Photo of the Week: Marina Towers Abstract

"Marina Towers Abstract" © Andy Marfia 2014 All Rights Reserved. Nikon D7100 w/ 16-85mm lens, 1/100sec at f8, ISO200.

This week's photo is an abstract take on Chicago's iconic Marina City.  With this shot, I tried to focus on the building's distinctive curved lines.  The stark contrast and heavy blacks were achieved in post processing. 

Here's what the Photoshop levels adjustment looks like:



That's more extreme than most post processing that I do, but I think it works well here.  Shadow details: who needs 'em! 

Photo of the Week: Go with the Flow

"Go with the Flow" © Andy Marfia 2013 All Rights Reserved. Nikon D7100 w/ Sigma 10-20mm lens, 1/250ec at f8, ISO200.

One of my favorite views in Chicago is featured this week, Lake Street looking east into Chicago's loop.  I spent about five minutes editing this photo, which is a refreshing change as I can sometimes take hours on a single photo.  Yes, the overexposure is intentional.  I wanted this one to be really, really contrasty.

This photo made it into flickr's explore and received about 2500 views yesterday.  It's always a little weird, and random, when that happens, but obviously very flattering.

Photo of the Week: Crumb's Eye View

"Crumb's Eye View" © Andy Marfia 2013 All Rights Reserved. Nikon D7100 w/ Sigma 10-20mm, 1/30sec at f8, ISO200.

One of my favorite things about commuting in Chicago are those rare, fleeting moments, when I find myself on an L car by myself.  When this happens during the day it's a strangely peaceful experience-- an unexpected moment of contemplation with just the rumble of the train, the sunlight through the windows, and whatever thoughts are in my head.  Or, in this case, whatever camera is in my hand.  I captured this week's photo with my Nikon D7100 resting on the ground, a shot I wouldn't have tried with other passengers around.  This was taken just as we were leaving the Jarvis Red Line station going towards Howard.

Photo(s) of the Week: Ascend / Descend

The Chicago Air and Water Show seems to equally divide the populous every year: on the one side are those who claim that it's noisy, military propaganda.  On the other side are the "fighter jets are cool!" crowd.  Which ever camp you happen to fall into, it's hard to deny that it does make for some dramatic photographs.  Here's two that I've edited thus far.  The first is called "Ascend" and the second "Descend":


Nikon D7000 w/ 70-300mm lens, 1/125sec at f20, ISO200. Copyright Andy Marfia 2012 All Rights Reserved.


Nikon D7000 w/ 70-300mm lens, 1/1250sec at f8, ISO200. Copyright Andy Marfia 2012 All Rights Reserved.

Both shots were taken near Montrose Harbor.  Ground zero for the show is the North Avenue Beach, but I simply don't have the patience to deal with the crowds at that spot.  The Montrose Harbor area was much more relaxed.

Photo of the Week: St. Charles Air Line Bridge eats Chicago

Nikon D7000 1/200sec at f10, ISO100. Copyright Andy Marfia 2012 All Rights Reserved.

I'm a big proponent of revisiting photos, both in the darkroom, and by going back to locations in real life.  I find that some of my best images come from second or third attempts.  This week's photo, of the St Charles Air Line Bridge as seen from Ping Tom Park in Chicago's China Town, is similar to one that I shot last year but was never completely satisfied with.  With this version, I chose a wider crop and processed in black and white, and I think I finally got it right.

About the bridge: The St Charles Air Line Bridge was named a Chicago landmark in 2007.  It was the world's longest and heaviest single-leaf bridge when completed in 1919.  Interestingly, while most people view this as one bridge, there are actually two in this photo, sitting side by side.  The lowered Bridge is the St Charles Air Line, while the raised one is the Chicago Terminal Bridge.  The latter is no longer in use and sits permanently raised.

