Saturday, August 15, 2020

Weekly Shooting Excursion VI: West Lawn

This was my sixth week of finding a day to go out shooting, and so far it’s been my favorite of these staycation shooting excursions. I went to West Lawn, which is the neighborhood that sits immediately to the east of Midway Airport. Specifically, I walked along both sides of 63rd Street, the main commercial district in the area, on the mile long stretch between Pulaski and Cicero (which are both multi-lane, very busy streets). I walked a couple blocks along Pulaski on either side of 63rd as well.


While I had driven down this stretch of 63rd Street a few times (it’s an alternate route to Midway when Cicero is a traffic nightmare, which is often), I had never spent any time there, and didn’t even know the name of the neighborhood (I had to look it up). It was on my list of places to shoot, I’d seen from driving along 63rd Street that it looked like it could be photogenic (at least my kind of photogenic). 


As I wrote above, this has been my favorite of these weekly shooting excursions, and I’ve done several (I’m writing this several weeks after June 24, the day I actually shot these photos). It’s probably due to a couple of reasons. First, the weather was perfect. Temperature in the low 70’s (low 20’s Celsius), low humidity, mostly sunny, but with huge, fluffy clouds that look great in the photos I was shooting. I really dislike hot, sticky weather, and it was pleasurable to walk around on a day where it felt nice to be out. Second, it’s always fun to explore a new area, even if that area is a typical non-destination neighborhood on the edge of the city. Third, the neighborhood was quite pleasant. It was mostly a mix of smaller retail spaces and mid-century apartment buildings. I love mid-century architecture, and while they often don’t seem to get a lot of love, the apartments along this stretch were mostly well maintained. A couple of empty buildings aside, everything on this street was tidy and well cared for.


Here are my favorite photos from this shoot.
















 

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