A Cold and Rainy Weekend in Chicago | Night Photography | Chicago Architecture

We spent the weekend in Chicago visiting a friend, and I got out a couple of times to shoot.  It was cold and raining a majority of the time, but I liked how the images turned out.  The grey weather sometimes adds character to architectural shots, like the image below of the Bean at Millennium Park.  The sculpture is already metallic, and the rest of the buildings, along with the weather, follow along with that metallic, sterile, industrial look.

 

Chicago By Day

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For the above image I set my tripod in the median of Michigan Avenue and used a 1 second exposure to blur the faster moving cars.

I think the floating pieces of ice really add to this image.

Chicago At Night

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Right across the street from the John Hancock building is a church that served as a shelter from the misting rain for me and my gear.  It also added a nice foreground to the giant skyscraper shooting into the sky.

Chicago is brilliant at night!  Since it was raining off and on there weren’t too many people out on the town.  It made the streets seem deserted of both people and cars, yet the city was still alive with lights.

At first I was upset looking out onto this giant river barge and construction crane, thinking it would ruin my shot.  However after taking a couple of photos, I ended up liking it.  Putting the start of the barge in the foreground of the image draws the eye into the scene and the crane draws the eye up into the skyline and all of Chicago’s skyscrapers.

For more on shooting Nightscapes, view my post 5 Reasons to Start Shooting Night Photography.

 

 

 

 

“In the vague chaos of everyday life, ideas come to you in the middle of the night, in the shower, in dreams. Sometimes they are pulled together, made whole, irrespective of the original sequence of their sources. They are life’s little everyday epiphanies. Sometimes they can alter and shape a life forever.”

-from “The Way of the Explorer“