Corn Cobs in a Midwestern Skyline

At least, the corn cob image was my first impressions so long ago when Marina City was built just west of the old SUN-TIMES building along the Chicago River. But looking more closely they are simply modern curving spaces that have aged well in the Chicago skyline. Large balconies yield excellent views on the downtown, the near north side and Lake Michigan, depending on the location of the unit.

With the acclaimed House of Blues on the lower floors, Marina has managed to keep updating itself as it became another of the wonders of Chicago architecture.

Another building from the Chicago skyline in the next post.

Changes in Skylines

Updating old slides into modern digital images will remind one of the buildings that no longer exist. Squatty, in a prime location along the river just a bit east of the previous post, were the editorial offices of the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES and its former sister paper, the CHICAGO DAILY NEWS. My prime newspaper reading for over 40 years, the SUN-TIMES moved a few blocks west some years ago, this building was torn down, and a new tall, modern skyscraper is now in that footprint. It is the Trump Tower. But I still recall the TIMES, reading that great paper, visiting the sports department when my son worked there, and lots of bygone days.

Guess any study of architecture will do that -- trigger reminiscences. Next post will feature a building that still exists . . .

Old Engine House

Much of the architecture of Chicago involves high-rise buildings, be they the Monadnock of the 1890s or the Sears Tower of the 1970s. Much of it involves majestic souvenirs of long-ago World Expositions, or iconic downtown merchants, or awesome assortments of vendors in the Merchandise Mart. Thousands of images are collected of all these, and I have my share in my archives. But before we look at a few of my favorite Chicago Architecture photos, I thought a reminder would be in order.

When looking into any city for architecture, remember that the buildings are never built to remain empty. Without people, the buildings are not alive. And every city or town has interesting, photogenic, and important buildings if only we open our eyes to look. In color, in form, in the people who work inside, the old-fashioned Chicago Engine House is as wonderful a bit of architecture as any.

What building would you like to honor in this way? Another post on buildings comes soon.

Chicago Bridges

Chicago is a wonderful place to study architecture, and thus a wonderful place to photograph architecture. Well after the city was established, the notorious Great Chicago Fire of 1871 leveled a good portion of the downtown area, granting architects a blank canvas to rebuild. With the modern inventions such as the elevator and advances in indoor plumbing, buildings went higher and were built better than ever before. We will look at some Chicago buildings in the next series of posts, and we will start with two of my favorite bridge shots.

Both shots are of old bridges on the north branch of the Chicago River, just a bit northwest of the Merchandise Mart. The brick base was taken in the middle 1970s as the span had become a true bridge to nowhere. The bridge that appears to be a shortcut to the upper floors of a high rise is a recent shot of a retired bridge that stands at eternal attention.

Some high rise buildings in the next post.

Alphabet Art

Late last summer I had a strange idea and naturally followed it. I kept the camera with me as I drove around for a few days, snapping pictures of individual letters on large public signs. Each night I would crop and save the letters, eventually making a list of missing entries. The idea was to form a sort of font for future use, but with no use in mind.

Eventually I did find a use for these letters, and now I have three Alphabet Pictures. And I have my font saved for future use. I expect I will add a fourth to this collection when my fourth grandchild is born in May. Hope you enjoy these.

Ceres -- The Goddess of Cereal

Experimentation with Polar Coordinates will yield some interesting abstracts, as we have seen. Last night I got a pretty haunting concrete image I just had to post.

The Chicago Board of Trade, an art deco masterpiece opened in 1930, has a statue of Ceres, goddess of grain, atop the building. Shot from the street on a sunny day, she glistens and looks straight down LaSalle Street from her position of honor.

Wrapping her into a Polar Coordinate and cropping off the top of an imperfect circle leaves her quite recognizable, but looking down into a pit. Perhaps a commentary on the current financial mess? Either way, a definite keeper.

New post tomorrow. No more Polars for now, guaranteed.

One More Polar Coordinate

On second thought, we will hold off the new direction for one more day to look at another strange abstract effect from the Polar Coordinates. In an email to a friend who had seen the previous post, I was writing about where to find the effect -- it is a Photoshop Filter Distort selection -- and I realized I had limited my fun with that filter.

The previous post was like most of my Polar productions, which would only be a dozen or so. In each case, I used a panoramic photo or cropped one from a traditionally-shaped photo. In each case, I selected a photo with a clear three-layer arrangement -- the river below, the bridge between and the sky above, for example. That produces the logic of the prior post, with the river at the core, the bridge and its crane as the highlight and the sky as the background. I will of course continue to experiment with such pictures.

But as I checked on the use of the filter, I happened to have a non-panoramic photo, one with nothing like the three-stripe arrangement mentioned above, and I used the process on it purely to refresh my memory on the use of the filter. I quickly used SAVE AS to hold that image and later returned to decide if I wanted to keep it. What do you think? I definitely like it and plan to do further experimentation with it.

