By Steve Polston

Before the middle of the last decade, Indianapolis had a wonderfully groomed park just south of the Statehouse. Pleasant place it was, especially for photographers.

This bulked up park had large shrubs, annual plantings and shady spots that contrived to bring humans out on warm days to stroll, sit, eat lunch and meet friends. It was a place that folks in suits and office-wear felt comfortable. The large and flowering shrubs had personalities, show-offs in the sun

One marveled at the idea of a city government that would care for its office workers so much that providing an exceptional outdoor space was a priority.

The park was awash in birdsong on many spring days. Local birders knew this as a place where migrating birds could drop down for a rest.

But half of the park was given over to construction of the Simon office tower for worldwide property managers and shopping mall magnates.

Today, their building boxes in the little park, which no longer is visible from the city’s main thoroughfare, Washington Street.

On two sides are hoteliers – The Westin and The Hyatt, and the fourth side of the park is the convention center.

It is apparent that the free ride for local office workers is over. Choice views of this green space are given away to out-of-towners and the park now resembles a corporate park in any suburban area of the United States. Monolithic buildings surround the park and the human is no longer made part of nature; the human is a speck of dust.

Large plazas in the world’s best cities can be places where locals gather to meet and greet, find a bit of shade in galleries and alleys or take in a stroll or watch birds with a sense of belonging to a familiar flock.

Photography in this environment – now – is more suited to a group photo for conventioneers, as the edges of the space are defined by windows, brick, and stone and glass walls. The conventioneers can come out to have cell phone conversations with the home office, or stop on the way to a corporate eatery in our city.

They will never see us, and we will never see them.

The piddling diatribe above is to set the scene for what I think is a challenge to photographers in this park, which is called Convention Center Plaza.

Super-wide lenses help bring in the edges of the environment, but the parallax on the edges of the lenses make buildings lean in or out of the frame.

Harsh light in an open environment means defining details are lost without context. Use medium lenses to put borders around objects. Use telephotos to blur backgrounds or focus on faraway objects.

Beware that even the hard space of this little corporate park contains interesting objects that are difficult to photograph because of their size.

You can see more of my work throughout the Examiner site or at my website, www.stevepolston.com.