fourpointedstar

Sarah and I have traveled to see the Foo Fighters multiple times, so this trip was easy; just a quick trip up to Milwaukee for the weekend (we saw Green Day on the second night of the festival!). What stands out about this concert is that Josh Freese was on the drums; he was later let go, but we saw him again because he also tours with Nine Inch Nails.
This festival seemed to be more relaxed on security, so I brought my Sony in to capture a few photos of our favorite band!

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Back in 2023, I wanted to photograph the 4th of July fireworks, but not from the normal location on Chicago Street. So I found this little hole in the trees along the river. I nearly dropped my camera and tripod into the water because the hill was steep, but I really like the uniqueness of the photos.

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 first saw this car at the Elgin History Museum Classic Car Show; it wasn’t in a great spot to capture a photo of the entire car, but I captured a very minimalist photo of the hood ornament (“Sleek Lines”, July 26, 2025).  The owner was sitting directly behind the car at the South Elgin show and explained that the “hood ornament” is also the hood handle.  This was such a cool car to photograph. 🙂

This is the “classic car” – the 55 to 57 Chevy Belair, a true work of art.  Its very interesting to see the style and design change each year; a 1955 Belair shows what the new style will be, but the details are more reserved, and by the time the “57 Chevy” came out, “reserved” was not the word you would use for the car at all.

I tried this photo a week before with a tree in the background, and it just didn’t work.  I posted the photo simple because it was unique, but now that I have this image?  I like that other photo even less! LOL. I love the balance of color and detail and the overall saturation as well! 

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. 🙂 

You know that feeling after your dad bought a Ford Taurus growing up, and then it seemed like you saw Ford Tauruses everywhere?  That’s how I feel about this orange speckled insect!  Back in 2010, I took a photo of one with my iPhone, and I love the photo.  Then last year, I found another one at a local butterfly garden.  This year I’ve seen them in my yard, on a client’s landscaping, and at the same butterfly garden; maybe they’re not as rare as I thought!

There is something magical about a bee that is the size of a grain of rice.  Well technically, it’s not a bee; maybe a hover fly or a sweat bee, I can never remember which is which.  Either way, the way they flit and float around is wonderful, and then they choose a spot to land; but I can’t imagine that the tiny fraction of an ounce is even noticeable.

When we started our photo walk, I wanted to capture images that I may not normally see or look for. The stop light shadow immediately grabbed my attention, but I will admit that my second photo, the reflection, is the type of photo that I have taken many times over.

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.

I loved the way the evening light played with the reddish bricks on the steeple, but when I saw the shadows on the RR Donnelly building? The way the straight shadow played across the rectangular windows and contrasted with the darkness of the second building’s window reflection? That was simply too good to pass up!

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.

These cars harken back to a simpler time, and it’s always fascinating to see an older generation stare into an older car. I often wonder, does he remember his dad working on a Model A? Did he learn to drive on a similar car in the late 50’s or early 60’s? Or is he just admiring a 100 year old vehicle?

I’m not sure that I like this photo; one of my primary motivations for liking nearly any photo is that it feels balanced. And for some reason, this image does not feel balanced to me, but I’m not even sure that I could even define why I don’t feel that it’s balanced.

Every year, the Elgin History Museum puts on such a great car show!  They hold it on the grounds of the museum with “Old Main” serving as the backdrop, and this year, this fantastic Ford coupe was posing in front of Old Main – the perfect photo op.

This Packard was sitting next to the 1955 Chevy, and while I took my photos of the Chevy, I was continuously drawn to the unique hood ornament and the unique color – a cream with a hint of yellow. I love the graceful pose of the hood ornament – a swan landing in the water – absolutely gorgeous.

Let’s just assume at this point that I won’t tire of hood ornaments. (Spoiler… there’s another photo of one this week too!) This is the same 1955 Chevy that I used for my 24 photo challenge as well, so if you want to see 20+ more images of this car, click here.

Shortly after I’d taken my first photos of the apple for the original photo challenge, I was editing a photo that I’d taken of a Duesenberg, and it occurred to me that I should take the photo challenge at a car show. So today, while at the Elgin History Museum’s car show, I chose a red 1955 Chevy Coupe. I followed the same pattern as with the apples: no bracketing, each shot is planned, every shot is unique. I took 29 images, and I have 25 photos to show below.

I’ve started my first photography class; I’ve never taken classes before, so this is a new adventure. The instructor mentioned in the first lesson the Apple Challenge – take 36 unique photos of an apple. So I took the challenge seriously. I bought 4 apples, ate one of them, and used the other 3 for my photos. Instead of my normal “take a bunch of photos” and “bracket everything”, I took 1 photo for each “pose”. Over 2 different days, I took 46 photos and the lightly edited final 40 images are below. (I did end up retaking 6 photos, as the original image was terribly out of focus or similarly flawed.)

My original thought was that tonight’s photo – the last of the week of flags – would be of a flag with the sunset from the drone, but a huge cloudbank rolled in and ruined that plan. So, I improvised. 🙂

A good Independence Day Parade is full of red, white, and blue – clothing, bunting, streamers, balloons, and so many American flags large and small. So in keeping with this week’s theme, here are a few flags from my hometown’s Fourth of July parade.

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. 😉

I looked inside of this car and thought, “Did he have to pay someone to paint the engine parts to match the car? Or maybe he painted it all himself?”

I love the fact that this car’s owner has chosen red accents for his engine but left the dipstick blue. It’s perfect.

This engine sits flat underneath the Corvair’s “pickup” bed; making it even more of an oddity, not simply because it’s a van front end with a pickup back end.

During her interview, Lauri Novak showed us her photo project where she photographed shadows around the house – this photo is an homage to her project!

Sure, if you go to a classic car show, the mid-50’s Chevy BelAirs are almost as popular as the late 60’s Mustangs, but it’s for a reason. The BelAirs are simply rolling works of art … absolutely stunning, eye catching, and head turning.

Another wonderful photo from the Elgin History Museum’s annual Classic Car Show. Everyone knows what a 1957 Chevy Belair looks like, so it’s always challenging to find a unique take on this incredibly classic of the classic cars. But, if there’s a late 60’s muscle car with awesome rims next to it? Well, now that’s kinda unique.

…someday I will learn to take a photo of the entire car, or at least of the tag with the car’s information at car shows, but the day that I photographed this car was not that day…

Earlier in the morning, before the Elgin History Museum’s Classic Car Show technically started, there were a few showers that rolled through. While most of the cars arrived after the rain or their owners cleaned the cars off, this dripping wet Thunderbird lent itself to some unique photos.