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.

 

Weekly Shooting Excursion V: Rainy Chinatown Night

Another weekly shooting excursion, this time, more rainy night shooting.

I love shooting in the city on rainy nights, and it’s pretty easy to figure out why. It’s a great way to get gorgeous shots full of color and reflected lights. Of course, it’s also easy to get wet and cold, and to get blurry photos from raindrops on the camera lens and shooting with long shutter speeds, but it’s worth the inconvenience. I’ve been fortunate to shoot on rainy nights in a few places-Boston (that was a fun one, it was my first time in the city, and wandering alone on an overly chilly mid-summer night in the rain in an unfamiliar place with no rainwear was oddly enjoyable), Madison, WI on a stormy night last Thanksgiving weekend, dodging hailstones while shooting, twice in Blue Island, a Chicago suburb close to where I live. I don’t get to do it often-it’s not always raining at night, of course, and when it does, I don’t have my camera with me, or am ready for bed, or just don’t feel like doing it. 

I was happy, then, to check the weather report and find that storms were forecast to move into the Chicago area right as night was falling. I chose Chinatown to shoot. I’ve shot so many times in that neighborhood over the years that I’ve kind of used it up photographically speaking, but a lot of the businesses have bright LED lights, and I knew it would be a good, easy shoot. I arrived in Chinatown right before sunset, and my first shots have a twilight-gray feel I quite like. It was really pouring for much of the time I was shooting-the waterproof jacket I was wearing turned out to be not as waterproof as advertised, and I was soaked to the skin by the time I was finished. I didn’t mind, I’ve always enjoyed walking in the rain, and it was a warm night, so it actually felt really good.

Here’s the best of what I shot.

Weekly Shooting Excursion IV: Hyde Park

Next up in my weekly shooting excursions was Hyde Park. This was my fourth weekly shooting trip, and by now, I was settling into the routine of weekly shooting, and was more comfortable with being out in public with people around. I’m very diligent with my mask wearing, being outside makes it easier to maintain social distancing, and being around others felt mostly fine. Maybe my comfort level was to blame, but for some reason, the photography gods did not bestow their blessings this day, and I not only was not finding much of interest to shoot, but I didn’t like most of what I actually did shoot. When reviewing my photos at home, I threw out probably 80% of them as not being worth working on. While maybe not the most productive trip photographically, I enjoyed walking through the neighborhood. Hyde Park is always a nice place to visit.

I don’t blame the area. I’ve always loved Hyde Park, it’s probably my favorite Chicago neighborhood. It may be the urban college town vibe. I lived in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan most of my adult life before relocating to Chicago, and have always liked the feel of a college town. When I moved to the city in the late 90’s, I looked at several apartments in Hyde Park before settling on one in a different neighborhood, but have visited the area many, many times over the years I’ve lived in Chicago.

Part of the reason I didn’t get a lot of good shots may have been the area where I shot. I avoided the University of Chicago campus, which is full of beautiful gray neo-Gothic architecture and also some great contemporary buildings, as I had shot there many times before. I also avoided the lakefront, even though there’s a park there that offers great views of downtown Chicago. I focused instead on the northern edge of the neighborhood, from roughly 51st St. (the official border with Kenwood, the neighborhood to the north) to 55th St. I ventured a couple blocks north into Kenwood as well.

When reviewing and post processing my photos later, I found that I didn’t like anything I was doing in color, and ended up processing all my Hyde Park photos as B&W. 

Here are my favorites:

Recent iPhoneography

I haven't just been going on weekly shooting excursions this summer, I've also been making a lot of work with my iPad and various apps. Here are some examples of recent work. All of these started with photos shot from various old magazines, textbooks, etc. using my iPad's camera, and were worked with various apps. I mainly use Procreate for the overall design and construction, but often other apps are involved as well. I use Snapseed to clean up the photos and do basic post production, for example. My love of both mid-century design and contemporary Japanese graphic design are evident in these. I do not consider myself a graphic designer, but I am influenced by design. I don't consider these collage, although there is a collage aspect to some of them. They don't look like or share much of an aesthetic with most iPhonography I've seen either. Not sure what that makes them!

Weekly Shooting Excursion III: Little Village

My third get out of the house shooting excursion was a fun one. I went to Little Village, a neighborhood on Chicago’s southwest side. Like the nearby Pilsen neighborhood, Little Village is a largely Mexican area, with over 80% of the residents of Mexican descent. Unlike Pilsen, it’s not gentrifying, and the growing hipster presence in Pilsen is replaced here with a sturdy working class vibe.  It has a vibrant street scene, with lots of street vendors along the main commercial area on 26th St. Unlike my first two recent photo excursions, which were pretty quiet, there were a decent number of people out when I was there. This was the first time in months that I’d been someplace and seen people out in the street, and while it felt a little odd at first, I got used to it pretty quickly.

I chose Little Village because I like the area, and while I hadn’t shot there before, I knew it would be photogenic. I was also hoping that 26th St. would be closed. Chicago had been formulating a plan to close certain streets to traffic, in order to allow restaurants to safely sit people outdoors during the pandemic. Several blocks of 26th St. were on the closure list, and I figured being able to safely wander into the street to shoot would make it easier to compose good shots. However, when I got there, I found the street open, even though right before I left I had read online that it would be closed. This was probably due to the recent demonstrations and looting. Several storefronts along 26th St. were boarded up, and I later read online that there was some looting in the area. Chicago being close to moving to stage 4 in it’s pandemic plan, which would allow limited indoor seating in restaurants, may also have been a contributing factor. At any rate, the non stop traffic along 26th St. made shooting a little challenging at times, but I still got some good shots.  Side streets were much quieter, I was able to get some shots without trying to time them between cars. 

Here are my favorites from this shoot.

Weekly Shooting Excursion II: Rainy Blue Island Night

A few days after I pushed myself out the door to shoot along Olde Western Ave. in Blue Island, I went on my second 'make myself go out shooting to stay sane during the pandemic' shoot. This one was spontaneous-rain storms moved in to the area right as it was getting dark, and I love shooting in a city on a rainy night, so I grabbed my camera and returned to Blue Island. This time, I stuck to the downtown area, a stretch of Western Ave. a few blocks long. I’d done this same thing-shooting in Blue Island on a rainy night-almost exactly two years previously, and while I didn’t want to repeat myself, I knew I’d get good shots there, and it’s close to home. Comparing these to the photos I shot two years ago, I’m pretty happy. There was more rain during this shoot, leading to wetter streets and more light reflecting around. I think I’m also better at post processing now, especially minimizing the annoying orange-yellow hue produced by the street lights in many cities (Chicago is in the middle of a multi-year plan to replace all it’s street lights with LED lights, which are more energy efficient and more neutral in color, so that might not be an issue much longer).

Here are my favorites from this shooting excursion.