The eagles and the ducks got our attention but the gulls were also around on the Mississippi. Gulls don’t tend to get much interest but, if you have been standing around for a while waiting for something to happen, the gulls start to be a bit more interesting. Is this the bird shooting equivalent of going ugly early? They even did some diving for us close in so I guess I should be a bit more grateful. We put it down to tracking practice and we will stick with that I think.
Just a quick joke. I was out shooting wildlife when there were a couple of airliners overhead. It is a bit early in the year for airshows but I guess this might count as my first crossing shot of two jets for the year. Hopefully there will be a few more!
The eagle trip to the Mississippi provided plenty of times when the big birds were either elsewhere or just sitting in the trees wondering what to do next. This meant either doing nothing ourselves of having a practice on the other wildlife passing by. There were a few ducks in flight. Since these are small targets, they have to be reasonably close to make a shot even worth trying. However, a couple of times they came close so why not?
It has been a couple of years since I last made a trip out to the Mississippi to take pictures of the bald eagles that fish out there. Last winter it was pretty warm and my schedule was a bit busy. Warm weather means the river doesn’t freeze up and the birds can fish anywhere they like. When it gets cold, the ice means fishing is harder to do and they tend to gather at the dams along the river since they will usually have some open water just downstream.
This winter hasn’t been consistently cold either but it has been a while and I don’t know whether I will still be here next year so, with a good looking weather forecast, I decided to go. I was not alone in this with the number of people at Lock and Dam 14 in Iowa far larger than I have ever seen before. Combined with the relatively open river, this meant the people were healthily outnumbering the eagles.
However, there were a few birds in the air at various times. Sadly, with a lot of open water, they could choose where to fish. Also, the wind was coming from across the river so they tended to make their fishing runs away from us. Consequently, there were lots of eagle butt shots to be had but not many front views. Even so, I was with some friends so it was a good day to be out and there were a few shots that made the trip a success, even if I didn’t get anything as good as I have managed in previous years.
We had the great pleasure of traveling to Maryland to stay with our friends Mark and Rosie a while back. They are friends of ours from the UK who are currently in the US for work. We spent the weekend with them and got to enjoy a part of Maryland that neither of us had spent much time in before. They live down near where the Patuxent River meets the Chesapeake Bay and there is plenty of water around you wherever you go.
As someone who grew up by the sea, I have always enjoyed being by the water. A good local spot to visit is Solomon Island and we decided to head there for a walk around and a spot of lunch. Since they have a boat, Mark and I decided to go by water while Nancy and Rosie took the car. I wanted to have a blast about in the boat and Mark wanted to go a bit faster than he would if Rosie was aboard so this worked for all of us.
I mentioned previously that I was out shooting the bridges opening for the returning boats. What I didn’t mention then was that I was primarily looking to shoot a time lapse piece. With the movement of the bridges and the boats progressing along the river, I thought that this might make for an interesting time lapse. It wouldn’t be a lengthy piece but it might be a useful addition to the library for a larger piece about Chicago if I were to do it at some point in the future.
The schedule of the lifts of the bridges is always a bit flexible. How quickly the openings take place, how fast the boats are getting through, how many of them there are and how quickly the crews can move from bridge to bridge. Coming this way, though, they are only at the third bridge so they are usually quite predictable.
I got myself in position, had the camera set up on a mount and the remote timer configured for what I was looking for. I saw the previous bridge open and close so knew it wouldn’t be too long. Sure enough, a short while later, the bells started to ring for the bridge closing. I started my sequence of shots so I would have a run in along with the actual movement of the bridge. Then I waited – and waited – and waited. There were some unfortunate sounds coming from the bridge but nothing was moving. After a while, the bells stopped and people started to cross again.
A crew got to work on the lower level trying to fix whatever was not playing ball. The bridge had opened the previous Wednesday so it wasn’t lack of use that was the issue. My decision was how long would I wait before giving up and going home – an easier option than for the boat crews that were stuck between Columbus and Michigan! Finally they fixed it and the bells started again. I got the sequence restarted and everything then happened as planned. It is a short clip but below is the resulting sequence. Now to find something in which to use it.
The return of fall also means the return of some boats. The boats that live out in the lakeside marinas during the summer start their migration back to the boat yards for the winter. For those with masts that don’t fit under the bridge, there are but two options. Wednesday or Saturday. Okay, it is one option but it happens twice a week. These are the days that the bridges along the Chicago River are opened to allow the boats to make their way back inland.
