Category Archives: Chicago

#52weekproject: Week 18 – Run River North at Schubas Tavern

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52WP-18 Run River North

 

Photo taken Monday, July 21st. (wow, that was a long time ago.) Went out with my friends Rohit and Katie to a concert at one of my favorite concert venues in Chicago, Schubas Tavern. They host a lot of up-and-coming and lesser known bands in an intimate and friendly space, which appeals to my hipster sensibilities. And since the show was sold out, I knew we were gonna be in for quite a show.

Run River North, they are basically my favorite Korean-American Indie Folk Rock band out right now :P. I originally found out about them from an interview on NPR, and they even have a music video featuring Diedrich Bader (whom you may know from the Drew Carey show). So, how can you not like them?! Check em out!

#52weekproject: Week 16 – Singers in the Subway

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Singers in the Subway

Lake and Washington Subway

Taken on Tuesday, July 15th, 2014. I’ve wanted to take this photo for a long time now. Caught these guys performing in the State & Lake Red Line Subway station after leaving work. And have seen them performing together during rush hour for at least the 2.5 years I’ve been in Chicago. There are usually 3 of them that perform together, and after some searching it seems they go by The Real Connection. They perform old school motown/soul songs, and just have this real smooth soulful sound that is just really soothing.

I had an idea that I wanted to take a picture of them with the train running in the background, but it’s usually so hard with so many people around. I ended up leaving work late this particular day, so the rush hour crowd had subsided by then, but they were still going strong. I’m gonna print this out and give it to them next time I see them. Maybe I can try to get a pic with all three of them together.

 

Here’s a video of them I found on the youtubes with my superior world wide web crawling skills:

 

#52weekproject: Week 15 – In the Loop

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Week 15: In the Loop

In the Loop

Taken last Friday, July 11th, from the 6th floor of a parking garage on the corner of Wabash and Randolph St.

I don’t love it, but it’s got this timeless look to it… like it could have been taken anytime in the past 30 years. (Spoiler alert: It was.) Anyway, first photo in this series taken with my Fuji X100. It’s a nice compact camera, that’s small enough that I usually carry it everyday with me to work in my backpack. Controlwise, it’s a little hard to use and requires a bit more setup and thought to take a picture, but the image quality is pretty nice.

#52weekproject: Week 13 – North & Halsted

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Week 13: North & Halsted

North and Clyborn
Taken Wednesday, May 21st, 2014. I wandered around the city checking out a few parking structures that had open rooftops near the train tracks to get a shot of the city and maybe a moving train. The hunt was a little bit of a bust in terms of actual photographic captures, but I think I do have a some ideas for next time.

This shot in particular is from the Steppenwolf theater parking structure, which overlooks the brown/purple line near Halsted St and North Ave. It felt a little creepy taking a photo from there, because the trains slow down around the corner, and at that time of day, it feels like I’m a peeping tom (not that I would know), taking pictures of people through their train windows and invading their privacy (that’s a nice blouse you’re wearing, by the way).

Anyway, I dig that the lampposts kind of frame the photo, and you can see the a bit of the city between the buildings (the Hancock being the easily recognizable one). Could have tried a longer focal length from further back, but not sure I’d have the height to do that.

#52weekproject: Week 11 – The Lampost and the Lighthouse

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Week 11: The Lamppost and the Lighthouse

Lamppost Painting

Taken on Tuesday, May 6th, 2014. Took the bus down to Adler Planetarium after work on a day that was windier and colder than it seemed. I was looking for a sunset picture of the skyline, but since I had shown up way before dusk, I decided to try a few different things, which is what this project is all about. The sunset photo was a little pedestrian, so it doesn’t get top billing this week. (Also, full disclosure, it was super windy and cold by the lake, and I was losing feeling in my fingers so I wanted to skedaddle before the sky got interesting enough for a great skyline pic.)

This photo is pretty simple. Make the horizontal things horizontal, the vertical things vertical. Compose the elements in a visually appealing way. Find some balance in the subject. Have an interesting foreground, midground and background. The hard part was composing this with an ND3 filter on it, which only allows 1/1024th of the light through (but it gave me the ability to make this a long exposure).

One of the things I like about this photo is that it has a painting like quality to it with the choppy water smoothed out with the long exposure. It actually has some semblance to my desktop wallpaper that I found that is based on Rene Magritte’s Son of Man painting (that you may recall from the newer-but-not-that-new Thomas Crown Affair movie). Here’s that wallpaper:

Also, here’s the other photo that didn’t make the cut:

The Chicago Skyline at Sunset(ish)

Sunset skyline

It’s amazing how you can get 2 completely different photos just 30 minutes and 50 yards from each other.