For the sake of this story, we’re going to call my friend Jane, and Jane is the current manager of a northern Indiana state park.
That is literally as specific as she wants me to get.
I had sounded her for stories a couple months ago and she immediately replied that she had a perfect one for our site. Now I’ve finally gotten around to it. She asked that I keep her anonymous since state governments are not crazy about employees making unapproved public statement. But she’s 100% real, all right.
“Finally got around to do this story, huh?” she asked.
“I know, I know. I’ve had a pretty nasty backlog of–”
“It’s fine.” She waved me off and then nodded toward a two-gallon gas can. “Grab that, would ya?”
Like most park managers I’ve met, she’s perfunctory in almost everything. Park managers are like ship captains, and those that enjoy the job never want to be promoted out of it to become “admirals” (think Captain Kirk in Star Trek II, III and IV). Usually friendly and at-ease, she’s more used to making commands than conversation.
I handed her the can. She gave it a quick shake and then dumped some in the park’s Stihl weed whacker. The barn filled with the slippery smell of two-cycle gas. She primed it, flicked the choke and then gave it a tug. It roared to life. The brush cutting blades rotated into a yellow blur. After a minute she killed the engine, returning the weed whacker to its wall hooks.
“New carburetor,” she said. “Got some time now. How ‘bout a drive?” she asked-but-didn’t-ask. She was already hopping in the park’s Gator, transferring a dusty bag of tools from the passenger seat to the back.
Jane whipped the Gator out of the barn and then railed it down a trail into the park proper. Like most Indiana state parks, it was well-maintained but suffered from the perpetual shaggy grass syndrome that comes in the summers. With a skeletal staff, aging equipment and hundreds of acres to mow, it’s almost impossible to keep the grass neatly-manicured in any public park but the smallest.
But it wasn’t funding she wanted me to write about. Funding issues are an old, tired song.
“Hell of a coincidence, but your timing couldn’t be better. Yesterday I had a bunch of that s—t left on the brickwork by the lake. Then I found another spot this morning just south of the parking lot,” she shouted over the Gator’s diesel drone. “Easy to take pictures of.”
Five minutes later, Jane came to screeching halt by the small lake…which could also be described as a very large pond. Old brickwork lay in twisting paths around the lake, some of it recycled from a storage barn that resided on the property fifty years earlier.
She killed the engine and pointed. “There you go. Take some pictures.”
I did.
Parks are popular places to professional photographs, and becoming more popular every year. The old days of studio photos, with carefully-airbrushed complexions and draperies are dying off. People want more interesting backdrops. So they head to the parks. First, it’s free, and a hell of a lot cheaper than renting out a studio. Second, it gives options. There are hundreds of public parks in Indiana alone, enough to suit any occasion or taste.
But more than any factor is the rise of freelance photography. Digital photography and the increasing affordability of photo editing software has made the profession more lucrative and easily-accessible. Virtually anyone who wants to get into photography can. And people are getting photos to mark every occasion. Weddings, engagements, graduation, family photos…you name it, people want their memories documented by a professional eye.
