there are scenic places to photograph in every one of the eighty-eight counties in the Buckeye State.

In June 2011 Ohio University Press published my book A Photographer’s Guide to Ohio, the first guide to finding and photographing more than one hundred and fifty of Ohio’s best scenic vistas; natural areas and preserves; waterfalls; public gardens and arboretums; historic barns and bridges, gristmills, and rural areas; and buildings and murals. Much to our delight, the initial printing of 1,000 copies sold out in seven weeks and the book is now well into its second printing.

Since 1990 I have been privileged to conduct more than two hundred seminars and workshops throughout North America in nature, garden, landscape, and travel photography. At these programs the topics include selecting and using digital point-and-shoot (P&S) and single-lens-reflex (SLR) cameras; controlling exposure and depth-of-field; principles of lighting and composition; using tripods, filters, and other accessories; fine-tuning digital photos using Photoshop, Lightroom, and other image editors on a PC or Mac; and sharing digital photos with family, friends, and clients using email, slide programs, websites, brochures, color prints, and self-published books. A summary of this material, essentially a primer on digital landscape photography, was included as the first chapter in A Photographer’s Guide to Ohio.

During the past four years the world of photography has continued to change at a rapid pace. More than half of all the world’s photographs today are now taken with cell phones, and new mirrorless digital cameras are becoming very popular. Millions of photographs are shared every day using Facebook and other social media, and self-published books and eBooks are commonplace. In A Photographer’s Guide to Ohio: Volume 2, I have included an overview of this technological revolution in picture taking and some of the implications for the Ohio landscape and nature photographer.

Ohio is blessed with several hundred state nature preserves and wildlife areas, of which more than forty, including waterfalls, were profiled in A Photographer’s Guide to Ohio. Another forty are described in this new book, including some of Ohio’s most photogenic geological sites, champion trees, wetlands, and prairies. I have also included an overview of Ohio’s fourteen state scenic rivers, which add up to more than 800 miles, and the Buckeye State’s twenty-seven state scenic byways, which cover more than 2,300 miles and include five national scenic byways.

Ohio is fortunate to have five world-class zoos, which are home to thousands of fascinating and photogenic animals, and I have included a chapter on them, together with some additional public gardens and arboretums omitted from A Photographer’s Guide to Ohio. Also new is a chapter on some of Ohio’s best holiday lighting displays and tips on how to photograph them. The final chapter covers more than twenty additional historical buildings and other sites, a few more of Ohio’s best town murals, and three of the most picturesque festivals held annually in the Buckeye State.

Some readers may wonder why the such-and-such nature preserve, or their favorite building, isn’t in the book, so a word on how I picked the places in this new guide is in order.

First, all the sites in this book are open to the public and freely accessible. Most are free, except for zoos and a few public gardens that charge a small entrance fee. Second, each place I describe is appealing from a photographic viewpoint. At least I think so. In general I have included Ohio natural areas with great views or with eye-catching displays of one or more kinds of wildflowers rather than a handful of rare or endangered plants; there are already too many admirers trampling the ground around these rarities—or worse—in order to add another picture-perfect close-up to their photographic collections. Ohio ranks third in the nation in its number of historic sites on the National Register of Historic Places, with more than 3,600 places, but only a small number are picturesque enough to be included in this guide. I have supplied numerous references, so, if you would like to discover other sites, you can use this guide as a steppingstone for your extended explorations.

I have visited and photographed each of the places described in this book, most of them more than once and some of them many times over the years, so you can be confident that information in this book is based on my experience as an Ohio traveler and photographer and not just on word of mouth or unconfirmed information.

For each place described, I have included the location and, if available, a telephone number and a website where you can find more information. For most of the places, I have also included a GPS location, expressed in decimal degrees (not degrees, minutes, and seconds). For waterfalls and buildings, which have a relatively small geographical footprint, the GPS location has been established from Google Maps. For nature preserves, public gardens, and other places that cover a larger area, the GPS location given is for the visitor center or the main parking area. For scenic rivers and byways, I have included the GPS location of both ends of the corridor or route. Six color-coded regional maps of Ohio are included at the end of the book to help you plan your photography trips around the Buckeye State.

Many place narratives include tips on the best time or season for photography, based on my visits, and, in some cases, suggested ways to interpret the subject from a photographic point of view. However, don’t expect to find specific instructions on exactly where to stand or what lens, f/stop, and shutter speed to use—this isn’t a cookie-cutter guide to Ohio travel photography. Use the information in this book to decide if you want to visit a place, but when you get there explore each location visually from your own perspective and decide how you would like to interpret and photograph the subject. Travel photography is a never-ending journey, and each time I return to a favorite Ohio location I challenge myself to find new ways to view the subject through my camera’s viewfinder.

