Tag Archives: Illinois

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!

Poplar Grove – A Friendly Place!

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There are occasions when you have an idea for something that you want to do, get a bit of a start on it and then it falls by the wayside for a long time. Such was the case with heading to Poplar Grove. I had read something about this airfield not far from Rockford IL and thought I should check it out. I made contact with the owner of the field and he said I was welcome to visit any time. After that, somehow I got distracted from this and didn’t follow up. Not only a failing on my part but also rather rude! Not the impression I would normally expect to give someone I hope – other than my friends and family who know my true nature of course!

Despite all of this, Poplar Grove came back into my mind recently. I am looking at the Oshkosh Ski plane fly in later this month and a group from Poplar Grove are regular attendees when the conditions allow. I made contact with them about possibly working together if the weather allows the fly in to go ahead. This reminded me of my previous failings to do anything after my previous contact.

This time, I decided to be a bit more cautious. Rather than contact some people and then fail to follow through, I decided to take advantage of the continuing pleasant weather and make a trip up. The Sunday weather forecast looked very promising and a weekend is more likely to have activity for light aircraft. I got on the road early and headed up to the field.

Surprisingly, it doesn’t appear on my GPS. However, a little check on Google Maps was enough to point me to where I needed to set the destination and I got there without any trouble. A couple of aircraft departed as I pulled into the lot which always inspires a bit of confidence. Initially I decided to just hang out in the lot and see what was going on. Standing around with a 500mm lens tends to start a few conversations and this was no exception.

One guy stopped by to ask if I had got any pictures of his son who was learning to fly and had been up while I was stood there. Another couple of people said Hi! as they passed by and another guy stopped for a longer chat. He pointed out that the field was a friendly place and, if I knew how to stay out of trouble on an airfield, it would be fine to take a walk to some other spots.

I followed his advice and headed off. The layout of the field is very cool. There is one hard runway and two grass strips. One of the grass strips and the hard runway were both in operation. There were many hangars (apparently about 450 aircraft are based on the field) and there are also some houses with taxiway access. I want to move!

Standing near one taxiway I got a good view of the aircraft movements. As people taxied by I would get friendly waves which I reciprocated. What a nice place. The chap I had talked to previously drove up and we ended up talking for a while. His name is Steve Langdon and he is involved with the EAA chapter that I had been talking to as mentioned earlier on! He told me about the many different and interesting aircraft that people operate or are working on at the field. This was reinforced by the arrival of one T-34 and the departure of another – one that obviously knew where I was!

By lunchtime, I really needed to be heading back to Chicago so started to walk back to the car. I passed an open hangar with a beautiful Beech 18 sitting in it. This belongs to the owners of the field and, having now been back in touch with them, I hope to get a chance to photograph this aircraft at some point. I suspect there are plenty of other aircraft on the field that I will want to shoot as well. This place is a treasure trove.

Thank you to everyone I met at poplar Grove. it is a lovely field with a great attitude. I hope to spend more time there soon!

More WHF Fun!

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Some days things are just looking like they will be good. The Warbird Heritage Foundation have their newly restored P-51 Mustang, Baby Duck, ready for flight. Before they can do too much with it, they need to get some hours on the engine. Consequently, they have had Vlado Lenoch coming across to fly the aircraft when possible to build the hours.

I knew that they had intentions to fly in the week before Christmas but I didn’t know exactly when. However, the weather was crap for the majority of the week. When I saw a good forecast for Friday and I had some free time, I decided to take a chance and head on up to see if anything was happening. If not, it was still a nice day to be out and about!

As it was, not only did the guess prove to be accurate, I got a bit luckier than even I had expected. Baby Duck was out on the ramp when I arrived which was a good sign. Indeed she would be flying and Vlado was coming to fly her. What is the easiest way for Vlado to get there? In his P-51 of course. Paul also was planning on flying one of the other aircraft that day as well. Bonus!

