Category Archives: Chicago

Oak Park

Just west of downtown Chicago is an area called Oak Park. This is a pleasant enough suburb but it is a popular place if you are a fan of architecture. My sister was recently visiting and she is a big fan of Frank Lloyd Wright. He was responsible for a lot of buildings in the Oak Park area and had a house there himself which is now a museum to his work. Since she was in town, a trip out to take a look at the buildings seemed worthwhile.

There are a great variety of interesting houses in Oak Park with only some of them being Lloyd Wright creations. Some are obviously copying his prairie style and others are just funky in their own right. A stroll around certainly shows off some great houses. You will not be alone if you take this trip. There are plenty of visitors wandering around looking at the houses, most of whom have stopped off at the visitor center and rented the audio tour. I felt quite unusual to not have headphones on as I walked around!

The weather was quite friendly the day we were there. Some of the houses are painted colorfully so a sunny day really brings out the different hues. Making the trip either earlier in the day or later would certainly make the light a little less harsh but this wasn’t a photo tour for me but a trip for my sister. Getting some pictures as we went along was just a side benefit. I should probably try and plan another visit to suit photo taking but we shall see whether that ever squeezes its way into the schedule.

Millennium Park

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Millennium Park is one of the most popular attractions in Chicago so we obviously had to pay it a visit. At various times I have taken pictures of the park that I like. These show the park itself. However, one of the things I love about the place is the effect it has on people. The Bean in particular is great for people watching. They are all looking at their own reflections in the mirrored surface and it causes so many people so much fun, you just can’t help but enjoy the fun they are having.

The new Maggie Daley Park is being constructed at the moment. That cuts off a section of the park. I wonder when it will be finished and whether we will still be in Chicago to see it. I do hope so. A few other things have changed since my sister was last here including the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute. We took a walk across the bridge to see that before heading in to the loop. The Art Institute has a Picasso exhibit running and they have added his name to Daley Plaza in front of his sculpture there as part of the publicity for the exhibit. That seemed worth a look before we headed back.

Botanic Gardens

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As I have mentioned before, visitors provide a good reason to do things that I might otherwise put off. My sister being in town was a good source of reasons to do stuff! That included a trip to the Botanic Gardens. In a quirk of the weather we have had this spring in Chicago, this turned out to be a sunny day but a cool one with the temperature hanging around in the high 50s. We got into the 80s a couple of days later and then the 40s two days after that. Crazy stuff this year!

The Botanic Gardens are bursting into life in the spring so are a great sight. As with other tourist type trips, a visit in the middle of the day is not ideal photographically since the light is very harsh. However, that wasn’t the point. Enjoying the day was what it was all about and that we certainly did. Plenty of flowers were out in bloom. The trees have suddenly discovered leaves after being bare branched for what seems like forever.

Of course, we weren’t the only genii to have thought this was a good idea. The place was packed. I can’t blame everyone for wanting to be there but they do ruin some of my pictures! What are they thinking? In common with several places we go to, a trip a bit further from the visitor center does thin out the herd a bit. Walking too far is not what some people want to do. Good for me! I am not much of a flower photographer and shooting in the bare sun does not make for great flower shots but I gave a few a go anyway. Most of those will never see the light of day again, though…

Convertible Delivery Trucks

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The number of bridges and underpasses in the city mean there are plenty of signs showing vehicles what the height restrictions are. As someone who drives cars that will fit anywhere, I don’t pay a huge amount of attention to these signs. I don’t even have a honking great SUV so there is never any problem. If I was a truck driver, I imagine I might be a bit more aware of these things. Then again, maybe you assume the height they post on the sign has a bit of wiggle room built in.

Whatever the story, someone got it wrong the other day near us. I was walking across the pedway to go to Michigan Avenue when I saw a guy getting a step ladder out and looking at the top of the truck – or at least what used to be the top of the truck. Half of it was gone and a few of the cross struts for the roof could be seen hanging down inside the vehicle. I guess they got it wrong. Either that or the sunny weather made them turn the truck into a convertible!

What Are They Thinking – Or Are They Thinking At All?

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Something happened here in Chicago the other day and I thought a blog post was in order. I seriously doubt the volume of traffic this blog has will strike fear into the hearts of those concerned but I couldn’t let this go by without some mention. There are two main papers in Chicago. The Tribune and the Sun-Times. This week the Sun-Times laid off all of its staff photographers. Gone! In their place, the journalists are being trained to take better pictures with their phones.

I know, as a photographer, I am a bit biased here. However, I can’t be too far from the truth in thinking that is one really bloody stupid idea. I know the newspaper world is not a happy one at the moment but I am thinking this is not going to help them. Newspaper pictures have a tradition of illustrating a piece dramatically. That is because they employed people who knew what they were doing telling a visual story. I am not picking on the journalists who will pick up the slack here but will they be the ones to take on this skill as a result of a course on shooting with their phone? Will their focus be on getting a great shot or getting the information they need to write the piece. I imagine they have to get video too for the online version. Three jobs in one. Great value for money or three jobs being done half-assed (should that be third-assed)?