Prints: I recently used this as a submission for a photo contest sponsored by Preservation Chicago, and as a result, I have a few extra prints lying around which are for sale if anyone is interested:



Shoot me an email for info on pricing.  They measure exactly 9x18 inches on 13x19 Epson Premium Semigloss paper.  I can also print other sizes as requested.

Photo of the Week: Columbus Drive Bridge

Nikon D7000 w/ Sigma 10-20mm, 1/160sec at f6.3, ISO400. Copyright Andy Marfia 2012 All Rights Reserved.

This week's photo features the Columbus Drive Bridge as seen from the Chicago Riverwalk.  Columbus Drive is one of the newest bridges over the Chicago River, built in 1983 and is the second-longest bascule bridge in the world.  What I enjoy most about it, at least from this vantage point, is the metal grates used on the road surface which allow light to pass through.

This is the first in what I'm hoping will be a new series of photos documenting the bridges of Chicago. 

Photo of the Week: Friendly

Nikon D7000 w/ 16-85mm lens, 1/60sec at f3.8, ISO400. © Andy Marfia 2011 All Rights Reserved.

Chicago's second significant snowfall of 2012 occurred on Friday night.  I took this photo while walking through Uptown.  This sign caught my attention because it flashed the words "Mexico" as I was walking by, and I thought-- nothing screams Mexico like a snow storm!  I waited a few of minutes but it never delivered that message again.  So I captured "friendly" instead.

This photo is an example of what I mentioned in my previous blog entry about white balance: "sometimes you just have to throw your hands in the air and convert everything to black and white."

Photo of the Week: 21st Century Chicago

Nikon D7000 w/ 70-300mm lens (at 300mm), 1/800sec at f6.3, ISO6400. © Andy Marfia 2011 All Rights Reserved.

This week's photo was taking during the final New Music Monday series in Millennium Park.  I was in the seated section of the Pritzker Pavilion, looking west towards the Chicago Cultural Center and Michigan Ave.  I've been meaning to take a photo like this for a while, but didn't have the right lens with me (70-300mm) until this week to really get the shot I wanted.  I decided to convert this to black and white because I liked how the classic look contrasts with the modern elements of everyone on their phone or using a camera.

More Cabrini Green Photos

A follup up to Wednesday's post, here are four more photos taken at Cabrini Green last weekend.  I've also put all of these into a set on flickr, if you prefer to view them there.


Nikon D7000 w/ 16-85mm Nikkor lens, 1/1250sec at f5, ISO400. This is in front of the building, standing in what used to be the parking lot.


Nikon D7000 w/ 16-85mm lens, 1/1250sec at f5, ISO200.  A much more extreme black and white conversion than I normally do, but it seemed to work in this case.


Nikon D7000 w/ 70-300mm Nikkor lens, 1/1250sec at f9, ISO400.  Another shot from the front, showing the torn away south side and a crane.


Nikon D7000 w/ 70-300mm Nikkor lens, 1/320sec at f8, ISO400.  Another photographer at work.  In my experience, photographers are some of the least likely to notice themselves being photographed.  Of course, it helps when you have a 300mm lens.

White Sox Opening Day! (self portrait)

I don't often do topical, themed photographs-- ie: a photo about Opening Day, posted on Opening Day.  Or a photo about St Patrick's Day posted on St Patrick's Day.  It's not that I don't want to, it really just comes down to time.  Everything I put on the internet usually seems to be about a week or two delayed.

Today I happened to have the morning off, so I figured I'd give it a shot.  My first idea was to do some sort of macro photo with the ball, but those were just "okay".  This photo turned out better.  I shot it mostly to amuse myself, and in that regard it's a smashing success.  Good guys wear black & white!  And just a touch of sepia tone.

Photo Details: Nikon D7000 w 50mm Nikkor f1.8 lens, 1/400sec at f1.8, ISO400.  This is in front of a mirror, inverted so the text would be readable.

snowpocalypse of yesteryear

In anticipation of tonight's snowmageddon, I thought It would be fun to dig out some negatives from previous winters.  I had wanted to find a photo from the blizzard of 99, but completely failed in that task.  My negatives and slides are in dire need of reorganization from that era.

