Tag Archives: Chicago

Wigglegram

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Joey-and-Tracy

You may recall how I extolled the virtues of GIFs in a previous post. I mean, we are in the future now, and one can only expect to have moving portraits like they have in Harry Potter. I think they called them magical portraits, but I like to call them wigglegrams.

My friends Joey and Tracy were kind enough to ask me to take some photos of them for some save the dates cards they’ll be sending out. Of course, I never turn down an opportunity to hang out with friends, so we went out and wandered around their neighborhood of Old Town, Chicago. I found a nice wall to photograph them, and they decided to just levitate in front of it like this. Legend has it that they are still floating there to this day.

I kid, but I did take a couple of other nice photos of them. I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to include a lot more of the environment in these portraits, and I could mix it up with some tighter compositions. Anyway, I’m a little behind on posting these, but congrats Joey and Tracy! You are both great, and even more so together!

port-08port-07

#52weekproject: Genevieve at Lincoln Hall in Chicago

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2015-06-08 - Genevieve 02

Taken Tuesday, June 9th, 2015, at Lincoln Hall, in Chicago. I picked up some last minute tickets after having seen Genevieve’s Tiny Desk Concert on NPR the previous week. (http://www.npr.org/2015/06/01/411227694/genevieve)

If you happen to be following my instagram, you might have seen this little snippet of her live: https://instagram.com/p/3xq3eLlIDX/. She’s got a really killer voice, and a super energetic stage presence. So, if you get a chance to see her, do yourself a favor, and go!

2015-06-08 - Genevieve 01

#52weekproject: Week 31 – Walking in a Loop

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panning walking

Taken Wednesday, Jan 14th, 2015. I normally tutor on Wednesdays, but since my lil buddy Zerick couldn’t make it, I decided to take a walk down towards Millenium Park for a photo of some ice skaters… The photo didn’t really pan out well… so instead I am posting this photo I took while panning on this fella walking.

#52weekproject: Week 31 – Chicago Subway – Monroe

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Monroe Subway

 

The Accordion Player

Taken Tuesday, Jan 6th, 2015. I’m working on a bunch of new years resolutions, one of which is to continue taking pictures in Chicago. I’ve started to take the Red Line from the Monroe stop in the loop, since it means I get on the train one stop ahead of the other half of the rush hour work crowd. The station here is a little darker, and doesn’t seem quite as lively, but I did find this lady playing her accordion for the waiting passengers. Doesn’t seem to be quite as popular as the singers, but she isn’t quite as interactive either.While I can’t even recall what she was playing, I will say that it takes an immense amount of confidence and thick skin to ply your trade on the subway, where the only feedback you’d get is from the expression of hurried commuters trying to get somewhere. Thanks but no thanks; I think I’ll stick to just sharing my photos on the internet. 😛

So as I watched her play, I took out my camera and waited for the train to pass in the background, and snapped a few shots before I shoved my camera back in my pocket, and dropped the only dollar I had in her bag and boarded the train. Although it was a quick photo, and I was actually able to eyeball exposure and had the settings dialed in just right without even having to futz with my camera too much. Which is something I feel kinda proud of… Like that should earn me a ribbon or something!) Even the the camera is slower, and with the manual controls (or especially because of the manual controls), I am still able to take a quicker shot than I probably could have with this other newer camera I have.

Black and White vs Color

One of the other things I’ve done is converted this to black and white, and brought it into photoshop to do some dodging (to decrease the exposure in some areas, and increase the overall contrast of the image). I’m finding that I like doing that for my black & white conversions, but it would be a terrible pain to include into a workflow for an entire series of photos, but I’m sure that’s just my laziness talking there…

I’m a little torn between whether I like the black and white version, or if I prefer the color version (also dodged a bit). I think each have their own merits.What do you think?

Monroe Subway v2 color

#52WeekProject: Moonrise over Chicago Harbor

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Week 28: Moonrise over Chicago Harbor

Taken on Saturday, December 6, 2014. It had been a while since I had gone out to take a picture. The last time, it was of a boat in the harbor while I was trying to do some scouting for this photo. Unfortunately, the day I originally wanted to take this photo (Nov 6th), the weather was crazy and the winds and waves ended up tearing up a lot of the lakefront and even sunk a barge. So wisely, I waited until the next full moon to take the picture. (And hooray, I didn’t get swept out to sea!)

The top picture was taken at around 4:20pm, as the sun was setting. The bottom picture was taken at around 5:01pm just after the moon rose over the horizon. The downside of having moved to December, was the moonrise ended up being 40 minutes after the sunset, so because of the darker scene, I needed to boost the exposure when caused a lot of issues. (As you can see in the blurrier bottom picture.)

In order to emphasize the moon, I wanted to use the longest focal length I could, which meant a 300mm f/4.5 manual focus lens stacked with a 2x teleconverter and a 1.4x teleconverter. This makes it an effective focal length of 1000mm and the increased distance from the focal plane reduces the overall exposure by 3 stops, so an effective aperture of about f/13. Unfortunately, because of these limitations, and the decreased ambient light, my shutter needed to be open much longer (from 1/125s to 1/2s), and with the long focal length and heavy gear on my tripod, every little vibration resulted in major blurriness in the photo. Even after I switched out the lens to the 200 f/2.8 with and only the 2x teleconverter (EFL 400mm f/5.6) at 1/6s, and you can still see major blurriness in the photo.

So, while the idea was pretty solid, the execution was pretty terrible due to the conditions and limitations of my equipment. I’m definitely going to try this photo again, and will likely aim for next year’s supermoon (Sept 27th, 2015) when the moon will be about 14% bigger, and the moon rises at 6:32pm, 7 before the sunsets. I’ll bring a sturdier tripod, and keep my fingers crossed that the weather holds up so I can shoot at some reasonable settings, so it’ll look like that top picture with a giant ass moon (not my own) in the background!

Also, I made a timelapse, which you can see below…