Every visit to Chicago is an adventure. As a routine I get up real early and walk the streets and visit places like the Chicago Bean and bug reflective chrome sculpture before the tourists do. It’s fun having the whole place to myself and I have done a ton of cool images there. Here is one from my most recent trip. Shot on my morning iPhone expedition.
On my last trip to Chicago I did my morning walk with just an iPhone. I wanted shoot with an iPhone as it makes me see things differently. I used the Hipstamatic add to create the images you’ll see over the next few days. Seeing square is also challenging and proper framing of what you do see can make the ordinary look a bit different. This is a rather new sculpture in Chicago and it allowed for some creative angle. However, sometimes the straight on shot works best.
Having been a firefight for many years I get excited when anything firefighting wise comes up. When we were in Buffalo shooting Grain Silos we are given the option to take a ride on a Fireboat to the water intake facility in the lake. What a cool trip that was. This is an image made while we were docked at the intake facility and the firefighters decided to clean off the dock.
I am in catch up m ode and sharing images that have been sitting in my Blog files for a while. Today I’ll share two images from Death VAlley. The whole Death Valley things is a bit surreal. It’s a beautiful place. It’s a place you don’t visit in the summer. It gets amazingly nasty hot. Winter time is the time to visit. The image above was shot at dawn when I was shooting sunrise in the dunes near Stovepipe Wells. The image below was a bit further out in Death Valley and I found an old shack and a hundred feet from it was this roller skate. Now who roller skates in the Dessert?
I am heading to NYC Today and then on Wednesday head to Portland and from there out to the Palouse. In the Palouse I have a favorite location to shoot sunset from and it is the fields and rolling hills behind what I called the Bell House. The owners of this home have passed away but the sons maintain it. Great and really nice people. I made a stack of photos to give them when we visit next week.
Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. You be the judge. I at least though it was interesting. This was shot in some old abandoned screw and bolt factory. It is really is old because we found a box with cancelled checks dating all the way back to 1953. This places was downright creepy. It was huge and it smelled bad. I had a hard time finding something to shoot, so I got creative and did a double exposure. Kind of works, i think?
I consider myself one of the luckiest guys in the world. I have been doing photography all my life and have had a great career doing it. I have seen things, traveled to the most incredible locations and met some of the coolest people you’d ever want to know and meet. I am also a lucky guy because back in February 2015 I married my best friend Debra in Antarctica. She is a trooper and she loves photography too. Wow, how lucky could one get. She actually gets me, understand me and tolerates me with all my travels and everything photographic that I obsess about. Yes, she is definitely the woman for me and she is a darn good photographer too. She has an amazing eye and it’s fun to shoot with her because even though we are at the same locations we come back with totally different images. Here is a shot of Debra shooting away at the Methodist Church in Gary, IN.
This seems to be the year of finding some great graffiti. Gary proved no different. This was found in the abandoned Methodist Church. This place was huge and incredible to shoot in.. I could have spent a whole day just shooting at this one location. In the sanctuary I saw this graffiti on the wall and decided it worthy of a photo. Shot with the iPhone.
In addition to my big bot camera the Sony a7 II I was also shooting this past weekend with the iPhone using my favorite app Hipstamatic. This app lets you configure the camera for certain styles and then applies them to shot you take. I love it and the next three images were made using this app and doing double exposures. One particular selection in the app called Salvator actually does the double exposure thing when the camera is shot, Hope you enjoy these three images.
Gary being a steel city at one time flourished. It was challenge building homes for all the workers at the mills. Edison had a plan to make concrete homes. This was tried in several cities. Here are the Edison Homes in Gary in complete abandonment and disrepair. These home would have great in hurricane states. Even today the structure is sound just the insides in ruins. I shots these with a Sony 7II and decided to post process to look somewhat apocalyptic.
