fourpointedstar

Once you start looking around ECC, you’ll find many beautiful scenes to photograph, and since the campus has been built over decades, there are many different architectural styles to take advantage of.

The Baháʼí House of Worship is one of the most beautiful buildings in the Chicagoland area. Since the exterior is almost entirely white, it’s a great candidate for a monochrome series of images.

Taking photos of a fire is an incredibly flexible, you can take very quick photos, photos with movement, or anything in between.  But if you capture very quick photos, you just might see a dragon!

Oh my, and to look inside that mountain outcrop?  What a wonderful spectacle of lines, shadows, and shapes!  This is definitely some kind of 3D TicTacToe game that I’m not aware of!

I’ve always loved these kinds of architectural elements; the abstract corners jutting out from a building. ECC seems to have a few of these; staircases that are not in the core of the building, but on the outside hanging onto the building, and in this case the blue pillar makes this element even more impactful.

Searching for abstract architecture photos is a little more conducive to conversation than many other types of walk-about photography.  As we walked along, my daughter and I talked about talents, skills, careers, colleges, and life in general.  Being a parent can be stressful and contentious, but a walk through a scenic area with someone who also appreciates the beauty of the man-made world around us can bring it all back into focus.

These were the stairs that first drew me in at ECC; they’re on the outside of Building J and perched precariously on the side of the brickwork.  The angles, the straights, the bricks, the shadows all combined to create great imagery.

I’ve lived 2 miles away from Elgin Community College for ten years now, but I’d only visited when I was teaching my daughters to drive. As I walked into Building H for my daughter’s first class, I was struck by how many photo opportunities exist in the architecture. So, the next week when I dropped her off, I chose to walk around and capture a few of those images.

Recently I saw a photo of a fork.  
The fork was alone on a white backdrop, illuminated by a single point of light casting a very distinct shadow.
The image stuck with me, itching my creative neurons.  Then this past week, Sarah was at a conference, and I was home alone, so I grabbed random a few kitchen items, a white backdrop, and a flashlight…

It gets harder and harder to capture different or unique angles of cars at car shows.  I have hundreds of photos of antique car details and thousands of photos of cars; so at each show that I attend now, I am looking for something different, a new sight – like photographing a classic through a hood.

I’m not even sure where the puddles came from that day – it was over 90°F / 32.2°C out – but the puddles made for fun reflections.  A couple of other photographers on the walk really used them to their advantage, I just used them as an abstract framing device.

Pardon me if I’ve photographed this structure before, but I’m obligated to capture an image each time that I visit Chinatown! I do need to remember to bring a wider lens next time that I visit though; I would love to capture the staircase as the border of the photo.

There are some photos that I like that I don’t want to “define” why; the crosses photo fits in that category – I love the symmetry and texture of the image.  As we walked along Spring Street, I saw my shadow walking along the brick but it took me a bit to capture the right photo since normally my elbow would be extending from my head when I click the shutter button.

We crossed the street at Dexter for the express purpose of the church photo; it was obvious to me that the street lamp and raised bricks were a perfect composition.  But I spent quite a bit of time working on the exact composition for the vines; I wanted to keep the sparse vines to the right, but the light pointed to the left … and I ended up with a photo that I wouldn’t normally take that I really enjoy.

I love looking for interesting reflections in windows; the window offers a perfect frame and typically distorts the view. Recently though, I’ve been drawn to photos of reflections in puddles; a very similar concept, but a different and less predictable frame and outcome.

My friend and I took a nice slow walk around one of Elgin’s historic neighborhoods. Our meandering path matched our meandering conversation as we talked about life and pressed our shutter buttons. I remarked to him “I’m just not really feeling it”, but I continued to capture interesting images. As I tried to pick 7 images to post for this week, they all seemed to be missing something; but as pairs of photos?

The strong red-ish light of the sun played strongly across each scene, but was most evident on the brick buildings leading to the wonderful hues in these photos.

I’ve captured this style of image of an American flag multiple times; a single long exposure of a flag as it waves in a breeze. The trick is the breeze can’t be too strong or you don’t get variations in the waving, but … that means that you might encounter a night like last night, where you stand outside for an hour because the wind just isn’t blowing most of the time.

Let’s call this image a work-in-progress, ok? As photographers if we’re honest with ourselves, none of our images turn out EXACTLY how we want them to, especially when we’re trying something new. However, I am very happy with this composite. I wanted to do another multiple exposure this week, but this time with a lot more images – 50 is a lot, right?

I captured the same flag at roughly 1 second intervals for 2 minutes for this creation, and each flagpole is rotated exactly 1/50th of the circle. While the blending/opacity did not turn out with the effect that I wanted, I am exceedingly happy with the happy accidental bushes around the edge!

p.s. I’ll let you guys figure out why I chose 50 images. 😉

Doesn’t everyone lay down in the lawn of a random business’s lawn because their flag is waving in the correct direction for the image that you’d like to create? This is 5 exposures merged so that each images partly shows through, and I quite like it; if you look closely, you can see where the stars bleed through in some spots too.

Since we’re celebrating the July 4th holiday this week, I chose our flag as my subject for this week’s photos. While normally my photos are taken in the past and then I choose 7 images for the week from an event or along a theme, I’ve decided that this week’s photos should be taken daily and be relatively unique compositions.

First of all, this hotel’s footprint is very odd, very random; almost as if the architect was moonlighting as a cubism artist.
But then the midday sunlight reflecting and refracting across the brick facade?

Absolutely delightful!

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Of course there is a joke about the Golden Arches on the River Point building, but honestly, this construction was a wonderful addition to the Chicago River split.  In 2008 and 2009, I visited this exact spot, but there was no building, only traintracks.  Now, there’s a beautiful park, wonderful art, and the space has been utilized.

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I absolutely love the powerful yellow mixed with the soft blue, but try as hard I could, there was no way to align the axis or center of the dome with the yellow backlit wave.  I still love the contrast and bold colors in the image.

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This wasn’t my favorite photo to capture. The railings on the staircase are glass and that just gives me the heebie-jeebies (is that how you spell that phrase?); moving my feet out of the way while trying to hold my camera over the edge.

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As I moved around the lobby in the Hemmens, these lights moved with me creating patterns and shapes. A centimeter this way or that and the entire frame would change; it’s one of the reasons that I love architecture photography, it really does embody that statement of “right place, right time”. The colors, angles, lighting are all impacted by exactly when and where you are standing.

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I’ve heard many people say the right place and the right time are essential for a photograph, but I would argue that the right mindset is also essential. As Sarah and I were standing in the lobby of The Hemmens in Elgin, I was watching the reflections and refractions on the windows and walls. And while my mind wandered, this distant aircraft caught my eye as it traced its way through each window pane.

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Normally graffiti distracts from my nature photos; but in this case, the carvings were so pervasive on this rock that it became an artistic subject in itself. In order to capture “Winding Valley”, I had to stand on this rock, and interestingly there were no carvings on the other side of the boulder.

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