One of my favorite cities to photograph is Chicago. It’s been a while since I was there due to the pandemic but that doesn’t stop me from going through my files. Here are a few gems from some of my last trips. I hope by the spring I can visit there again.
One of the things I like doing when visiting Chicago, one of my favorite cities is to take the architecture tour. This is a boat tour that takes you up and down the river then out to Lake Michigan. The photo ops on the trip are numerous, especially you take the tour at different times of the say. I wanted to share on a picture I took on the trip. Essentially I took an image that looked of (below) and then using Capture One made adjustments to the image you see above. The main tools were level, color temp, contrast, clarity, saturation. I’ll be doing tutorials on photoPXL.com to show how all this is done. But, you need to have confidence that if you take a photo that you might question, that in the end, you can use your software to bring it to life.
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Another image from one of my favorite cities to shoot architectural abstracts. This one was done with a Sony and a 100-400mm lens. I then corrected perspective in post-processing so all the lines were straight up and down. The golden glow was caused by early morning light which is my favorite shooting time in Chicago.
I love doing may kinds of photography. I am most happy doing landscape photography, where I can take my time to compose the image and wait for just the right moment of light. I enjoy doing portraits, where I can try different posing and lighting to come out with unique images. Street photography is different altogether and in many cases not understood by many. I love wandering the streets of my hometown as well as the cities I visit. For me, street photography catches the moment, light and life on the street.
I am excited because this coming week I receive the new Fuji X Pro 3 camera which should be ideal for working the streets. I’ll report back after I have some time with this app. These images today were taken in various locations The photo of the couple in front of the sphere was done in Chicago. The man with the violin was made in Copenhagen. This guy is such a good violin player and he strolls the streets in Copenhagen playing at restaurants and parks. He always has a violin case of cash that people donated to him. The image with the man and woman walking was made in Las Vegas. LasVegas, by the way, is a very rich city to shoot street work. I love the shadows, the seriousness of their walk and then the little upside-down plywood cutout behind them.
I hope you like these. Look for more soon.
The Chicago Bean is one of the most iconic places to take photos in Chicago. I like that as it gives me a chance to find something that may never have been seen before. It’s an opportunity to see something different. These are not easy images to do as we are influenced so often from what we have seen others do. With the Bean, I walked around and crawled around and looked through the camera and realized there were numerous opportunities to get a unique image. This one works with the identifiable people in the bottom center and after that, it just goes crazy. It works because it makes a view stop to see the image and try to figure it out.
Sorry, it has been a little while since my last post. I was away for a few weeks running a workshop and then in major catch-up mode. Today’s image was made in Chicago a few weeks ago. I love this classic shot but maybe not the big letters spelling TRUMP on the beautiful building.
I love cities for a lot of reasons, especially for all they offer a photographer in subjects that can be photographed. I take walks on the streets early in the morning and shoot people, buildings, light and shadow and even elements like door knobs. I usually work with long lenses. These were taken with a Fuji XT2 and a 100-400 zoom.
This a pano I did a few years ago of the Chicago Skyline from a jetty at the beach where all the Volleyball games are held. The original was printed to be 8 feet long. Shot with a Phase One IQ 180 you can see details like people standing in windows. I did this by determining the proper exposure by doing some trial shots. Then I placed the camera on the tripod for vertical photos. I then shot 10 images. The camera movement was from left to right and had about 30% overlap per frame. When I got back home I loaded these into Capture One and processed and adjusted the images and then made sure each had the same settings. Then I opened them in Photoshop. I had Capture One output full-size tiffs. These were then stitched in Photoshop using Photomerge. I printed the print using 24-inch roll paper so the height is 24 inches and the length was almost 8 feet.
I hope you had a safe and happy New Years eve. I had a nice dinner out then a quiet celebration at home with Debra and my son Scott who is visiting for the holidays. Today will be a day and as matter of fact the next few days of testing a number of new cameras that have come my way. I’ll be finishing up a review of the DP Quatrro O, RX100iv, Sony A7s II. I’m starting reviews on the Leica SL, Sony RX100rII and two top secret cameras. Never a dull moment.
Today image is an architectural abstract. This was made in Chicago and done on an iPhone. I challenged myself on one of my morning walks to shoot only with the iPhone and this is one of the many nice images I captured that morning.
My route for my downtown Chicago walks covers many miles. It is one of my favorite thing to do in any city but Chicago offers up so much. I took a walk down the river towards Michigan Ave. and saw this bridge. I was underneath it and used the double exposure function of Hipstamatic to achieve a color BW look for the bridge and make it somewhat abstract. I kind of like it.