Tag Archives: Chicago

A Walk in the Park

One of the nice things about having visitors is that it gives you a reason to take a look around your own town. We had friends in town for New Year and, while coming to Chicago at the end of December might well be something you consider to be a bit unwise, we ended up experiencing some surprisingly mild and sunny weather. This meant taking a walk around outside was not such a dumb idea!

Millennium Park was an obvious place to go. The last time they had visited, the Bean had been partially covered so they had not got the full experience. A sunny day is a good time to do that. We were not alone as you might imagine. Plenty of other people were out in the park and the Bean (I know its real name is Cloud Gate but I am not going to be the only person to call it that) was having its usual effect on people as they marveled at the reflections of the city and themselves.

I have photographed it many times but there is no way I am going to miss out on the chance to do so again.

More Young Wildlife

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We took a trip to Brookfield Zoo to see the young snow leopards. However, we also were aware that there had been some other new arrivals at the zoo since we had last visited. One of these was a baby White Cheeked Gibbon. After visiting the leopards, we headed for the large primate building to see how the new arrival was doing.

Shooting in the primate house is tricky since the light is not always great. I also hadn’t planned for this so didn’t have a flash with me. After the cold outside, the warm and humid building also made for a lot of steaming up of the gear so we spent a lot of time just looking around while everything cleared up. The baby was certainly pretty cute. Mum was taking good care of him while some of the other gibbons seemed to be a bit annoyed about the lack of attention they were getting. This could involve trying to poke the baby. However, Mum was up to the task of fending off any unwanted attention!

Model Day in 15 Seconds

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You might be a bit bored with me playing with time lapse video. If so, look away now! Here comes another one. We had guest visiting for the New Year and one of the things we took them to see was the scale model of the city. The Chicago Architecture Foundation has a shop on Michigan Avenue and the building in which the shop is located has a large atrium. In this atrium is a model of the city.

All of the buildings in the Loop and some of the surrounding areas have been accurately recreated using stereolithography. This is a technique using resin and lasers that builds solid objects one minute slice at a time creating a solid object of great complexity. If you are interested in the technique, head over to YouTube and search for the term and you will come across a number of videos showing it in action.

The model is set up in the atrium with custom lighting. Apparently, the lighting is designed to recreate the pattern of the sun from sunrise to sunset over a 15 minute period. I had been to the model a number of times and had shot details of it before. This time, I decided I wanted to get a time lapse of the light progressing across the model to see how it came out. Since I had the plan ready in advance, as soon as we got to the place, I set up the camera and then went back down to join the rest of the crew. There is enough in the model to keep people interested for 15-20 minutes so I wasn’t going to delay everyone. It did mean, however, that I had to carry a bunch of stuff around with me for the rest of our walk!

Enough of the back story. Here is the video that resulted. To be honest, I don’t think the lighting effects are as obvious as I had hoped that they would be. However, you do get to see some of the movement of the light.

More Time Lapse Sunset

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I had a plan to meet up with my friend Joel to catch up recently. We were looking for a place to meet and went with the Holiday Inn by the Merchandize Mart. It has a bar that is a comfortable place to talk and has the added benefit of a great view over the city. I wasn’t there to shoot anything but, knowing the view was good, I took along some gear just in case.

Joel and I chatted for ages and didn’t get around to taking pictures for a while. As the sun was setting, the sky was getting very interesting and I finally had to apologize and grab the camera. I got a few shots and then set it up by the window next to me to shoot a time lapse.

This required no input from me so we could continue to talk without interruption but it should provide something interesting to check out later. However, I hadn’t planned as well as I hoped. As the light dropped, the shutter speeds were getting perilously close to the delay between each shot as I had set the ISO a little lower than I thought. Changing it is not a problem but I was using a lighter tripod which was not as well locked off as I thought. I managed to move the head a little. I corrected but knew the alignment would be off a bit.

Fortunately, while I couldn’t completely remove the effect, when I processed the time lapse using Lightroom and LRTimelapse, I was able to find the frames where the jump takes place, set them as keyframes, adjust the cropping of the second of those two frames to almost perfectly align and the resulting video is a lot better than it would have been.

Thanks Joel for a fun time. It was good to catch up and I appreciate the stuff you gave me. Here is the video that resulted!

Another Jetstar Moment

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A long time back (not that long if you think in geological terms), I wrote this piece about hunting down a Jetstar. I won’t bore you with the details in case you read about it the first time. If you didn’t and want to know, click on that link and you can find out more. Anyway, I still get updates when any Jetstars are flying in the US so I know if they are coming close. Normally, if they happen to be near me, the chances are that I am either already doing something or the weather is crappy (or both).

Recently, I got a morning email about a departure of the same jet as before from Midway. I was free and the weather looked good. Moreover, I still had time to get ready and get down to Midway before it was due off. I decided to give it a go. I needed to find a new location to shoot from so tried a couple of spots when I got there by checking out some of the other departures before settling on a location. Next time I might try a different lens but the result overall wasn’t too bad.

Waterfall Glen

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It’s always nice to get out and check out a place that you haven’t been to before. Nancy spotted one of the forest preserves in DuPage County called Waterfall Glen. Despite the name, it isn’t about a waterfall – although there is a small man-made one there. It is actually named after a guy called Waterfall from many moons ago.

The preserve is a sizable area. The middle of it is off limits though. It is the Argonne National Laboratory so I guess they don’t want people wandering in whenever they feel like it. There is a trail that runs all the way around the area and it was part of this that we sampled.

This was a walk and not a photo outing so I only took one camera and one lens with me. There was a fair bit of wildlife around so, if I was prepared to hump the equipment around, I suspect there could be some good shots to be made. We saw a coyote, a deer, many types of bird and a small snake that was right on the path in front of us – good spot Nancy.

