Monthly Archives: April 2012

Looking Down on Everyone

If you thought I was suggesting I look down on others, you were right – just not in the way your thought???  Having visitors provides an opportunity to do the sightseeing things that the city has to offer.  One of those things is to go to the top of tall buildings and look down on the world around you.  We went with the option of the Sears Tower, sometimes referred to these days as the Willis Tower but not by too many people I suspect!

This is the most popular one for tourists visiting the city so an early start is advisable if you want to avoid some very lengthy lines.  Early morning also means the sun is over the lake so is not too bad from the point of view of grabbing shots away from the lake.  All of this is helped if the windows are clean which, sadly, they weren’t this time but what can you do?

A more recent feature of the Skydeck is the glass cubes that extend out over the Wacker Drive side of the building.  Having the chance to stand over the street below is amusing to lots of people and a little scary to others.  A school party of teenage girls resulted in lots of squealing but I guess that is par for the course.

It is fun to see how people react to the chance to stand in space.  Most people are with others and you get a lot of interacting.  Others take it as a lonesome moment and just look out.  You have to make the most of the moment since the next group will be with you before too long!

Floral Fun

This one isn’t a complicated post.  It is just some flowers really!  We had visitors for the weekend and were out wandering around the city.  The sun was out and so were plenty of flowers.  I don’t claim these flowers sprouted perfectly for me.  Usually someone has brought them in and transplanted them into the planters to make the place always look good.  However, some of them were actually growing where we saw them.

Anyway, I am not really a flower shooter but I was pleased to see them and thought I would grab a few shots.  No-one is going to be gasping over their brilliance but who cares?  They were pretty and the sun was out so what is there to worry about?

Skating Action

Some time last year I wrote a blog post about photographing some guys jumping bikes in a park here in Chicago.  If you want to check that out, this is the post.  I had been inspired by a great book by Syl Arena on flash photography and what can be achieved to freeze fast action and to add drama to the shots.  This has also got me interested in trying another sport, skating (the skateboard variety, not ice).  They are a couple of skate parks along Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, one north of us and one south.  I had never before managed to time it right to get to one of them but finally I have done it.

I got the park and a few people were skating around.  I watched for a while to see who was a more comfortable skater before asking whether anyone would let me take their picture.  One guy, Konrad, was kind of okay with the idea but seemed a bit skeptical.  Most other people were not keen.  Konrad had one location he had been making some good moves on so we set up there.  We grabbed a few shots from different angles with me mainly using a single light triggered by cable rather than IR.  This is tough stuff to do so you can’t just have them do it over again until you are happy.  They get worn out.

We grabbed a few shots and then Konrad went off to skate some other parts of the park.  When I got back, the shots were not too bad.  The use of a single light was not ideal as, with the deck in front you get quite a shadow cast.  Also, it reflected strongly which tended to limit the light on him.  Two lights will definitely be better.  Fortunately, a little work in Lightroom managed to enhance the balance on him a bit.  A first time out and not too bad.  Plenty to improve on next time though.

Some Board of Trade Video

Over a year ago I shot a job that Midwest were undertaking on the Board of Trade building here in Chicago.  The job was spread over three weekends and I was there for the first two.  The job involved lifting a lot of steelwork and piping into location at the back of the building where the steelwork was then assembled using the helicopter to move the individual pieces into position.

All of this was a touch trickier since the assembly location was close to the building which is pretty high.  Therefore, 300′ of lifting line had to be used which made the job of maneuvering the helicopter to position the loads just that bit harder!  The final week involved the cooling towers being put in place but I could not be there for that.

I shot a bunch of stills but also got a fair amount of video which, at the time I did nothing with.  While doing some work on my database recently, I realized just how much footage I had and decided to have a shot at editing it down to something a bit more digestible.  Here is the result.

Marina City

When you live in a city that has a bunch of recognizable landmarks, you start out by taking a lot of pictures of them.  After a while, you figure that you have done all of that and move on.  However, you have never done everything you could and so, every once in a while, it is worth trying again with something familiar in case you come up with something new.

So it has proved to be with Marina City.  These two towers (also colloquially known as the corn cobs) are just a couple of blocks from where we live.  When we first moved here I certainly shot them a lot.  Recently, I was wandering back along the river and decided to pay them a quick visit.  I was going for a couple of shots when I got there.  One is to crop in close on the structures to turn them into something more abstract.  The other was to get between them and shoot straight up to turn them into something different.

I had a wide angle zoom and a fish-eye with me, both of which can have advantages with these types of shots.  The access to the buildings is very good so I had a lot of opportunity to mess around with variations on the theme.  In the end, the ones you see here are some of those that I liked the most from the effort.  I shall now ponder for a while whether there is something different I should try next time.

Trying the New Spot in Better Light

I recently posted about a trip to O’Hare in some crummy weather when I didn’t end up with many good results.  One of the better aspects of that visit was that I found a nice location directly under the approach to 14R.  This provides some good head on shot opportunities.  Head on shots are kind of fun I find.  They are a different perspective to normal and mix things up a bit.  You can’t do it all of the time or it is dull but it does make for some more dynamic shots that the standard side on pass.

