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Chicago at Night

It has been a while since I last went out and did some night photography around Chicago. I had been meaning for a while to go and photograph the Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park at night when they have the light and music show. This was supposed to be a relatively quick trip out but ended up being a rather longer expedition.

Chicago at night is a great place to photograph. It is fine to walk around at night and there are usually a bunch of people out and about. However, do you do get a feeling that the city is yours and that you aren’t sharing it with the tourist masses. The night lighting is also a lot more generous to sights that look less impressive during the day. The dark hides a lot of the blemishes!

The show at the fountain takes place every hour on the hour. I got down at 8pm which was just after sundown. This wasn’t such a good plan as, even at the end of the 20 minute display, it really wasn’t dark enough to get the benefit of the lights. I figured I would try again another time but ended up taking enough shots of details around the fountain that soon it was sufficiently close to the hour again that there was no point in leaving. The 9pm show was certainly more photogenic – even if I had to take a few angles that concealed some of the construction sites on the skyline.

With some shots in the bag, I headed back in the direction of home. however, along the way were plenty of things to shoot as well. The Art Institute, the Pritzker Pavilion and the bean were all there along with the goings on of Millennium Park. It ended up being pretty late by the time I finally headed home. I have now whetted my appetite for some more night shooting so hopefully it won’t be too long before I am back out.

Pullman

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For the longest time I have been thinking about paying a visit to Pullman. Pullman is a town on the south-side of Chicago that was created by the Pullman Palace Car Company, a railroad car builder at the end of the 19th Century. Having read some history of Chicago, Pullman has an interesting position in the way things have developed. It was an ideal town created to allow the workers to have everything they could need and probably a lot more than they would have had if they were working elsewhere in Chicago at the time.

Of course, the story is not all sweetness and light. Having a controlled environment like that had other consequences and, when the economy tanked and the sale of railcars fell, the workers had their wages cut but miraculously the “market forces” did not result in the company owned housing rents following suit. It all ended in a nasty strike which was ultimately broken by the federal government. If you want the full history lesson, I guess I am not the one and there are better places to research.

Anyway, we finally got around to taking a trip down to have a look around. There is a visitors center where they gave us a walking tour guide. While the factory was mostly destroyed by fire in recent years, the majority of the town is still there to see. It is a great neighborhood to wander around and everyone we met on the street was very friendly. A number of the properties are in the process of being restored by the owners. Others are in worse shape. However, the place has a really interesting feel to it.

A sunny day always makes a wander around a new place more fun. We were there in the middle of the day so not the best lighting for shooting but the trip wasn’t primarily for photography – just for exploration of a place we’d not been to before. Therefore, the shots aren’t amongst my best but they are fine for the time-being. It is always a good challenge to try and make something worthwhile out of some harsh light and shadows.

Time Lapse Fun

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One gift I got for my birthday was an intervalometer. I have been interested in time lapse photography for years but never got around to trying it out properly. The intervalometer I got was a third party device which is a fraction of the price of the official Canon version! A couple of posts ago I included some time lapse video in Chicago. Here are a few more videos that I have put together in the recent months.

Cultural Center Part 2

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After the visit of Bonnie, Gary and Julie the other week, I was determined to head back to the Cultural Center and have a bit more of a plan this time. Following on from my wanderings along the river to watch the bridges opening, I headed across to the Cultural Center to take another look at what I could get.

This time I had two advantages. First, having been there before, I had a better idea what I was looking at. Second, during our previous visit, a private event had been taking place in one of the halls under the glass domes so we could only see it obliquely. This time, no events were taking place and I had freedom to wander where I wanted. This proved even better because I hadn’t realized that there was another room further on that also was fascinating to see.

What I hadn’t brought with me was a proper tripod. I had a couple of supports that I had brought (including a Gorillapod) but they were only useful in certain situations. Therefore, I had to practice my best hand holding at low shutter speeds for some of the shots. All good practice! For a lot of the locations, this wasn’t a problem. However, in the open rooms, ramping up the ISO was necessary although balancing the shutter speed against the noise levels was a trade off that had to be made.

The interior has a lot of interesting places to shoot. Some of them offer clear opportunities and this time I came equipped with a wider lens to accommodate the width of shot available. Some of the other areas have great detail and interesting features but I have yet to find a good way to represent that in the shots. At least that leaves me with more reasons to go back for another try.

There is a wide range of light within some of the rooms and trying to represent that tends to lead me to some HDR work. I tried out a bunch of shots with HDR and when I got home, experimented with different ways of processing the HDR. Some of these are aimed at a realistic interpretation and some are more dramatic. The patterns and colors can make the dramatic finishes look very interesting but too much of the same thing gets boring fast so I am still playing with other finishes. For those HDR experts out there, let me know if you have some good ideas.

Signs of Spring?