Meanwhile, thanks for the help with experimenting in a new direction, Laura. We will move in another direction in the next post. Maybe.

Abstract from Manipulation

Look at this abstract which looks so strangely concrete. Check it carefully and see if you can spot the Illinois River in the center and awhirl around the river -- a bridge, crane and all. Look closer and you can find the seam, relatively cleverly hidden, where Photoshop changed its normal left/right coordinates to polar coordinates. Essentially, if you find the seam, you have located the left and right edges of a relatively normal panoramic photo of the bridge with the river below. The magic effect spins the base into a circular center and wraps the image for some fascinating semi-abstracts. Try it sometime!

Our next post? In a different direction to be chosen soon.

Abstract Processing

Another place to find abstracts would be in the post-processing. Whether by intent or by accident, when an image does nothing for you, you can try something else. Often a change of color, a blurring, a creative crop will create a completely new image. There are times when dropping color overlays over such an image, one by one, will result in finding just the right color. Image manipulation under pressure can be demanding work, but this can and should be fun.

An intentional abstract from a very different effort in our next post.

Abstracts Abound

One of the many enjoyable aspects of photography is finding the beauty of abstraction in the most unlikely places. In my mind, visual art is abstract when it uses color, shape and line to draw a pleasing work that does not reference a specific reality. And "abstract" is not a "thing." And sometimes the thing becomes the abstract.

Here are two abstracts that are such "found" items. And they are part of very specific things. Many modern buildings feature collections of reflecting windows -- mirrors, if you will -- that tend to blend the building with its neighbors. This one in Anchorage, Alaska reflects another building in an interesting way. The other abstract is from an interesting fountain in The Chicago Botanic Garden, featuring a line of water jets with one jet out of sync.

Finding such abstracts is always a high point of a photo shoot. Abstracts can also be generated by post-processing magic. We will look at a couple of these in the next post.

Robins & Reflections

Not much could be more springlike than a nest of baby robins just out of the eggs. Careful not to touch or disturb, I shot this with a telephoto a bit further away than the image looks. Two days later, the nest was an empty souvenir. Watching their tiny beating hearts moving their bodies was just awesome.

The reflection in the still streamway was made at Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the "outdoor museum of woody plants" that can be a paradise for a photographer in search of beauty.

Enough springscapes. Next post will be a new topic as yet to be determined.

Berries & Pathways

Berries on a Black Jetbead. Paths that wind invitingly through a sun-kissed but shaded forest. Blue Sky, green grass, and places to see while having fun in the sun. Oh, yes, spring offers the hope of nature, of renewal, of rebirth. Today the temperature rises above 40 with promise of further increases. Yes, spring is here.

More Springscapes in the next post.

Flowers and Lightning

Another look at the season I long for, spring. Two opposing Springscapes, bringing lightning and flowers. Of course, the old saw of April showers and May flowers reminds us of how the seeming opposites are intricately related; those of us who love spring look forward to both.

More springscapes in the next post.

Spring Arrives No Matter How it Looks

As I look out my window here on Pulaski Day, I see "lake effect snow" drifting down on my lawn even though Lake Michigan is a good 25 miles from here and we rarely see lake snow this far west. Despite this anomaly, Tom Skilling says that Meteorological Spring began yesterday, so I declare that Spring is Here.

Both of today's Springscapes are modern digital conversions of years-old slides shot either on the old Ektachrome (the landscape) or Agfachrome (the ball glove). But both remind me of the look of spring -- blue sky, blue water, birds, greenery and baseball. This week I will drop by a few more Springscapes to try to put these last vestiges of winter on the back burner!

The Other Side of the Family Tree

Just one more restoration at this time, taking a moment to look at the other side of the family tree. My dear grandparents Angela & Louis, each depicted previously, were my mother's parents. My mother was an only child from Chicago, while my father was the eldest of six children from Philadelphia. It seems so logical that he would settle near her home, and I grew up a Chicago boy. I had time being fed and carted around Chicago by Angela and I was given Cubs baseball by Louis. Dad's parents were my vacation grandparents. The feeling was a loving one, but love from 800 miles away when a long-distance call was an unnecessary expense is difficult.

Vacations were wonderful, though. The hint was given above: five sets of aunts and uncles, and one of the aunts was only twelve years older than I was. Dad's eldest sister, on the other hand, was only a year younger than he, and my cousin Barbara was two weeks older than I was. Lots of fun on vacation, lots of picnics and side trips. My Uncle Tom, dad's brother-in-law, took me to a Phillies game. We saw Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, Betsy Ross' house, Benjamin Franklin's grave. For as few days as I spent in Philadelphia, it always seemed my second home.

The portrait of Ralph Sr. and Emma, which I was able to repair and soften as well as adding the sepia tone, is my favorite. It catches them at the time they were active and filled with laughter and enjoyment whenever we saw them. I recall that Grandmom made a wonderful spaghetti sauce and her smile always seemed to be intended just for me. I recall that Grandpop loved that spaghetti and constantly used a napkin to blot sweat from his brow while eating it. And I also recall that he did Woody Woodpecker's laugh as well as Walter Lantz, the originator of the voice. I pride myself on doing a good imitation of Grandpop doing a great imitation of Lantz.

