“Between a Rock & a Rock”
November 20th, 2025
“Angles of a Roof”
November 19th, 2025
Tagged: 2025
I’ve taken many photos along this theme over the years – I absolutely love the strong silhouette border and pop of colors in the sunlight.
For the past 10 years, I’ve wanted to take this trip with Keith; Sarah and I have also talked about taking a vacation down to Southern Illinois to see the natural beauty. For many years, the trip would conflict with work or kids activities, so we we’d say “next year, we’ll go on Keith’s workshop”.
We started the trip off with this fantastic image, and by the time the two and a half days were complete, Sarah and I had hundreds of fantastic images, and we’d made great new friends too.
This image may be my favorite image that I captured on our Blue Line Photo Walk; I love the fact that you can wander around this image and see so many scenes, each one partially obscured by another scene. For me, the perfect detail is the two men chatting at the counter at the back of the repair shop.
One of my photographer friends has taken images that are similar to this concept; what happens if you photograph while the crossing guards close? But at the Metra crossing at National Street, you have additional options – what if you merge traffic, train, casino boat, and crossing guard?
I always want for my next photo to be better than the last image; a better composition or representation, or maybe a different, unique view. I’ve photographed fireworks many times, and I’ve seen some fantastic ideas using zoom and focus that I’d love to try…but what if I took my idea from Christmas lights – spinning the camera during the exposure – and tried it during a longer exposure of fireworks?
I’ve long wanted to capture an aircraft that is traversing the moon, but have not taken the time (or patience) to plan for that photo. But the other night when I was walking into the house, I watched an aircraft nearly pass in front of the moon. The resulting photo is not my best image of an airplane or of the moon, but I find the motion blur to add to the image.
As this biker rolled up, the chorus from Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box” blasted from his bluetooth speaker; I’m not certain that you could be more cool that this dude. I crossed the street in front of him, and I gave him a sleight nod of my head to let him know that I felt his aura, and as I lifted my camera up to capture the image, he gave me just the edge of a smile to let me know that he knows that he’s worth of being photographed.
There are two easy rules to follow when you start photographing the world around you: always have your camera ready and always look for a great photo. As I was driving home from the girl’s high school, I spotted the sliver of the moon with the dusk colors; the water in the pond offered a wonderful blue hue as well, so I turned on my hazard lights and hopped out of my car to capture the scene.
I’d passed this scene for a few mornings; the singular shaft of sunlight spilling through the forest skylight; however, there was no where to park along this stretch of Winfield Road (and the road has a curb too). Instead I pulled up Google Maps to find the nearest spot and decided to walk to the scene.
I love the mystical feeling and wonder if you could find a sacred sword in that spotlight?
At this particular corner at the southwest corner of Herrick Forest Preserve, there are two trees standing alone. They’re not full, in fact that they’re kinda odd, but they make fantastic silhouettes against the pre-dawn hues of the late summer.
There’s a bit of a story behind this photo:
In late August and early September, the sun is at the exact correct spot for wonderful sunrise photos on my drive into work. A couple of days before this photo, the mixture of sunrise and fog was perfect. I took a dozen photos that I was very excited about, and once I got to my office, I turned my camera back on to see the images that I’d captured.
And that was how I discovered that my Sony doesn’t have any alert when you press the shutter that there are not SD cards in the camera…I’d missed all of those (in my imagination) wonderful photos. So, for the next week, I stopped at the same three locations and captured sunrise photos, attempting to recreate those images that in my memory were perfect.
Anyway, I simply love this photo. I’ve shown it to a few people, one of whom said that it needs more tonal range or the addition of another color (roll back all that yellow to get some blue into the image)…but I like that early morning punch of yellow.
I love these types of photos; photos where you can’t quite tell what elements are part of the foreground, background, or reflection.