I waited to see when the right combination of wind and weather would occur so that I could get the morning light just off the nose when this runway was in use again.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait particularly long.  Things lined up quite nicely so I popped out to have a look.  My desire to stay in bed meant that I was about five minutes too late to catch the ANA arrival from Japan but others were on the way so it was a nuisance but not a huge loss.  However, en route I did take a look at the south side of the field for other possible shooting locations.

I had shot a few years back at a spot that provided a great view of aircraft departing off 22L, many of which turn quite early after departure giving some topside views.  This spot ended up having a warehouse facility built on it which was a nuisance.  however, further development in the area has provided some spots to park so I checked out one of these and it seems a reasonable option.  Then I headed to the approach.

In good light it seems to work really well.  I experimented with wide angle shots as they pass overhead as well as long lens shots that crop tightly in on the aircraft as it gets closer.  Both seem to have some merit.  I didn’t stay too long as there was a gap in the larger arrivals so I headed back to my other new spot to try a few departure shots.  Then it was back to the approach for the last of the big jets and then home.  Not a bad morning really and with the day only just started, plenty of time to do other things.

What Animals Are in Your Local Park?

With a lovely spring weekend day, the city provides a lot of opportunities to hang out and enjoy yourself.  One of these is Lincoln Park.  Not a long walk from us but certainly a quicker bus ride gets you to the park.  It is amazing how quickly the spring transformation is underway.  The trees are rapidly filling out with leaves and the wildlife is also making itself obvious.  There are certainly worse places to be on a weekend.

If you want to ramp up the wildlife, the park also has the zoo which is free to visit.  It had been a while since we went there so we decided to take a look around.  Since you can wander in and out at will, you don’t always end up looking at everything and this time was no exception.  We did visit the big apes which is always a great experience.  Taking in the bats was something I hadn’t done for a while as well.

We could have looked at more but I had a strong urge to find some lunch so instead we went exploring of a different kind.  Maybe not as difficult as living in the wild but the results were certainly good.

I Thought These Bridges Were Moving

Spring in Chicago does not always arrive promptly but this year the absence of a real winter has meant that it has.  With nice weather comes the possibility of boating and that means the annual migration of the boats from their winter storage to the marinas for the summer.  For anyone with some height to their boat, i.e. sailing boats, this requires you to make use of the bi-weekly bridge opening schedule.

A look online told me that the first opening of the season was coming up on Saturday so I decided to take a look.  The weather was great and so some good shooting opportunities should have been available.  I wandered along the river inland since no bridges along the main stretch were open yet so I had time to get to Wolf Point where the river splits.  Along the way I grabbed a few shots of things that appealed to me.

At Wolf Point, I had two disappointments.  First, the water birds were very active right in front of me but I only had a wide angle and a fish-eye with me so no good opportunity to get any shots.  Second, looking all the way down the south branch, I couldn’t see any sign of activity.  Since I had a limited amount of time before Nancy and I were planning on heading out, this looked like it was going to be a bust.

So it turned out, I wandered back towards home and we went out.  When we returned in the middle of the afternoon, the bridges by us were just going down.  That many hours would have been a disappointingly long time to wait.  Maybe next week.

Trying and Failing with Bad Weather

Every once in a while you have what you think will be a good idea and it turns out you were wrong.  This is the story of one such event.  A weekend morning was looming and I felt like getting out and shooting.  The flights from Asia are morning arrivals at O’Hare and so are not often something I shoot.  A few of them appear and that is it.  Back to the RJs and 737s so I often don’t bother.  Also, the normal arrival pattern is not great for morning light.

This time they were coming in from the west so heading in to the light.  However, the weather forecast was a bit crummy.  The traditional thought is not to go since dull skies and mainly white planes are not a great combination.  However, two things made me think otherwise.  One was the possibility of the sun breaking through and illuminating the aircraft against a dark sky background.  That can look good.  The other was the possibility of a lot of vapor in the air making for some neat vortex effects and vapor clouds over the wings.

Consequently, I decided to give it a go.  I headed out having scoped out a potential location to shoot from that would give me a view of the arriving aircraft.  I have not shot over that side much before so a good location is not something I had.  There is a lot of industrial space over there so buildings can obscure the view and the ever present power lines are another consideration.  As it turned out, the spot I chose turned out to be quite reasonable.

That is where the rest of the plan starts to go wrong.  The sun did make a brief appearance.  The opening shot is probably the only one that really achieved what I was hoping for.  After that, the cloud cover thickened up and then the skies were pretty unhelpful.  My second hope for the moisture to give some good effects proved to be a little too optimistic.  There certainly were plenty of trailing vortices and occasional puffs of cloud above the wings but the gray background did not help make them stand out.

I decided that I was probably done for the day and started to drive south on my way home.  I then happened upon a few cars parked up at a spot directly under the approach to 14R.  I thought this might be worth a look and it certainly made for some good angles.  I grabbed a few shots before heading home but this was a spot I decided was worth a further visit.  More to come on that…