photos from joshua l. smith
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Parking garages offer unique views of Chicago, so anytime that I park in a garage, I walk down the staircase. On my way to visit a client, I saw spotted this puddle’s reflection and in my mind, I wandered off to what I could create with just a boring staircase.
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…view older images with the thumbnails below…
A few years back, I attended a camera club meeting about street photography. One of the attendees asked about the privacy of those that you photograph, and the speaker responded “as long as they are in public, there should be no expectation of privacy.” A drone blurs this line even further; while a photo taken 300 feet away will to show fantastic resolution, you can easily see my neighbors back yards in this photo. Anyway, as much as I enjoyed trying to create an interesting composition with my own neighborhood, I won’t fly the drone over residential property any longer.
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
For the second full week of Black & White February, I decided to follow up on an idea that I’d had for a few months – to shoot light trails in Elgin. I enjoy capturing long exposures, but the added challenge of capturing light trails in downtown Elgin instead of Chicago (where there’s more traffic) seemed challenging.
While we were out in the bitter cold for the January Lunar Eclipse, I realized that Elgin’s parking garages would make a great vantage point for some light trail images. I’d taken images from the top of the Spring Street garage, in fact, I’ve led photo walks in downtown Elgin and used the Spring Street garage as a vantage point.
However, I decided to add one more aspect to the week’s photos: I would attempt to shoot 7 images and capture 7 photos that I was proud of…I didn’t quite make it. Capturing light trails of traffic when there’s very little traffic turned out to be a bit more challenging than I expected. But I took 14 images, from 6 vantage points, and captured 7 images that I’m proud of.
