One Fall night, I’m walking to Michigan Ave. to take a bus home from an art show at Navy Pier and end up snapping a few shots of the architecture between the two. This nighttime shot of the Wrigley Buildings, the Tribune Tower, and the Trump Tower turned out really nicely, and ended up on the cover of my 2021 calendar.
November 5, 2017. Samsung S8+ cell phone, 4.25mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 26mm), f/1.7, 1/30, ISO 250.
I love this photo because it’s lovable! Check out that shutter speed. This photo was exposed in 1/500th of a second, and that chipmunk making sure it scored that piece of mango was still a blur. I bet that slice of mango weighed more than the chipmunk did. But it knows good stuff, good luck, being in the right place at the right time, and getting away clean with the prize.
July 14, 2024. OnePlus 12 cell phone, 13.3mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 70mm), f/2.6, 1/500, ISO 50.
How have I wronged her? Oh, I’m sure I can count the ways. How many of us have made this expression? Every single human, I’m sure. But the cat could convey her displeasure just as much as a person could, and I can only hope that I corrected the situation promptly.
February 19, 2013. Samsung Galaxy Nexus cell phone, focal length 3.43 (35mm equivalent: 33mm), f/2.75, 1/15, ISO 640.
It’s just a random vernacular moment. Maybe in most cities or towns, someone would have a note like this on a lockbox. I don’t know. It sure feels like a very Chicago thing to me.
July 19, 2021. Samsung S20+ cell phone, focal length 5.4 (35mm equivalent: 24mm), f/1.8, 1/300, ISO 40.
On a fiercely hot Saturday afternoon where the only shade is the shadow he casts, a worker takes a long walk from an office at one end of these grain silos to another at the far end.
This wheat mill was only about a mile and a half west of downtown Chicago. Owned by ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), it was an active milling site. It was demolished in early 2021, and the site is currently a parking lot. News reports from the time suggest that there will be luxury development there. But I love this photo because these silos were old and beat up, the worker brings some scale and human interest, and the conversion to black-and-white brought out more detail and gave it a vintage quality, befitting a time when Chicagoans had an active milling site so close to residential and white-collar office neighborhoods.
September 5, 2009. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), 70–300mm DX Nikon zoom lens at 45mm (35mm equivalent: 67mm), f/13, 1/2,500, ISO 1,250.
When I lived in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood, my semi-enclosed back porch had a view of this amazing maple tree. It often showed itself off well, but my favorite views of it were in the Winter after a snow. I have a couple of other photos of it with snow that will land here eventually, but this one’s a good starter.
February 2, 2013. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), desaturated from full color. The manual lens did not provide focal length or f stop, 1/180, ISO 400.
A local resident reflects on what all the residential construction along the Chicago River will mean for its own housing.
A little more than a mile due west of Lake Michigan, the Chicago River splits into its North and South branches at the Confluence. The Riverwalk follows the south side of the river, ending at the Confluence, and there’s a small but really nice park there with a few dozen Adirondack chairs. It gets lots of sun in the later afternoon, but it’s a pretty nice place to be anytime the weather is pleasant. “Between Green and Blue” was also taken at that park.
In the park’s early days, the area across from the park was a rookery used by ducks and herons. That’s gone now; the city decided that the building you see in the reflection needed the space more than natural river dwellers did.
July 12, 2019. Samsung S10+ cell phone, 12mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 52mm), f/2.4, 1/200, ISO 50.
In contrast to yesterday’s dark, moody crows-foot violets, here’s a nice, bright iris that’s at its fullest. Like the violets, this is a closeup macro shot, but at this small aperture, we’re picking up a decent amount of sharpness. Irises are pretty common, and they don’t last long in the wild, but find a really nice one and it will offer you lots of different ways to see it.
June 8, 2013. Nikon D7100 (DX sensor), 105mm Nikon macro lens (35mm equivalent: 155mm), f/16, 1/250, ISO 400.
Crows-foot violets are very tiny and it was a nice challenge to snap in the macro lens and see what I could capture. Once again, I set a focus and moved back and forth until I was happy. Since my aperture was wide open, I ended up with a narrow band of critical focus at the stamens, but because of that — and the reason I love this photo — it ended up with a very painted feeling. The moody swirls of green and the quite out-of-focus violet in the top right corner all contribute to the feeling that this is a photo with a little bit more.
May 4, 2013. Nikon D7100 (DX sensor), 105mm Nikon macro lens (35mm equivalent: 155mm), f/4.2, 1/1,000, ISO 200.
There were actually a few hawks kettling, as it’s called when they fly in circles and loops looking for prey; the rest of them were a bit too far away to get clear shots, but this one came close enough that all I ended up doing for this post was cropping out the extra blue sky so it would show up larger here. That red tail is nicely backlit by the sun, isn’t it? Hawks look amazing flying around.
January 5, 2019. Cropped from a larger image. Nikon D7100 (DX sensor), Tamron 100–400mm lens at 300mm (35mm equivalent: 450mm), f/6, 1/2,000, ISO 400.
I’d spent an afternoon at the nature park and was waiting for the bus at the corner near the park’s entrance. The bus took a while to arrive on the hot, sticky Summer afternoon, and this woman was clearly lost in thought for some time — not reading, not on her phone or tablet, not sitting under some AC like I was so looking forward to, just there in the moment. It’s a mood I identify with very much, and that is why I love this photo.