I wanted to grab some shots of the returning boats on one of the Saturday runs. The weather was looking promising so I decided to head out. It is not the best time to shoot since the light is a bit in front of you and behind the boats but it is worth a look. What is trickier is that the buildings are casting some strong shadows which make for a very contrasty scene. However, that’s what RAW is for!
As it turned out, the run was not trouble free. I will save that for an upcoming post and just share a view of the bridges doing what they were designed to do.
Living in the city you can get a lot of things happening out of the window. They can spring up and catch your attention but can equally end before you know it. This can be a problem when you are trying to decide whether to go out and see what is happening. One such example happened recently. I was on the phone when I looked out of the window and saw that the Michigan Avenue bridge over the Chicago River was up and didn’t seem to be showing any sign of coming down. Finally it did lower but not completely. This is when the fun started!
One of the Chicago Fire Department’s boats came up to the bridge and then started spraying water on the bridge. It wasn’t clear at all what was going on. Some fire trucks also showed up spraying onto the bridge from each end. I grabbed some shots of this from our windows. This is the time when you have to make a decision. Do I grab my stuff and go down to get more shots and risk that it is all over before I get there or do I stay upstairs to see what happens and find out that it goes on for ages and I could easily have been out and shooting for a while? I have got this decision wrong both ways in the past. This time I decided to go out and see what I could see.
I didn’t find out what was happening since Chicago’s finest were happy to shout at you for stepping in the wrong place but certainly weren’t going to tell you anything. I later found out the bridges had expanded in the heat and needed to be cooled down. I managed to get to a few locations and get some shots before they opened the bridge up again and then lowered it. This time it went where it was supposed to go and a few cheers came from the crews.
Along with shooting some stills, I also grabbed a bit of video. While this won’t win any documentary awards, you can get a feel for what was going on.
Spring in Chicago does not always arrive promptly but this year the absence of a real winter has meant that it has. With nice weather comes the possibility of boating and that means the annual migration of the boats from their winter storage to the marinas for the summer. For anyone with some height to their boat, i.e. sailing boats, this requires you to make use of the bi-weekly bridge opening schedule.
A look online told me that the first opening of the season was coming up on Saturday so I decided to take a look. The weather was great and so some good shooting opportunities should have been available. I wandered along the river inland since no bridges along the main stretch were open yet so I had time to get to Wolf Point where the river splits. Along the way I grabbed a few shots of things that appealed to me.
At Wolf Point, I had two disappointments. First, the water birds were very active right in front of me but I only had a wide angle and a fish-eye with me so no good opportunity to get any shots. Second, looking all the way down the south branch, I couldn’t see any sign of activity. Since I had a limited amount of time before Nancy and I were planning on heading out, this looked like it was going to be a bust.
So it turned out, I wandered back towards home and we went out. When we returned in the middle of the afternoon, the bridges by us were just going down. That many hours would have been a disappointingly long time to wait. Maybe next week.
Since the birthday of this blog has just passed, I am now going to spend my time repeating previous blog posts from a year ago. Seems a lot easier than creating new content. In fact, for those of you with an inquisitive nature, I will make things easier and you can go to this post to see what I wrote before and decide for yourself whether I am being original or whether I am totally ripping off my own work. If it is different, has the quality of my posts improved???
This year St Patrick’s Day was a Saturday. I am not sure whether this really made any difference because the city chooses a Saturday to celebrate everything and that is the party day whatever the date. The odd thing this year is that it was warm. Mid 70s is not what you expect for this time in March. In fact, my first St Patrick’s Day in Chicago, we went to see the parade and gave up half way through because we were thoroughly frozen!
This time being too warm was more of an issue. I won’t go in to whether the madness that the city falls in to is any way related to St Patrick or even the Irish (and we shall leave the fact that Patrick wasn’t Irish anyway for another day!). Instead, I am going to focus on the tradition of dying the river green. I went down to join the crowds and see how things were developing. It was very busy with the weather really bringing out the crowds.
Dying the river went fine despite the coxed eights that didn’t get out of the way in time. The Police boats seemed mad but hadn’t made an effort to get rid of them ahead of time so what did they expect. It was funny to see the speed boats running close by and putting quite a wash over the eight who looked less than happy about how close they were to sinking!
Watching the crowds was also fun. You do see some sights on a day like today and some of them can be photographed. However, you also have to be careful since the drinking starts early and can affect the good humor of some people!
