When our niece first went to Northwestern, we made a number of visits. At the time, there was an area at the south end of the campus that was a building site. We hadn’t been back since but now that building site is a cool new building. Since this was where the reception was held after Sara’s diploma presentation, I took the opportunity to grab a shot of it. Rather cool I think – the building, not my shot.
When we lived in Chicago, we made a couple of visits to the Lego convention, Brickworld. Some of the Lego creations on display were really impressive and I have included them in previous blog posts. It just so happened that, this year, Brickworld was on the same weekend that we were in the Chicago area for my niece’s graduation. We had a little spare time on the morning that we were flying home so we decided to check it out en route to the airport.
The venue has changed from when we last went. It is now at a larger location and everything is in one large room. The previous place had four smaller rooms. This seemed to result in the more advanced pieces being grouped together. Now everything is scattered around the one space. Combined with the many retail stands, it made things a bit more tricky to see in a short space of time. Even so, we managed to cover everything enough to feel like we hadn’t missed out on anything. I even managed to FaceTime my sister in the UK so she could see some of the stuff from a long distance!
As with previous years, there were plenty of impressive creations. A section of downtown Chicago from the area we used to live was very cool. A recreation of a baseball stadium seemed to be incredibly detailed but it was quite hard to see since it was enclosed in a case. A guy had produced a detailed representation of a building from his home town in Europe. A Middle Ages scene from previous years had received some updates. My favorite, though was a scene from D-Day.
The scene consisted of a landing craft with soldiers and vehicles coming ashore on a Normandy beach having taken the area in battle. The level of detail was impressive with the water created from thousands of little pieces. I have no idea how many total pieces were included but it was clearly a lot. It must have cost a small fortune to put together combined with a lot of time and effort. A very impressive effort.
I decided to hang out with Seth Myers for a while. Admittedly, I did this at the same time as a few thousand other people. He was the commencement speaker at Northwestern University for 2016 and my niece, Sara, was graduating. While it might appear that there was no connection between Seth and me, I assure you that we were just playing it low key. Consequently, I took these pictures from a reasonable distance across the stadium. Maybe I have some more personal shots taken at another time? Maybe?
Waukegan Airport is the home for a number of corporate aircraft. One of the regular visitors is a Gulfstream belonging to a man who has a home in the area and who is associated with Chicago area sports in a big way. However, the aircraft is wearing colors that are more associated with his college playing days in North Carolina. The result is possibly not the most attractive paint job you have ever seen. It does include the logo of the man in question in his trademark (literally) pose of Air Jordan. I once spent a portion of a day driving around the airfield with the Airport Manager. As we went through one of the electronic gates, he spotted the remnants of a cigar on the ground outside the gate. Apparently, this is one of Michael’s cigars. He is not allowed to smoke them when on the ramp so he drops them just before entering the area.
I was talking with a longtime friend of mine about some stuff recently and it got me thinking about a project he had worked on a few years ago. He was heavily involved in Adam Aircraft based out of Centennial Airport south of Denver. The company had two projects; the A500 twin piston and the A700 twin jet. The company ultimately folded with only about half a dozen of the A500s delivered to customers and the A700 still in flight test. I was wondering whether I had any shots of either type.
I did make a visit to the company while he worked there and got to walk around the flight test hangars. Sadly, no cameras were allowed so I don’t have any images of the work the company was doing. That is a big shame. However, I did come across A500s twice. One time was at Oshkosh where a couple of the planes were on display together. Later I also saw one parked up at Palwauckee (now called Chicago Executive) where it had a cover over the fuselage. I believe some are still flying but, without manufacturer support, I imagine they are not cheap to keep.
A work trip recently took me through Chicago Midway. I wasn’t there long before getting on my next flight. We were taxiing out to depart and were coming past the National Guard air unit based on the field. They operate a bunch of Black Hawks. A couple of them were parked up on the apron and one was on approach. My plane conveniently had to hold for a while so I got to see the Black Hawk fly its approach and land. I only had my phone with me but here is some footage of the arrival.
Unless you live in the mountains, California winters are not a time for much thought about snow. However, I did find myself thinking back to an event we went to a couple of time when we lived in Chicago. Morton Arboretum is located in Lisle, west of the city, and was a favorite place for us to visit. In any season it was a pretty place to walk. During the winter, they would put on a demonstration of dog sledding and this could be fun to watch.
A course would be set up through the trees so there were plenty of places in which you could set yourself up to watch the action. The runs would take place at various times throughout the day and between them you could go and talk to the people and meet the dogs. They were certainly energetic creatures and, I imagine, they would be a real handful to have in a house. Let the buyer beware!
The snow was not too deep on this occasion so it was relatively straightforward to head out around the course and get set for the teams when they came through. Most of them had things well under control but sometimes a single dog sled would appear and the dog might get a little distracted by all of the cool smelling stuff around them. At this point, the person would appear to be doing more of the pushing and the dog less of the pulling.
Shooting in the snow is always a little interesting. The brightness of the snow itself contrasts a lot with the shadows in the surrounding trees. This is when shooting RAW really helps as you can get a lot more out of the shots.
Rochelle IL is about half way between Chicago and the Mississippi River. For those with an interest in railroading, it is known as a location where the Union Pacific and the BNSF railroads cross. The town has taken this crossing to heart and created a park where the two lines intersect. There is a place to sit under cover and watch the trains come through while there are areas for kids to play. There is even a gift shop that stocks railroad related gifts.
I was in Rochelle for work and my colleagues were interested in seeing where the crossing was located so, during a lunch break, we headed to see it. It was a rather hot day so hanging around in the sun did not seem like a good idea to me. I went straight to the covered area to stay in the shade while they took a look around. Of course, I wasn’t going to go somewhere without taking my camera along.
We weren’t there terribly long but we did have a few trains come through. If I had thought about things, I might have come better prepared and had some hearing protection. The two tracks cross on the flat and then there are grade crossings for the local streets so they sound their horns as they come through. In such close proximity, this is a touch loud!
Getting some lovely evening light means the steady improvement in shooting conditions right up until the point when it all goes away. The light was on the nose of the departing jets so was good as they climbed out. Once they were passed our location, they were partially backlit but, since the sun was very low in the sky, the undersides of the jet were illuminated as it climbed. This provided some great options.
As the sun got even lower, the shade was beginning to be an issue for the front shots but the sky still provided a few nice options as the jets were heading away. The back of a plane might not always be the best side to shoot but, if the light is playing ball, it can be good. Of course, the transformation from great to gone is pretty quick so you make the best of it and then you can go home!
Every once in a while you see something and you have no idea what is going on. As a United 767 climbed out from O’Hare, it was streaming something from the fuselage. I saw it through the viewfinder at the time and figured it would be obvious what it was when I looked at the pictures. It turns out I still don’t know what was happening. Anyone reading this that has any ideas, please let me know what you think.