July 12, 2016. Google Nexus 6P cell phone, focal length 4.67 (35mm equivalent: 26mm), f/2, 1/125, ISO 60.
I love this photo because it’s about friends and the gathering of the tribe and the passing of a friend.
I’ve made many friends thanks to music, and occasionally fly here and there to see bands, live music, friends, cities, everything there is about travel. I first visited Austin in 1989 and, while I ended up deciding not to move there, it’s been a second home to me since then.
This is the water tower near Gruene Hall, about a one-hour drive from Austin that I’d enjoy with a good friend when one of our favorite bands was playing there. (The second photo I posted here, back in May, “Noodling,” was from Gruene Hall.) We’d meet up with a whole lot of other friends there, catching up, breaking bread, buying rounds, and then letting good live music wash over us.
In September of 2021, one of the people in our little group died. Most of the rest of us still get together to see other bands around Austin as best we can, and the first chance we had, we raised a glass to our late friend. How can I not love this photo.
May 12, 2019. Samsung S10+ cell phone, 4.3mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 26mm), f/1.5, 1/40, ISO 320.
On the way back from the eclipse, we flew really close to Wrigley Field. Some of us remember when the idea of lights on Wrigley Field was pretty gauche. Anyway, for the crappy cell phone cameras available at the time, it’s still a decent picture.
August 21, 2017. Samsung S8+ cell phone, 4.25mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 26mm), f/1.7, 1/200, ISO 50.
Thanks for looking at a terrible cell phone photo of a total solar eclipse.
I’d had this idea for a while for the 2017 total solar eclipse, and decided to pull it off only a few weeks before the event. I can be an impetuous sort. On August 1, I posted on Facebook:
Made my eclipse reservation!
Aug. 21, 10:30 a.m.: Flight to Nashville departs
12:01 p.m.: Flight arrives
I take any shuttle to any parking lot or car rental agency. I checked on Google Maps and they're all out in the open
1:27 - 1:29 p.m.: Totality
2:00 - 2:15ish: Board shuttle back to terminal, have a little lunch if there's time, hopefully with a southern view
3:50 p.m.: Flight back to Chicago departs
5:30 p.m.: Flight arrives
It wasn’t without a little suspense, but overall, it ended up being easier than my typical workday. I got to O’Hare in plenty of time — I wasn’t taking any risks. Once we had all boarded, we got word that Nashville was issuing a ground stop on inbound flights. Very considerate, so as not to block the eclipse… which was three hours away. But! It turned out that our plane was so full of astronomers from local universities that we were granted an exemption and allowed to head out on our way.
When we landed, I realized that I didn’t have eclipse viewing glasses. But! A bar in the terminal was giving away glasses with each purchase of Blue Moon beer. I don’t like Coors as a company, and it owns Blue Moon, but I didn’t want to go blind either. So I bought a beer, they handed me my glasses (which are still within reach as I type this), and I went out to the curb and caught a shuttle to the parking lot.
Scouting the airport out on Google Satellite View, I’d chosen a particular knoll in a particular parking lot for its spaciousness. I got there, and it was packed with people who had done the same thing I’d done — flown in earlier, scouted out a place in a parking lot, and gotten ready to watch. I talked to people from Tampa and Louisville as I set up my 360° still and video cameras.
And then this insanely large cloud blocked the sun. The shadows it cast were amazing to see, but that was small consolation. The sun was constantly just on the edge, coming and going, and we kept thinking we could move to another corner of the lot. But we stayed put and a couple of minutes before totality, the cloud just vanished and we had clear skies. Nailed it.
Totality is beautiful and amazing and like nothing I’d ever seen. The beads on the edges of the moon were stunning; the silver light that blankets Earth during a total eclipse was mind-boggling. Everything. The arrival of the shadow. The crickets. The planets and stars. The horizon on fire around all 360 degrees. People all over the airport were screaming and shouting and crying. I could hear people on a distant garage shouting.
Once totality is over, the eclipse is over. It’s fun to watch it getting darker, but getting lighter? The light is pretty normal again within just a couple of minutes, really. I waited 10 minutes or so, which was still well after most of the people on the knoll had left, and went inside to have lunch. I boarded my plane and, once we thought we were going to taxi to the runway, they said that thanks to that hours-long ground stop, they had a lot of catching up to do, and we wouldn’t mind being patient, would we?
We didn’t mind. Stunning day. Over the course of the day, I managed to sleep in a bit, get to O’Hare in time to fly to Nashville, watch a beautiful solar eclipse, fly back, and be back in my apartment by 8. And that is why I goddamn love this photo.
August 21, 2017. Samsung S8+ cell phone, 4.25mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 26mm), f/1.7, 1/30, ISO 160.
When you have a thermal camera, what better place to use it than in an ice cream shop on a hot Summer day? The bright yellow blobs are of course the customers and the dark purple blobs are of course the ice cream; that’s a candy counter in the foreground. It’s a fun look at a fun place and I was really glad the photo turned out so well.
June 15, 2019. Flir thermal camera with Samsung S8+ cell phone. Exposure data unavailable.