Many of us, especially birders, like to keep lists, and judging by the number of books available with titles like Five Hundred Places to Visit in ____ Before You Die, some people view travel, and, by implication, travel photography as a race. This often promotes a competitive been there . . . done that way of thinking which results in spur-of-the-moment snapshots, taken from familiar vantage points, rather than imaginative and original photographs based on an in-depth visual exploration of the subject. Take your time! Resist the herd mentality of following the crowds to the nearest scenic overlook, taking a quick point-and-shoot photograph with a smartphone, then hurrying back to your vehicle to move on to the next must visit place. National Geographic photographers, who are among the world’s best, typically spend many months on location and submit thousands of images on their assigned subject to the magazine’s photo editors, who select fewer than twenty photographs for most finished articles. You may not have the luxury of devoting this much time to your Ohio photography adventures, but in the long run the more time you spend exploring a place, and the more familiar you become with it, the better will be your photographs.

An Overview of Digital Landscape and Nature Photography

The primary purpose of this book is to provide a guide to Ohio’s best natural and man-made landscapes for photography. However, the book is not intended to be a detailed reference manual on digital landscape photography. There are many excellent books that cover this topic in depth, and a few of my favorites are listed at the end of this chapter. I especially recommend John and Barbara Gerlach’s book, Digital Landscape Photography, which provides an excellent account of equipment and techniques for taking great landscape photographs. My book, The Art of Garden Photography, covers most of the information you will need for photographing gardens, but this book was completed in 2003 when I was still shooting mostly film, and it has limited information about digital cameras.

What are the key elements of a great landscape or nature photograph?

I pose this question at each of my photography seminars and workshops. I receive a variety of responses, but five critical elements of an excellent photograph in my opinion are:

1. An interesting or beautiful subject

2. Optimal sharpness and depth-of-field

3. Correct exposure

4. Great lighting

5. Strong composition

The rest of this chapter provides an overview of digital camera equipment and basic camera settings; techniques for optimizing sharpness and exposure; some thoughts on lighting and composition in landscape photography; and suggestions for fine-tuning, storing, and sharing your digital photographs. For more in-depth information, consult the references at the end of the chapter.

Smartphone Photography

Today, more than 50 percent of all the photographs taken in the world are taken with a cell phone camera, almost 60 percent of Americans own a smartphone, and one-and-a-half billion photos are taken with a cell phone every day. In its November 2012 issue, Time Magazine used an iPhone photograph of Hurricane Sandy on the cover.

My own introduction to mobile photography (i.e., photographs taken with cell phones) also occurred in November 2012 when I purchased an iPhone 5 as part of renewing my cell phone contract with AT&T. That winter I read every magazine article and book on iPhone photography that I could lay my hands on and took hundreds of iPhone photographs. I was very impressed by the high quality of the iPhone 5’s photographs, as well as by the simplicity and ease-of-use of Apple’s iOS (operating system) 6 and the enormous number of inexpensive apps (computer programs) available to run on the iPhone. In April 2013 I conducted my first half-day iPhone photography workshop. It proved to be so popular that I have carried out several more, both for the public and also for several organizations whose employees use iPhones. I have no experience with Android phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy models, or with Windows phones, such as those made by Nokia, but most of my comments below relating to the iPhone should also be of value when using other smartphone cameras.

The best camera, it is often said, is the one you always have with you—your iPhone. An iPhone is very lightweight and unobtrusive, and the 8-megapixel main camera in the newer iPhones is capable of producing high quality photographs which are more than adequate for sharing online and which can easily be enlarged for use in magazine articles, books, and color inkjet prints up to about 11×14 inches in size. The iPhone’s fixed wide-angle lens, roughly equivalent to a 28mm in 35mm terms, is excellent for scenic photography; the iPhone can also be used for close-up photographs of subjects as near as 4 inches from the camera.

The iPhone’s camera has some limitations for photography. It is not well suited to fast-action subjects, such as sports; or high-contrast subjects; or wildlife photography, which requires a long-focus lens. The fixed 28mm wide-angle lens is not a great lens for head-and-shoulders portrait photography, and the iPhone camera is not a good choice for photographs requiring shallow depth-of-field, or for making color inkjet prints that need to be larger than 11×14 inches. High-end digital point-and-shoot (P&S) or single-lens-reflex (SLR) cameras are better suited to these subjects and tasks.

The very low-powered LED flash that is built into most smartphones is virtually useless and I recommend leaving it set to off. I set the HDR (high dynamic range) setting to on at all times. You can also activate a grid of lines on the screen designed to help position a subject when you would like to use a rule-of-thirds approach in composing a photograph. The PANO setting activates the iPhone’s excellent facility for taking panoramic photographs.