If you had seen a number of the positions disappear over time, you could imagine that they were cutting the slack out and working the remaining staff harder. This might even be construed as trying to maintain things on a smaller budget. however, when you just cut out the whole staff in one go, there is no way to view that as anything other than giving up on part of the story telling process. If telling stories is all you do, that really is the beginning of the end. I am sure that the paper will be more than happy to have readers send in their pictures and, if they are really lucky, get them printed for free! Hurrah! Lucky reader getting their work published for nothing and lucky rest of the readers getting someone’s free images instead of something more thought out from someone who has been doing this for a long time and knows what they are doing.

I don’t get the Sun-Times so I am not going to notice the difference. However, if the Trib follows suit, we are doomed. Someone has to maintain some standards. For a while, the Trib went downhill rapidly as some of its ownership issues got worked out. It was crap! There was virtually nothing there for a while. It has picked up again and the new owners seem to have given the team a bit more scope to make a decent paper. One wonders whether the Sun-Times will be so lucky. I do hope so. Once these institutions are gone, they won’t be back.

Older and Wiser Heads

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I have spent a lot of time in recent times over near Wells Street as a result of the bridge replacement program that they have been going through. That puts me outside the Merchandise Mart building along the river. Along the front of the building is a hall of fame of old Chicago figures. A series of pillars are lined up along the river with each having a bust of a famous person on top. These are nicely aligned and caught my eye as I was walking by. As an aside, if you watched the TV series Boss, you will have seen these busts as part of the title sequence.

And It’s Attached

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You should have seen the video of the move by now. The effort to float the new span into place was pretty impressive. The joints are a tight tolerance to be met but you are moving a large barge with a tug to get them there and those are not the most subtle of tools. however, a combination of the big pushes from the tug and putting lines on to the other moored barges allowed the team to carefully control the position of the barge and get the span in to place.

This was a popular thing. It happened mid morning on a sunny day so plenty of people came out to see it. TV crews were running around near me filming it and I was trying to get along the river to get different angles while still having the time lapse running in one spot (and hopefully nobody stealing the camera on the tripod while I am not looking). The TV camera operator I was chatting to was a lot of fun. They had been told to come out but not told too much. However, they were glad to be watching something fun rather than filming the less happy sides of city news.

With the barge in place, the crews got to work attaching the span. The first task was the bolt the lower spar in to place. The crews were climbing over these area getting the bolts in place. There seemed to be a large contingent of people standing watching this happen. Far more seemed to be watching rather actually doing anything at this point but I imagine a fair number of city people wanted to see such a high profile job get done.

The last step would be to put the remaining structure in place to complete the truss. That had to be done so the span could then support itself.

In to Place She Goes

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The movement of the bridge in to its new location finally went ahead after a lot of waiting on my part. While I was shooting stills, I did set up a second camera to get a time lapse of the move. Below you can see things a lot faster than they were at the time.

Getting Ready for the New Span

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Once the old part of the bridge is cut away, the next step is getting the remaining part of the bridge ready to accept the new structure. The original construction of the bridge involves having the metalwork riveted together. In the run up to the replacement program, it appears that the team have progressively removed the individual rivets in the sections that will be part of the new joint and replace them with bolts. Then, when the structure is cut, it is possible to unbolt the stubs left after the cuts.

With the sections removed, some preparation was necessary for the surfaces that would be part of the new joints with the mating surfaces and the bolt holes being coated. A bunch of cleaning up was also required so the team were moving around these joints on cherry pickers with power tools to clean and prep the surfaces.

The final step was to bolt in place some additional structure that would serve to guide the new span into place when it was floated in to position. All of this took a lot longer than I expected. One visit at night looked like a lot of things we ready. I talked to some of the crew to find out when the move would take place. They thought it would all be done overnight. I debated whether I was prepared to stay up all night to watch it and decided that wasn’t a good idea.

I was glad I made that decision. I awoke early the next morning and headed around and the new span was not yet moved. I was glad to know I hadn’t missed it. Indeed, the prep work was still being finished off. In the end, one of the guys came by and advised of the timing of the lunch break for that shift so I knew that I had time before the move and could head home and get some breakfast!

Meanwhile, there were a few guys cutting up sections of the old span. Not sure what their plan was but the cutting work always looks great at night.

Wells Street Bridge Part Two

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Here we find ourselves repeating some previous posts. Hopefully, this will be slightly different. A while back I posted about the replacement of the south span of the Wells Street Bridge. You can look back at the previous posts here and here. During the previous replacement, I got half of the story. I saw the original span being cut free and moved out of place. Sadly, I had to be out of town for the rest of the week and did not see the new span being put in place and attached.

This time it all happened a bit in reverse for me. I was sure I was going to be around to see the new span put in place. What I hadn’t counted on was that they were a lot quicker removing the original span. By the time I made my first visit, the original section had been cut free and floated off to be moored along the river. I was a bit annoyed at myself but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the second time around they would have found out ways of doing it all a bit more quickly.

One of the things I did find fun was looking at the cuts that had been made to remove the old section. The jagged metal edges look very cool, particularly when you contemplate how long that structure has been sitting across the Chicago River.