Tag Archives: Chicago

Around Chicago

Continuing the theme of my Mum’s visit, the two of us took a stroll through the city the other day. It is always fun to exploit the visit of someone to do some touristy wandering that you would otherwise never do. It also makes you explore some things that you haven’t seen before.

We included the Cultural Center on our route but I was surprised yet again by this place. Having only recently discovered it courtesy of friends visiting in the past (see this posting), during this visit I found another room that I hadn’t been to before. It was an empty room but quite ornate. It was very dark so getting a good shot was tricky. I tried a bit of HDR which was okay but I will have to go back again at some point to try again I think.

Another stop was at the Palmer House Hotel. Now a Hilton, my Dad stayed there recently when he was visiting and told me about the grandiose lobby it has. I had never been in before – why visit hotels when you live in the city – and it was impressive so we stopped in to take a look. How many other things from the city have I missed?

Sunset at the Botanic Gardens

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I have had my Mum visiting . We try and find some fun things to do while she is staying and maybe even tie them in to things I have been meaning to do. One of these things was a trip to the Botanic Gardens. The thing that made this different is that, during the summer they have been having a late opening until 9pm. The evening light should provide some good opportunities with the camera.

It certainly is a good time to visit. The crowds are not there as they would be normally (although there are still a fair number of people around) so you have less of a feeling of being rushed by people around you. Also, having a tripod is not a problem! As the evening draws in, the light gets lovely and then, once the sunset passes, you can play around with some night photography.

You do have to pay attention to which areas will get the nice light since the terrain will block certain parts of the gardens but, apart from that, you can really have a nice time wandering around and looking for nice shots.

Here are some more samples of what I saw.

Stormy Skies

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The forecast the other morning was for some big storms. I decided that this would be a good time to head down to the lakefront. When a storm hits us, I see a lot of lightning around us but there is little that I can do to get a good shot since the buildings are too close to get any perspective. Before Trump was built, there was a lot more to see but that is no longer the case.

Instead, i thought the Adler planetarium would provide a good view of the city as the storm rolled in so I hopped in the car and headed over there. There was a local TV crew setting up when I got there so I thought they must agree with my planning. The sky was certainly looking darker.

As it turned out, we were both wrong. The sky got very moody and some crazy looking clouds bubbled across but no storm showed up. Instead, it just started raining and my enthusiasm reduced significantly! Eventually I headed home and the storm ended up skirting south of us. Oh well.

Chicago Air and Water Show

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The Air and Water Show, here in Chicago, has been a regular for me since moving here – and why wouldn’t it be when I can actually walk to the show!? This year, though, I was not so inspired. The line up was not looking to be too diverse (at least as far as the things I like to shoot) and they had moved it an hour earlier which means more of the show is in the harsh lighting from a bad angle.

I skipped practice day and Saturday was almost rained out. Sunday the weather was good and I eventually found I couldn’t quite quit cold turkey and grabbed one camera and one lens (plus a bottle of water) and decided to walk slowly up the lakefront. This would give me a chance to take some shots from further away but looking more up the display line. It also made the sun angles a bit better.

As the show progressed, I gradually drifted up the lakeshore until I got the North Avenue beach, around show center, just in time for the Thunderbirds display. I should point out my timing was better than that of the Golden Knights and the Thunderbirds. The Golden Knights had finished their jump and were lined up on the beach being introduced by their commentator. Each member of the jump team was given a personal introduction and they were just getting to their special guest of the day who was getting the ceremonial baton when the Thunderbirds roared in from behind the crowd.

That was the end of the presentations as far as the majority of the crowd were concerned since the PA was switched over to the Thunderbirds commentary team who had probably been doing their introductions previously without knowing that no-one was hearing them. Don’t know whether the Golden Knights were running late or the Thunderbirds were early but, either way, not a smooth handover. The Golden Knights jump ship had been orbiting offshore awaiting its final pass but I guess they were told to make themselves scarce once the show box was handed over to the Thunderbirds!

The show was not too bad. I’m glad I went and I took the reverse stroll home which also worked pretty well. I guess I can’t pass up an airshow on my doorstep, even if the schedule doesn’t get me too excited!

Looking down on the world

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After a bit of a false start this week, I did a short job for a local company in partnership with some people I have worked with before. This job was to get some aerial shots of a tractor factory in the Chicago suburbs. The job was tied to another sortie so the timing was based on when that would happen. However, the aim was for a morning launch, hopefully to get some reasonable light.

The plant was not far from the base of the helicopter so I strapped myself into my harness and sat in the door of the S-58 to get the shots. A few orbits of the location later, a selection of shots were in the bag. They were looking for something straightforward so no great artistic expression on these. However, hopefully we got something that they like.

The main shots are going to them at the moment but here are some from the others I got on the trip.

Movie Shooting

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One of the things that happens a lot in Chicago is the filming of movies. These can be small scale movies that will be unlikely to make a big impact to blockbusters. The recent Batman films were shot in Chicago for example. One film that really took over the city for a while was Transformers 3. I haven’t been to see the film – Netflix for that one I think – but they really destroyed the sections of the city around where I live if the trailers are anything to go by.

The city granted them an amazing amount of access including closing Michigan Avenue for quite some time. A lot was filmed across the river from us on Wacker Drive. Two aspects of the filming were fun for me. First they had made some pretty impressive effects for the cityscape with ripped up concrete and destroyed vehicles scattered around which you could get very close to. The second thing was the use of aerial filming. A lot of filming was done from an Astar and it seemed to spend a lot of time hovering near enough that I could take photos – admittedly through the windows which doesn’t always help.