Vlado showed up and got ready to fly the Duck. I scooted across the field to be in a position for good light and angles and it wasn’t long before Vlado was taxiing out. A few other aircraft movements kept me amused while he headed out to the departure end. Before I had left the hangar, I had foolishly suggested to Vlado that he keep it low on departure. That was a pretty redundant thing to say. Vlado certainly kept the aircraft in a good position for me as he came past and he built up speed before turning it into height.

I headed back since we didn’t know how long they would be out. They actually landed away so were gone for quite a while. Chris Doud had been in the right place to bag the back seat so he was having a great time.

When they got back, Paul had a chat with Vlado about how the flight had gone and then got ready to take the T-2 up for a run. Vlado was also heading home in Moonbeam McSwine so I made a second run across the field to get the departures again. They ended up heading out close together. Both provided sporty departures so I was considering the day a very productive one.

I headed back to the hangar to await the return of the T-2. They broke back into the pattern and landed so some taxi in shots and then a few pictures of a very happy back seat passenger made for the end of the day. Time to head back to Chicago and enjoy all the traffic could offer on the last day before Christmas!

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.

Other Waukegan Bits and Pieces

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I did get a little side benefit when out shooting the A-4 at Waukegan. I made my way to the other side of the field to be ready to shoot the A-4 when it departed. However, I did give myself a bit of spare time to make sure I didn’t miss it. The result was a couple of extra aircraft.

One was the Yak 52 that Grant owns and flies. He was running it up when I got across the field. I told him where I was going to be so he would know when he departed. Sure enough he came close and he headed out. Hopefully we will be seeing more of Grant’s Yak in the not too distant future.

The second benefit was a corporate jet heading out. Waukegan has a lot of corporate traffic. If I had waited a few more minutes there was a Hawker 800XP heading out but I had to be back at the Hooch. However, I did get this fella as he departed. He used a fair amount of the runway which suited me well.

The last one was a CJ that departed while we were taxiing out in the T-6. Not as great a shot but one to add to the catalog!

Scooter Time Again

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For those of you that have hung around here for a while, hopefully there is more than one of you, you will know that I have spent a lot of time shooting with the Warbird Heritage Foundation up at Waukegan. If you saw my recent post on the T-6, you will know that I was up at Waukegan to see the A-4 fly again. The A-4 is a great little jet and one that I love to see in action.

The aircraft has some new stores fitted underwing. These are practice bomb carriers and they add to the options for displaying the aircraft. They certainly look good. The weather was great on the day I went up and Paul wanted to get up and flying as quickly as he could. He had other things to get to later in the day so getting the jet up and running was a priority. First it required an engine run and a leak check after the servicing and then it should be good to go.

The engine run went well and a couple of minor things were noted and fixed. Then it was time to fly. I decided it would be best to head across the field. The hangar is north of the runway and doesn’t have the best light angle for the aircraft taking off. Fortunately, the wind, while light, meant that the jet would be departing heading in to the light so, from a position by the other hangar (the maintenance hangar is called the Bunker) should provide a good view.

This worked out well, Paul certainly helped by keeping the jet relatively low as he transitioned the gear up. I got some nice close shots as he came by and then he pulled up into a steep climb out. Certainly great and worth the trip – the T-6 flight was a cherry on the top!

Time in the T-6

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I recently popped up to Waukegan to see the good folks at the Warbird Heritage Foundation. I was up there to take some shots of their A-4 Skyhawk. It was scheduled to fly and the weather was looking particularly good so it seemed like an opportunity not to miss. A post on that will follow soon.

While I was there, the Chief Pilot, Herwig, was getting ready to take up the T-6 to run a check on the adjustments that had been made to the aileron trim. When he asked if I wanted to come along, I think you can guess what my answer was.

This was to be my first trip in a T-6. I minimized what photography equipment I was going to take along in order to keep things simple. Since we weren’t shooting anything else, I really only had two shot options. The ground or myself. Needless to say, I had a go at both. There is something very self centered but fun about shooting yourself in the cockpit while flying. I like shooting the pilot too but in the case of the T-6, the best I can get is the back of Herwig’s head!

The flight was a quick one and the trim checks were carried out before heading back to Waukegan. An overhead break into the pattern and then we were back on terra firma. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon. Thanks guys.