Try to hold your iPhone as still as possible when taking a photograph. Spread your feet for extra stability. Hold the iPhone with both hands and tuck your elbows into your sides. By all means, lean on a tree, wall, or other solid object to further immobilize the iPhone. Shoot like a sniper—take a breath, hold it, gently press the shutter button on the iPhone’s screen, and release your breath. With Apple’s iOS 6, the photograph is not taken until you release your finger from the surface of the screen. This procedure has (sadly) been removed in Apple’s iOS 7, but you can reinstate it by using the Pureshot app on your iPhone and activating the appropriate shutter setting.

The new Samsung Galaxy K smartphone, announced in May 2014, includes a 10x optical zoom, but the iPhone 5/5s and most other smartphones are only equipped with a digital zoom, in which you can digitally crop the image to magnify a section of it. Don’t use it—the image quality is very poor. Instead, zoom with your feet—get closer to the subject. There is also an excellent capture app called ClearCam with an Enhance option that effectively doubles the resolution of the iPhone—great for making large prints from your iPhone photos.

The iPhone allows you to organize your photos into albums, which makes it much easier to find the photo you are looking for when you have accumulated hundreds of images on your iPhone camera roll. You can also synchronize your iPhone with your iPad, Mac, or PC using the iTunes program which can be downloaded for free from Apple’s website. Apple’s iCloud facility can be used to back up your photographs and includes five gigabytes of free online storage.

The iPhone provides basic editing capabilities that allow you to crop your iPhone photos, remove redeye from portraits, rotate photos, and apply some basic filters. I don’t use any of these features, preferring to fine-tune my iPhone photos on my home/office PC, using Photoshop or Lightroom, exactly the same way I fine-tune photos taken with my Nikon SLR cameras. Edit your iPhone photos with the image editor(s) you are most familiar with on the largest screen or monitor you have available. That said, it’s fine to edit your iPhone photos on an iPad, which provides a much larger screen than the iPhone and allows you to use more sophisticated programs such as Adobe Photoshop Touch and Adobe Lightroom Mobile as well as simpler image editors such as Snapseed, an excellent, easy-to-use program that is free for the iPhone and iPad. All of these programs allow you to quickly post a photo to your Facebook page or to Twitter, or attach a photo to an email or a text message, or even make a print if your printer is configured for Airprint or WiFi.

There are also hundreds of iPhone/iPad apps that will allow you to create fine art from your iPhone photos. Two of my favorites are Aquarella, which transforms a photograph into a watercolor painting, and Moku Hanga, which creates an emulation of a Japanese woodcut.

I have no doubt that the next few years will bring even more powerful cameras and other photographic features to iPhones and other smartphones, making these amazing devices more and more competitive with larger digital cameras, especially P&S cameras, which smartphones are already beginning to render obsolete. In the meantime, have fun with the camera that is always with you—your smartphone!

Digital Cameras and Lenses

Point-and-shoot digital cameras are ubiquitous today, and they offer several advantages, including compact size, many automatic features, and affordability. The more advanced P&S cameras, such as the Canon Powershot and Sony Cyber-shot series, provide excellent image quality and many of the features of entry-level digital SLR (DSLR) cameras.

However, P&S cameras also have some disadvantages, including: no optical viewfinders (or optical viewfinders with limited coverage); relatively small sensors; minimal depth-of-field control; some digital noise at high ISO settings; limited or no facility for using filters; minimal flash capabilities; and, in some models, no raw file availability. Although camera manufacturers continue to release scores of new P&S cameras each year, increasing competition from smartphones is steadily eroding the market share of P&S cameras.

Digital SLR cameras have sensors that are roughly the same size as a piece of 35mm film (FX), or about a third smaller (DX). The full-frame (FX) cameras, primarily from Nikon and Canon, are rugged, sophisticated cameras designed for heavy use by professional photographers and they carry a hefty price tag. The smaller, APS-size (DX) SLR cameras are much less expensive, and are an excellent choice for most landscape and nature photography. The main reason to consider a full-frame SLR, such as the 36-megapixel Nikon D800/800E or the Canon 5D Mark 3, for landscape photography is to obtain a larger sensor, which produces images that can be used to make mural size prints. The major limitations of SLR cameras are their larger size, higher cost, and the need to remove dust from their digital sensors from time to time. Entry-level SLRs from Canon and Nikon, the two major SLR manufacturers, are capable of producing professional-quality landscape photographs. So, if you have a limited budget, my advice is to purchase an inexpensive SLR camera body and invest in the best lenses you can afford. For landscape photography, your first purchase should be a wide-angle zoom lens, such as a 16–85mm or 18–55mm zoom; your next lens purchase, a 70–200mm or 70–300mm zoom. These two lenses will handle virtually all of your landscape photography needs. A macro lens, preferably a 180mm or 200mm, is very desirable if you plan to do a lot of close-up photography, and a longer telephoto lens, such as a 400mm or 500mm, is needed for some types of wildlife photography. Top-grade professional lenses are made from metal alloy and are very durable,