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One of the things that is a sign of spring arriving in Chicago is the movement of boats back out into the lake. Given how cold it gets here in the winter, the boats that fill the marinas along the lake during the summer months all head inland to storage once the temperature starts to drop. Having your boat frozen into the ice that covers the water during the winter is probably not good for it.

Chicago, being built along a river, has a ton of bridge. These are mostly “bascule” bridges – cantilevered bridges that are balanced with weights in such a way that very little effort is needed to lift them. In days gone by, the bridges would open frequently for the regular river traffic of the commercial vessels. These days, the boat trade on the river is focused on the tourist boats and they can clear the bridges when they are lowered. Also, road traffic is heavy now so opening the bridges can be quite disruptive.

Therefore, there is a limited opening schedule for the boats to get out to the lake in the spring and a return schedule in the fall to get everyone back in. The first opening of the season occurred the other day and I decided to wander out and see how it was going. I have photographed the bridges near me many times, often in lovely weather. This time I decided to go to some other bridges (and do it on a grotty day)! I can’t plan the weather so maybe a chance to try some other ideas.

I didn’t realize that the first opening might also be an opportunity for the city staff to work out any kinks in the bridge openings that have arisen over the winter. Let’s just say it wasn’t speedy! However, once you have committed to the task, you have to see it through.

I guess the boat owners know about the problems with the first opening of the season. Not too many boats were coming through. Maybe I will learn the lesson too! However, the process, while drawn out, did go ahead and the bridges opened in sequence along the river. I decided to hang out near the join in the two branches of the river. Here there are a couple of bridges that also have “L” tracks above them so make for a more complex bridge. They also look a little interesting when opened up. The light was a bit tricky but it was a fun way to start the day anyway. Now to continue on to see what else is going on in the city…

Out of Practice

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A weekend day crops up with some good light, a relatively clear schedule and a feeling that it has been a while since I was shooting some aircraft. If it flies, I am interesting in taking its picture. If pressed, military and rotary are the favorites for me but I am not a snob and I am more than happy to take pictures of airliners if the opportunity presents itself.

O’Hare is not far away and Midway is even closer. Both are busy fields but they are not a source of much diversity when it comes to traffic. Midway is Southwest heaven but not a lot else (although there are a fair few business jets every once in a while). O’Hare is fine if you want a lot of United Express and American Eagle regional jets. However, there is a period in the middle of the afternoon when a lot of the European traffic comes in and that is what tempted me to venture up that way.

It was also an opportunity to make use of some technology. I have had times in the past when I finally gave up after a steady stream on the same old stuff, only to head down the road as something very interesting shows up. Now, with Flightaware on my phone and LiveATC’s app streaming, it is a lot easier to be aware of what is due in and when. Makes for a more relaxing time!

The afternoon arrivals also coincide with the sun coming round to the right location so all looked good, as long as the weather was prepared to hold. No tension being built here – the weather stayed great!

I showed up ahead of the main arrival times although I was just a little too late to catch and AeroUnion A300. It left while I was there but the perimeter fence means nothing useful to show of that. However, we did have a great selection of stuff to get my first big afternoon of shooting in. There is also the normal stream of the local stuff and I didn’t ignore that completely but usually only to try something I wouldn’t go for on a one off arrival.

We had KLM, British Airways, Aer Lingus, Turkish Airlines and Royal Jordanian amongst others. The Turkish jet had a large Manchester United logo on the side but I didn’t hold that against them. Royal Jordanian really do have a very attractive livery. Only Iberia let us down by arriving on the center runway rather than the southern where we were. Ho hum!

All in all a great day out and a nice way to spend some time in the sun – outdoors after the generally dull winter we have had so far. As if to round that point out, that evening it snowed a bit again! What is going on?

What a drip!

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A couple of years ago I had a go at shooting water droplets splashing around. It was something I had been meaning to do for a long time so I tried setting up an arrangement to make it work. It was a bit of an effort but I got some results with it although, I have to admit I was probably a little disappointed with the outcome. Given how much of a pain it had been to set up, I was not hurrying to have another go.

Time ticks by and recently I was looking at the Facebook page of Gerry Holtz, a friend in LA, and he had been doing the whole water droplet thing as well. Needless to say, he had done a far better job of it than I had. The images were very cool and he had made some good use of color as well as alternative arrangements into which the water was dropping. Very impressive stuff.

Seeing this made me want to have another go and I was mulling doing just that when I saw a link to a video online with a guy called Gavin Hoey in the UK demonstrating his setup for shooting water droplets. Uncanny coincidence, don’t you think. I watched his video which can be seen here and realized I had been making it all far more complicated than absolutely necessary. So, I have inspiration by seeing someone do a good job and method from someone who knew how to make it a lot easier so what is stopping me from having another go? Nothing!

So, this time I am feeling a little better about the results. Some focus issues still to be resolved on some of them (and water doesn’t always splash in exactly the same place each time so guess what the focus will be on the most interesting shots!) but still, not too bad. Certainly enough to encourage me to think about doing it again soon.

Here is a gallery to show you the results.