fourpointedstar

Leaving at the end of a trip is always sad and happy; I’m typically glad to head back to my home and my routine, but sad to leave the destination and certain that I would love to spend a day or two more there!  The photo walk in Chinatown was hot and humid, but I was sad the day was over and that we were headed home.

I love the beauty and fluidity of Chinese characters; in English, signs are typically written in block letters, but the majority of the text through Chinatown is written in a script that I would describe as “cursive”.

The photographer and cosplayer knew the photo that they wanted; they captured 3 photos and disappeared back into the crowd.  But it reminded me of regular life, I do not know what character she was portraying, or what the backstory was, but for a brief moment I noticed her existence.  This happens with everyone, we rarely know their story or the character they are portraying, and they move on through our life so quickly. 

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.

As I composed this image, I thought it would be funny to have the red characters coming “out” of the dragon’s mouth like they were flames; I had a little inside chuckle as I composed the image at my own ingenuity.  Then some pedestrians were reading the inscription on the statue, so I waited – just as they walked away the people with the traditional hats walked by.  The moral of the story: sometimes you should let people read about the statue so that you can get a better image!

The traditional architecture shown throughout Chinatown in Chicago is incredibly repetitious.  Repeating patterns and colors flow throughout each structure, and I enjoyed attempting to compose images that eliminated the power lines and non-traditional structures, yet still displayed the beauty and form.

I try to lead a photo walk monthly, but… well, life gets in the way.  In late July, we had 7 people on our Chinatown walk, and I wasn’t sure what I would photograph on the trip.  This was one of the first photos that I took, something about the Slurp Slurp made me smile. 🙂