Tag Archives: Chicago

Midwest in the mist

Got a call from the guys at Midwest about some upcoming work recently. Asked if I wanted to come out and ride along for the jobs, one of which was in the Chicagoland area and the other was over in Indiana. Let me think about that for, oh, I don’t know, a microsecond. Sure, I will be there.

There is one downside to these jobs and that is that they mean an early start. The night before Jim texts me to say the weather is looking pretty dodgy and do I still want to come along? Predicting weather is not something that I can rely on so I was still in and if the weather screwed things up, then we scrub it and have another go some other time.

I made the early trek down to their base but before I left I checked the weather radar on the computer. There was an evil looking line of storms marching up across the state. Looking out of the window, the tops of the surrounding buildings were shrouded in mist. This wasn’t looking promising. We would see…

When I walked in, Jim had already been talking to the O’Hare controllers since one of the lifts was under their approaches. With the storms coming, it was already clear that we would postpone the first lift until the storms had gone through. As for Indiana, that was looking unrealistic since the south end of the lake is the most unpredictable for weather and it was a long run across even to get to the job. We hung out and waited.

The storms never appeared! They stalled a way off and the mist lifted a bit. In the end, it was good enough to go so Jim, Phil and I loaded up and headed out. Joe was on the site so he had to sit there and wait it out. I suspect he was glad we finally showed up! We ferried out to the site and set down. I hopped out while the long line was attached and Jim make quick work of the two picks.

For the journey back, I climbed up to the second seat. The cockpit in the S-58T is right on top of the airframe so you have a great view of things. Shame the weather meant it was not a great day for sightseeing! The transit back to base was a fun run and then we all headed off for breakfast. Not a bad way to start a day!

Wrigleyville Lift

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Got a message earlier in the week from my buddy Jim at Midwest Helicopters. Another job was coming up, this time up in Wrigleyville, and would I like to tag along? Of course I would. How likely is it that I would turn down an opportunity to shoot an aviation job, particularly one with the Midwest guys that are always so good to me?

After a week with some variable weather, Saturday morning turned out to be pretty good. It doesn’t seem very long ago that we were gathering for these lifts before the sun was up and when the mercury was certainly very low on the scale. To be out when the temperature was above 40F was a great change.

I hopped up on the the roof where the equipment was to go and set myself up. I had a great view of the pick location down on the street and could easily move to see where the cell phone transmission equipment was going. Only problem was that the sun was directly on front of me that way.

Since I have shot these operations a few times before, I decided to try a couple of tighter shots as well as the more regular stuff, hopefully including a few with Wrigley Field in the background. The lift went well and I got some good shots. You can see more of them here if you want.

Thanks again to the team at Midwest. Always appreciate you letting me join the jobs and the team are always good for a laugh early in the morning.

If you want to see more shots of the lift, click here to see more of the lift.

Chicago Sightseeing

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An ISAP friend of mine, Bonnie, was visiting Chicago with her husband Gary and her friend Julie to see a photography exhibit and asked if I wanted to tag along. Absolutely! Sometimes it is a little annoying to find out what is going on in your neighborhood from people out of town but always good to find stuff out.

The exhibit was at the Chicago Cultural Center. It is the old library and is a really cool building. I am going to have to go back there and spend a bit more time – plus take equipment based on a plan rather than whatever I had with me. The colors and patterns are really vibrant but lighting is uneven so I decided to play with HDR for the day.

Once we had finished, we hopped across the road to Millennium Park. I know the Bean is a tourist trap but it is still really cool. I have no idea how many pictures I have taken of it, of the people around it or of the reflections of the city in it but I still come back for more. The view on the underside is particularly cool in my opinion!

Everyone gets a kick out of their reflection in the Bean. It can be great fun to spend some time watching people spotting themselves and trying to do something a little different. Julie had a great idea to walk on the Bean and dropped to the ground to try it out. I think it worked rather well. I wonder how many other people tried it after we wandered off.

It wasn’t long before I needed to head back home and leave them to the rest of their day out (and the long drive back up to Wisconsin!). One of the things I had been discussing with Julie was my desire to get a good shot of the many fire escapes on the older buildings. As I headed back home, I passed a few more and had another go.

I still haven’t quite got what I want so I guess I will just have to keep trying. Whatever is in my head is not transferring itself to what I am shooting. Always another photo challenge I guess!

Dying the River Green

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A couple of weeks ago, Chicago had its annual celebration of St Patrick’s Day. The city goes quite nuts for this and it certainly isn’t a good day for dropping into your local bar for a pint unless you want to be with several thousand of your closest friends!

Anyway, part of the celebration involves dying the river green. If you are celebrating a Welshman who went to Ireland with a vendetta against snakes, this makes perfect sense. It is good fun though. This year, I was not feeling particularly well having gone down with a bit of a cold. March is not the warmest month in Chicago and the temperatures were being matched by quite a strong breeze.

Consequently, I took the chicken’s way out and watched the whole thing from my window. The two shots here are actually from a few year’s back but I thought it would be fair to show you what is going on. Instead, I tried shooting some video with the point and shoot from our vantage point. Below is the result and you can get an idea of what is going on.

Making the new site work

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So, I have finally taken the plunge and moved the old version of the website offline and transferred to the new version. I immediately notice that my two trial posts when the site was in beta seem to be in reverse order. I have no idea why that might be so I will keep on posting and see whether everything shows up in the right place eventually.

The photo life has been a tad restricted recently. Other work commitments have had me on the road and basically without a camera for a while so I have been plotting my next ideas. One good opportunity was, of course, the moon coming so close to the earth. Saturday was a lovely day here in Chicago so I was hopeful of some good shots. However, when I made my way out to the planetarium (and I was not alone out there!!), the cloud cover drifted in. It started out on the horizon but with clear sky above. Patience my young Padawan. Of course, as the moon rose, the clouds spread out and covered the sky. Lots of disappointed people went home.

I actually tried the next night but the result was just as bad. Ho hum! The results you see here are not impressive although given the low light and the shutter speeds, they could have been worse, I assure you!