Instead, I found this photo from February of 2002 (or possibly 03).  This is the lakeshore in Evanston, IL along the Northwestern University campus.  This was an unusually warm day after what was a fairly long, cold winter.  The rocks that you see in the foreground normally drop about 15 feet down to the water line, but by the end of this particular winter you could just step off them onto this glacier.

Not that I recommend anyone try this in the future.  Ah, college students.

(Scan from 35mm negative. Ilford HP5 400)

On to this evening: currently they're predicting up to 20 inches of snow, and 60mph winds.  The National Weather Service declared it "potentially life threatening" yesterday, which was right about when everyone on facebook and twitter started to freak out.  (Social media is hilarious during times like these).  I'm generally pretty skeptical about blizzard forecasting, which is often wrong and can have a touch of fear mongering to it.  However, in this case, I'm pretty confident we're about to get nailed.

We shall see.  Whatever happens, I'm going to do my best to capture some photos.  Good thing that D7000 I bought last year is weather sealed!

Photo of the Week: Millennium Leaning

Photo details: Nikon D7000 with 16-85mm lens, 1/60sec at f4.5, ISO1600

It's hard to get a unique photo of Millennium Park these days.  For every photo of the park that I think is pretty unique, there are a hundred others that have been copied by everyone else.  So I was excited when I discovered this vantage point from the 5th floor of the Chicago Cultural Center.  The Cultural Center is a bit of a maze, and sometimes I like to just wander around in there and see what I stumble upon.  In this case, I found an open room for the Chicago Children's Choir-- I don't think it's normally open to the public, but on this particular day the doors were open and it was empty, so I walked in and took a few photos.

For this next shot of the bean I thought I'd try something different:


Photo details: Nikon D7000 with 16-85mm lens, 1/80sec at f5.6, ISO3200

Instead of going black & white, I used the Tungsten white balance setting in Adobe Camera Raw to achieve this cool, bluish tone.  I could have arrived at a similar look by converting to black & white first, and then toning it blue, but I thought it had a little more pop this way. 

Photo of the Week: Trump Canyon

January is a good time to dig through one's archives, as I did for this shot.  (Though it's from October of last year, so it's not exactly deep in the archives).  I took this photo at Chicago and Wabash in the River North area.  I was crossing the street and my eyes were immediately drawn to the Trump Tower in between these closer building.  The Trump is only a couple of years old now, so I'm still surprised sometimes when I see it at various points-- it's still new to me.  I stopped quickly and took this shot.

Photo details: Nikon D90 with 16-85mm, 1/80sec at f11 and ISO200.  I processed the RAW file with DXO Optics to correct any lens distortion.  I then straightened the perspective in Photoshop, cropped it, and finally converted to B&W (using a red filter in this case).  It's very slightly sepia toned.

holding it together (before and after)

Canon S95 at 28mm, 1/15sec at f2, ISO250

This is the Clark St. Red Line platform.  I titled this photo "holding it together" because I felt the guy in the lower right kind of holds the composition together.  (it also looks like he's holding it together, too).  Without him, this would be a nice, but rather ho hum shot of a subway platform. 

This photo was taken with a Canon S95 and took an interesting journey from start to finish.  Here's the original RAW image, opened in Photoshop and converted to jpeg:



Um, where's the dude's head?  The answer is, it's not there.  Here's what happened: The S95's sensor captures 3648x2736 pixels (which is a 4:3 aspect ratio), however, it gives you the option of capturing at 16:9, 3:2, 1:1 or 4:5 instead.  A cool feature, and I've been using 3:2 (3648x2432) because that's the same ratio that my DSLR records.  I assumed the S95 discarded those extra pixels, but it turns out I was wrong.  Here's what happens when I open the RAW file with DXO Optics Pro (instead of Photoshop):



Bingo, the full 3648x2736 is there!  Cool.  I'm not sure why this happens, but clearly whatever Canon is doing to delete those extra pixels is being ignored by DXO.