They also had some skydivers both jumping from helicopters into the city and also base jumping from the buildings. I saw bits of that but was not close to it all. I did see a few sequences being set up. It is interesting just how long it takes for a sequence to be put together, rehearsed and finally shot. I saw a bunch of guys on wires getting hauled into the air numerous times before they finally shot it with the explosions going live.

They also filmed a sequence with explosions along the rooftops of a number of buildings along the ricer. We should have been suspicious as we sat in our living room in the evening when we heard the helicopter again but it was only as the buildings started erupting that we realized what was happening.

I have no great interest in the movie itself but, having seen so much of the filming work underway, I shall have to watch it just to see the places we know so well getting mashed!

Bears Training Camp

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It is that time of year when large men start practicing to inflict pain on each other – and if you are a Bears fan – on us too! With the negotiations over, it is time for training camp. The Chicago Bears hold their camp at a university down in Bourbonnais Illinois. With some spare time now on my hands, I decided to make a trek down for one of the public sessions.

With the temperature in the 90s, this might not have seemed like the best idea but it was windy and that really made things feel a lot better – although I think some of the receivers might have been using it as an excuse! I went to the camp for the first time last year. I had checked on what camera gear they allowed and the person I had spoken too said nothing too big. That time I took a 70-200 as my biggest lens and got there to see a fair few honking pieces of glass.

This time I took what I wanted and I’m glad I did. Not only does it make shooting easier but people are amazingly accommodating when they see big lenses. While they were all fighting each other for a spot when they were shooting with their phones, as soon as I wandered up, people would drag their relatives out of my way without me ever having to say a thing. Great stuff. Don’t see that at an air show very often!

I didn’t stay for the whole session. it was a bit toasty and lugging the gear around to different spots to try different things doesn’t help to keep you cool. However, I was happy with what I saw and slightly happier in the car with the aircon cranked up! It is a great thing if you like football. The price of a ticket for Soldier Field is astronomical but this is free and you get to see a bunch of stuff. The staff were all universally welcoming and you felt good about being there. Plus, some of the shots came out quite well!

More Time Lapse Fun

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I have been messing around with time lapses for a while as regular readers will know. One of the things that I had been thinking about was getting a panning effect in a time lapse. I was chatting with Ken Sklute at ISAP and he told me that, rather than bothering with expensive motorized panning heads, it was simpler to use the full image size that a DSLR offers and let the video software undertake the panning for you by cropping in on the shots.

I am not a big video guy and have Pinnacle Studio as my package. It is fine for the basic stuff but doesn’t have the most impressive features. When I goggled this topic, I came up with After Effects techniques for doing what I wanted. I tried the free trial but struggle to come to terms with what was required, despite the detailed tutorial. Guess that says something about me as a self teaching student.

Then I got lucky, My friend Jo Hunter over at futurshox posted some video from Oshkosh of time lapses doing exactly what I wanted. I dropped her a message and she came straight back with the solution. The program is called LRTimelapse and it is a standalone program that makes Lightroom develop settings that you can then combine with a video output setting to make the final product. It is developed by a guy called Gunther Wegner and you can find the whole thing at his website. It is donationware and I have made one because it works and has solved a problem that had been troubling me for a while.

I need to get better at the effect but for the time being, here is a sample of the effect. For comparison, first I have the original time lapse and second I have the panning version. No change in the content but certainly a more interesting thing to watch I think.

What’s the best camera?

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I suspect you have heard the phrase, the best camera is the one you have with you. Well, I am a bit of an idiot as I went out to a location the other evening for another reason but didn’t stick a camera in the car. We headed to Moreton Arboretum out in Lisle. We are members and go there pretty regularly to wander around.

This time they were running a cheese and wine type of event. Tables were set up outside, there was a bar and a tapas menu. A very pleasant way to spend an even out in the warm as the sun gradually headed down. The photographers amongst you are thinking golden hour. Why didn’t I think of that.

There is a lake near the visitors center which I will have shot a number of times from different directions, usually in the harshest light of the day. This time I was there when the light was great and as soon as we took a stroll around the lake, I was kicking myself for not having brought my camera with me.

Plan B was my phone. The camera is okay but not special. However, it was the best camera I had with me so it would have to do. It doesn’t handle too much contrast well so a little angling to try and get what I wanted was in order. Not stunning results but it’s what I got so here you go.

This last shot was something we saw when wandering around. I might explain more another time…

Lego Masterpieces

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An event was held recently that I had never thought of visiting before. It was a Lego convention of some sort held up in Wheeling. I had no idea what to expect at this – was it going to be a lot of vendors selling stuff or exhibitors of their creations. It is safe to say, it was a lot more fo the latter. I don’t know whether I was being unimaginative, but the quality of the work was astounding.

There was a lot of variety. Quite a few Lego fans obviously like fantasy themes and so there was plenty of work like this. I wasn’t as interested in that as I was in the creations of normal things that people had put together. They obviously have a lot of imagination – and a lot of Lego. One guy (who admittedly worked for Lego) had come from Australia. I had seen a previous creation of his online. It was a Qantas A-380 and was stunning. This time, he had recreated the Love Boat and the captain from the series had coincidentally been in the day before and autographed it!

There was far too much stuff to fairly represent here but below are just a few shots of things that I was really impressed by. (By the way, I know I said the fantasy stuff isn’t my thing but the Lord of the Rings display is included since it was quite incredible!)