Tag Archives: Chicago

Night Wanderings with Friends

As I mentioned in a previous post, sometimes it is useful to have someone come to the city to encourage me to get out and about. A few friends had been to Chicago in a previous week to do some shooting but I had been tied up when they arrived. They were planning some evening shooting and I had been out all day and had plans for the evening so missed it. I was a bit disappointed but there you go.

Consequently, I was pleased to see that a few of them were planning to come back a few days later for another session. This time I was free so agreed to meet up. Some of the group that were coming I knew and others I hadn’t met before. I headed out to the Adler Planetarium – our meeting spot – and started taking some shots. A few guys were already there taking their own shots so I wandered over to find out if they were some of the people I hadn’t met before.

While it was true I hadn’t met them before, they were not part of our group. However, in common with many photographers, they were a friendly bunch a we chatted for a while. They had come to town from Texas and were looking to get as many things in to their trip so I suggested a few spots that they might like to try.

After a while the rest of the guys did show up – well, all but one who had wandered off on his own – and we started taking some pictures. The skyline was lovely as usual and we took some shots around the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum. Then we headed across to Millennium Park. I’m becoming a regular.

Shooting around the Bean at night is good since the long exposures you need tend to make any of the other visitors disappear. You get a cleaner shot if you plan it right. We got a bunch of shots and then we started playing around with a flashlight. More of that to come!

Look Down on a Cloudy Day

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While we had our friends in town, we asked what they wanted to do. One of the things they had in mind was a trip up the Hancock Tower at the end of the day to see the city before and after sunset. Sounded like a good plan. We headed up that way with some time in hand and got to the ticket line. It was quite short and we thought we were in luck. However, a quick peek through the window to the line for the elevators revealed a different story. The line was very long and there was no way we were going to be up the tower until long after the light had gone.

We decided to save this for another day. Sadly, that day turned out to be the one with the best of the weather. When you only have so much time at a place, you have to go with what you can get so we made a second trip. This time a lot of the tourist had gone home after the holidays but the weather was more cloudy. At least this made for a short line.

The view from the Hancock is a good one. The light can be tricky since you spend a lot of time looking south but with more cloud that was less of an issue. However, the cloud did obscure some things and the moisture in the air made it harder to see things in the distance. There were still some nice things to see though so it was worth going up. Just a shame we didn’t manage to be there when the conditions were at their best!

Expensive Toys

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Not a huge amount to say about this. It is just a chance to see some nice cars. The shots are not the greatest but you grab a chance when it is there. There is a car dealership about 10 minutes walk from us that specializes in very high end cars. They have a bunch of Bentleys and rollers but lots of sportier types as well. The odd thing is that they will regularly leave very expensive “motors” out on the street.

As we walked past (when I have visitors I often walk that way just in case there is something nice out) there were a couple of Ferraris and a new Lambo. Nice!

A Walk in the Park

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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.