Now, normally this would not be very helpful.  If I'm composing for 3:2, I'm composing for 3:2 and I don't want the extra pixels on top or bottom.  But in this case it worked out-- I knew immediately I had mis-composed this photo, but the guy in the right corner moved before I could take another shot.  The extra pixels in this case helped me create an interesting image out of what would have otherwise been a throwaway shot. 

Photo of the Week: support group

This is the intersection of Leland and Broadway in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, with the elevated red line tracks crossing overhead.  It's worth clicking over to flickr to see the large version of this one.

Photo Details: Nikon D90 with 16-85mm lens, 1/125sec at f5.6, ISO400.

Photo of the Week: Wilson Broadway Mall

Nikon D90 with 16-85mm lens, 1/250sec at f8, ISO200

This is Wilson Ave as seen from the L platform.  More specifically, I was standing on the seldom used (south bound) Purple Line platform-- the CTA had this open last week due to construction, and was letting red line riders off here instead of the main platform.  In 10 years of riding the red and purple lines, this is the first time I had ever seen this open, so I was excited to get this shot of Wilson from a new perspective.

For comparison's sake, I also took this photo from the main platform:


Nikon D90 with 16-85mm lens, 1/200sec at f4, ISO200

Photo of the Week: Meet me at the 555

I took this photo somewhere in Chicago's loop.  (It's currently in Guess Where Chicago, so I'm going to keep the exact location a secret for now).  One of the things that I love about this time of day, near sunset, and in particular at this time of year, is how the sun crosses over from the south side of the sky to the north side.  This creates a sort of tunnel effect in the loop, where all the east/west streets are blindingly bright, and all the north/south streets are in shadow.  It's also pretty neat because you rarely get to see north facing walls like this one lit up with direct sunlight.

Photo Details: Nikon D90 with 16-85mm lens, 1/1000sec at f5.6 and ISO400.  I converted this to black and white in post processing because I liked the subtle film noir effect that it created.  I shot a similar photo last year that I left as color.

Photo of the Week: Rogers Park

Technically this is my second "photo of the week" but what the hell-- it's my blog, so I can make up whatever rules I want.  I took this one during the Glenwood Ave Arts Fest in Rogers Park.  I used a very simple technique for this shot that I've been doing for years-- that is, set up a composition that you like, and wait for someone to walk into it... click.

Photo Details: Nikon D90 with 16-85mm lens, 1/1000sec at f8, ISO200.  I cropped this from the original file to it's current 6x3 dimension, mostly removing the top half of the photo.

the winter grumpies (before and after)

I generally don't do a lot of cropping to my photos.  I've always been a "compose with the camera" kind of guy, and I find that the best compositions come through that process.  That said, there are always exceptions and this photograph was one of them.  All rules are meant to be broken, as they say.

Here's the original:



When I first shot this, my initial thought was that I liked the combination of people, both inside and outside.  The problem is that red pole in the middle of the frame, which I find distracting and just a little too centered.  So that's when I tried various crops, and settled on the square crop above focusing solely on the older gentleman on the street.  I then converted it to black and white and added a touch of film grain.

The downside is that I can't print this one very large.  With the crop, it went from a 12mp image to about 3 or 4mp.  I'd guess 8 x 8 is as large as this could print at reasonable quality.

Nikon D90 with 55-200mm (at 200mm), 1/100sec at f8, ISO200.

Photo of the Week: "the space between"

My photo of the week also happens to be featured on Gapers Block today.  This was taken earlier in the month during a snow storm, while standing on the Bryn Mawr elevated platform.  The train was just starting to inch away as I captured this shot.

Nikon D90 with 16-85mm lens, 1/80sec at f8, ISO400.  I had to crop this a bit to make the composition symmetrical.