One Day in Chicago: Or How to Freeze Your Lens off in Beautiful Chitown

  My wife and I recently traveled to Chicago for a two-night stay, and I had one day to see the city for the first time. While she busied herself with an exam or something, I took an architectural boat tour of the Windy City. In all fairness, my wife was taking her exam to become board certified as a clinical neuropsychologist. Isn't that adorable? For the record, she passed with flying colors. Sincere congratulations to her and our friend who also took the 3-hour oral exam. To start off my day, I took a quick taxi ride to the dock to catch my boat.......the incorrect dock. Always confirm which company your are touring with before heading out. I apparently went with http://caf.architecture.org. After a brisk walk to the correct dock, I grabbed an aisle seat near the rear of the boat. I always take an aisle seat, as I know I'll be jumping up and bumping people with my camera bag. I am a nuisance. A young lady asked if I could switch seats with her grandmother, so the two could sit together. I was a little reluctant, but eventually caved. Expecting a frail woman with a cane to hobble over, her grandmother approached with the dexterity of a woman half her age. I joked to some other passengers that I wanted my seat back. Never fall for the old "may my grandmother and I sit together?" scam in Second City.
  So with only 3 hours to see the Big Onion, I definitely recommend taking the architectural tour. Our guide knew every story behind every building. As for the photography, I obviously did not use a tripod, and never put on my strobe or bracketed for the exterior shots. I shot by the seat of my pants, and could only wait for the boat to take me to the next spot. I used my 24-105 for the entire boat tour (though I would employ my 17-35 the next morning in Millennium Park). Going wide for some of the cityscapes of course left me with some keystoning and chromatic aberration, which I corrected for in Lightroom and Photoshop.
   With our luggage in hand, we took a quick taxi ride to Millennium Park the following morning to get my last taste of Paris on the Prairie. If you've never been there, I suggest arriving before 9 o'clock on a Sunday morning. At that time, most of the tourist riff-raff are still bundled up or eating breakfast. I spotted the iconic Cloud Fountain through the trees along the steps leading to Gehry's Jap Pritzker's Pavillion, and lept over with excitement. It's not often I leave my camera bag with my wife, but seeing that there were no tourists as of yet, I seized the opportunity. The shot of the end of the silvery bean was taken from this vantage point. I shot it with my 24-105 at 24 mm, 1/200th at f/11. While the wide angle would also assist, I went with an f/11 to get the reflection in focus as well as the bean itself. The bean profile image was shot at 1/160th, f/11 at 92mm to isolate the cloud and building from the street and tourists.

    We then moved along to Gehry's Pavillion, just a stone's throw to your 4 o'clock. Because I was immediately asked to get off the grass, I had to go wide, but liked the city vista and crossing bars. From this location, the Pritzker appears to be a dust cloud from the launching Aon Center...in my simple mind. After needlessly crossing a bridge on the southeast corner of the park, we made it to the Crown Fountain. If any of my reader(s) make it to the park in the near future, please tell the security guard at this bridge that I understand that I'm not allowed to use my tripod on the bridge. She gave me a lot of attitude, and clearly does not enjoy her job.

 For my shot of the Crown Fountain, I was shot at 1/640th at f/4. A second copy of her face in Screen mode was used in Photoshop to brighten things up. Had I shot straight-on, I would have had the sun directly in my lens, and they tell me that's a bad idea. 

    So that wraps up our trip to That Toddling Town. I realize there was not much how-to in this episode, but  I guess I just wanted to share my brief adventure.......and the interwebs continue to push me to publish. Until next time.................

My First Blog: Look at Me, I'm Bloggin', I'm Bloggin'!

So.............this is blogging. Am I doing it yet? Well, the interwebs told me that as a photographer, I should be doing this. So....here I am. Is there anybody there? I thought for my first posting, I would talk about my frantic experience photographing my 6 nephews this past June in Duck, North Carolina. Not only was it an adventure, but it is also timely, with Hurricane Earl approaching. I hope our rental home is safe, since we plan to return next year.

We had a week in Duck, and I put off my little photography assignment until the second to last day. Obviously I had no plan on how I was going to wrangle 6 critters to pose for me, but I know each well enough to figure out how I could coerce them to earn their keep. One simply required that his cup of popcorn be just out of frame, one wished to trigger the strobe several times, while another demanded that some shots be taken with his swimming goggles and floaties on (somehow those did not make the final cut). Ideally, I would have liked to have shot all the images at dusk, but this was not possible due to eating schedules. They seem to require frequent feedings. My wife and I only have carnivorous plants to deal with at home. Not wanting to do much masking or post work in general, I left the sky as it was, and only slightly tweaked the recovery slider and luminance in Lightroom, in hopes of getting some of the sky blues to pop.

Our location for the shoot was beneath the hot tub, with the subjects' backs to the ocean...the Atlantic Ocean, to be pacific. I kept the lighting to a minimum, as I spent half my time chasing and positioning my models, rarely having a moment or a safe place to put down my camera. I shoot with the Canon 5D Mark II, and my 24-105 was the lens of the day. With a Pocket Wizard on top, I positioned one Canon 580EX thorough a white umbrella on an Avenger stand, just barely out of camera-left frame. For some reason, kids love staring directly into flashing lights. I lost several frames to these hypnotized stares. I was shooting at a 1/200th and around a f/10, in an effort to underexpose the sky. I must acknowledge my lighting guru, David Hobby (http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/) as my inspiration for the mixed lighting setup.With such small models, the umbrella was large enough to create some wrap on the non-lit side. In the end, I probably had 2 minutes per model, as they each had their own reasons for wishing to leave. One had to refill his popcorn and another had to get into the pool before going down to the beach. Prima donnas! W.C. Fields was correct. Still, it was a pleasure, and I've recently started photographing dogs and their "owners." Thanks go out to all the parents/agents. The checks are in the mail.
   Hey, did I just blog? That wasn't so bad. If you have not seen my work recently, please check it out at http://www.slangerphotography.com/.