However, they were just a benefit on top of the nice walk. The weather was rather warm for this time of year and I was surprised how much color was still in the trees with some still very green. There was also the little waterfall mentioned earlier. A nice spot and one I suspect we will visit again.

An Evening with Vincent Laforet

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Okay, maybe not a full evening but an hour and a half so close enough. A damp Monday evening in early November is not the sort of time that you are planning a trip out. However, Vincent Laforet was giving a talk at one of the local Apple stores and I was keen to be there.

I saw Vincent once before at my first ISAP symposium in Pensacola FL. He was still predominantly a still photographer in those days. He gave a talk about his aerial photography in New York and an unbelievably moving account of his time in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina which was accompanied by some equally moving imagery.

When Canon released the 5D MkII, Vincent filmed a short called Reverie to demonstrate the capabilities of the camera and it went viral. I don’t know whether this was the start of his move to film or whether he was already on the way there beforehand but he is now a director and a bit of a go to guy on the techie issues with HDSLR video.

His talk was a combination of some of his history – a fair bit of stills work since his audience included a lot of photographers – along with some of the video work he has been doing. I follow his blog so the video material was stuff I had already seen but that was not a problem. He talked a bit about what the newer technology is bringing to the video world and how different the workflow is.

The real interest came at the end of the evening though when he had a Q&A session. This really got to the heart of the issues people were interested in and he was very frank in his answers. He challenged people to think about what they were doing and who was going to be coming after their work environment (and what that environment would even be). He answered technical questions and gave thoughts on how to self-teach some of the things associated with film making.

He was a very approachable guy and willing to talk to everyone who wanted to get a moment with him afterwards. If you get a chance to see him at any event, I would certainly recommend it. In the mean time, his blog is well worth a look. He doesn’t always blog regularly but, when he does, it is good stuff. He also has a great gear page if you want some insight into the stuff he uses himself. Check it out at blog.vincentlaforet.com if you are interested.

Halloween at the Zoo

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Whether it is the weather or whether it is some subconscious thing, it appears that we get lured to the zoo at Halloween. The weekend weather forecast looked very promising so we thought we pop out to Brookfield to see what the animals were doing. It was only when we got there that we realized that, being Halloween weekend, everyone was there in costumes.

This triggered something from our recollection that we had done the same thing last year. Let’s go to the zoo when everyone else is planning on being there and all dressed up! (I will leave my thoughts on Halloween for another post I suspect.)

As it turned out, the center area of the zoo was very busy but the rest of it was no busier than most weekends. The sun was out and the animal were active so it was a good time to go. We got particularly lucky with a couple of things.

I have never seen the kangaroos move before. They have always been lying down taking a nap when I have been there. Sometimes, this is tucked up against the wall for extra shade. However, this time they got up and fed for a while and even hopped across the enclosure. That was a big plus.

Next we arrived at the brown bear enclosure and the staff were seeding the place with vegetables for the bears to find and feed on. Consequently, we got a couple of grizzlies rummaging around the enclosure for a long time. Given their love for dozing this was a result. I guess the polar bears had already been fed since they were out for the count.

The lions are always a stop for us. The male was lying down and looked like he was falling asleep. A lion roaring has a very small mouth shape which doesn’t look like much. A lion yawning, on the other hand, has a wide mouth and lots of teeth. A good photo opportunity! A little patience and we were rewarded with a big view of fangs! As an aside, lions are not empathetic creatures since we tried yawning a bunch of time to try and induce a yawn but to no effect!

Out last stop was the leopard. Normally another one having a nap when we are there, this time he was also on the prowl. We only had a few minutes before it was time to lie down again but even so, this was better than normal. Not a bad day out!

Michigan Avenue Bridgehouse

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The Chicago tourist activities have been continuing. Another local attraction I have never been to – and this one has no excuse since I have known about it for ages and it is visible from my window! – is the bridgehouse for the Michigan Avenue bridge.

Chicago has a large number of movable bridges across the Chicago and Calumet rivers. A large number of them are bascule bridges. For those of you not familiar with French descriptions of bridges, bascule bridges are counterbalanced and rotate out of the way using very little power due to the excellent balance. (Bascule is French for seesaw.)

The museum is in the tower at one end of the bridge. It is a pretty small museum but it provides access to the mechanisms that move the bridge. This is something that interests an engineering type like me. I think they could have made things a little better though. There is very little lighting down there so it is hard to make out all of the parts of the machinery. They could also provide a bit more of a guide to this. As a photographer, the amount of fencing in the way is a nuisance but I doubt there is much they could do about that.

As a result of the relatively limited nature of the bridge, the rest of the museum is a history of Chicago, its rivers and the water supply. It certainly provides more to look at and is quite worth a look. There are also some slightly different views of the river. Since it was only $4 to get in, I think it was worth a look. Now to see how I can make some suggestions to them about improvements.

More Walking Around Chicago

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The walk with my Mum also took in some spots I have been to before. Never one to travel sans camera I ended up taking some new shots. Whether they are better than ones taken before, I have yet to decide.

We stopped off in Union Station. No trying to repeat the gun battle from The Untouchables for us. Just a look around. It is a very impressive hall and it would be nice to think that there would be some larger use for it but the commuters never come this way so it is a smattering of travelers that end up here – plus tourists and film buffs of course.

We then wandered up along the river and stopped off at the Holiday Inn. Its location on the confluence of the north and south branches of the Chicago River gives it a great view of the city. The clouds had started to roll in so it wasn’t at its best but still worth a look.