Blessed with all four grandparents alive until I was twenty-eight years old; I would call that the greatest legacy of my family that was given to me and I treasure these memories. And I will always.

Another Restoration

I wrote so lovingly of my maternal grandmother Angela, and I feel fairness bids me to speak of her husband, Louis, my grandfather and one of the men most close to my heart.

A working man who spent years carrying boxes to load onto a delivery truck, Louis was the man who came home every night to eat the dinner Grandma had cooked because I liked it -- and he never complained. Quiet at times, highly introverted, this man shared his one interest with me. He was a baseball fan, a Cub fan actually, and we talked about them. Talked and talked about them. Listened on the radio and watched a bit on WGN. And in 1956, 1957 and 1958 he took me to Wrigley Field for eight games, memories I will always treasure. I assumed of course that he had seen the Cub pennant winners of the 30s and 40s. I found out in 1974 after he passed away that his love of baseball had been on the radio, never in the park. Never, until I wanted to go. That fact, more than anything else, remains with me nearly 35 years after his passing.

Louis loved Chicago, seen in the photo near Navy Pier, visible in the background. His willingness to be interested in what I loved, his willingness to take me to games I wanted to see, and his willingness to learn new things in a strange new world will keep him alive in my heart forever. And as I look back at the way Louis & Angela remain fresh and alive in my heart because of their unconditional love for me, I know they both taught me how to act in my most important role: they taught me how to be Poppa for my dear grandchildren. As such, they now touch the fourth generation in their posterity, and if I do this correctly, someday Louis & Angela will be touching the sixth generation. Who could ask for a better life than that?

Simpler Restoration

Excited with the success of restoring my grandmother's wonderful portrait, I turned to some other family photos that needed work, though far less-drastic work. This portrait, a nice triangle with my smiling face at the pivot, shows my Mother and Father back in the 1940s.

This image was in pretty good shape. Two corners were folded and damaged, but repairing corners is about as easy as anything in photo restoration. General dust, noise, and so forth is also pretty simple, and this one did not have too much. I worked around the edges, closing in on my face and Dad's coat and tie. One ugly crease went from Dad's collar, across the tie and the lapel of the jacket, and through my right cheek. A small portion was missing. Only about 25 minutes later, my cheek was healed and my young parents look vibrant. This is an uplifting work concept: work that yields immediate satisfaction is certainly work worth doing well.

Restoration as a Labor of Love

A true baby boomer born in late 1946, I have wonderful memories of my grandmother, the mother of my mother. Mom went back to work as a personal shopper at the fabled Marshall Field's and I spent all day with my Grandma. It has always seemed to me that she cared about me more than she cared about anyone (which may not be true but is a wonderful impression to have!) She passed away over 29 years ago and I still think of her lovingly and kindly just about every day.

When I came across the heirloom portrait, completely torn in half and carefully saved as it was, I knew that if I ever got confident in Photoshop, I would make a project out of restoring that photograph. It showed a woman I had never met, of course, young and slim and looking forward to the bulk of her life. Beautiful? Of course, I could never see anything other than beauty. And I wanted to have a complete portrait of her to cherish and to pass on to my children and grandchildren.

I put no time clock on the project. I spent as much time as I needed. And I was pleased to send complete matte-finish portraits to my son and my daughter and to my brother and my sister. I know that somehow, in heaven, my dear Grandma Angela has always known my love and respect for her. And now you know it too.

The Birds and the Bison

My vantage point for bison photography, north of the old barn on the Fermilab property, had me perhaps 25 yards from where the giant animals were feeding. Apparently at their noon meal, they paid little attention to me. After several minutes, one and then another of the bison began to move away from me and toward the south, where pens and another pasture area are located.

As they lumbered on their way, the pasture to the west, behind the bison as I watched them, was filled with thousands of geese, pecking the ground or standing still. At a moment, either triggered by the bison or coincidentally, they left. They all left. A cloud of geese, thousands of geese, squawking about being rousted, flew southeast in a cloud. Had they flown over my head, I would have felt like I was in the movie The Birds. An awesome sight.

Later, I saw some of the geese walking on water. Well, technically, walking on ice, but it sounds more dramatic the other way.

Our next post will take a different tack. Restoration of a photo of a dear loved one. A task filled with joy, coming soon.

More winterscapes

With the Chicago weatherman tossing out scary stories of 6" or more of snow on Tuesday or Wednesday or whenever it gets around to it, a post of some snowy pictures seems to be in order. The snow-laden branches are in my yard; that is a burning bush. The snow-filled creek leads into Mallard Lake, a local forest preserve where dogs were allowed to run off-leash and lots of fishermen seem to have good luck.

Next post should have perhaps one more pair of winterscapes, coming soon.