Frosty Chicago via the Art Institute

On a recent visit to the Chicago Art Institute I found these awesome frosted doors as I exited the Modern Wing.  There was some sort of condensation problem happening in the entryway.  The Art Institute had a fan set up to try and push air out of the room, but it clearly wasn't working.  No complaints from me.


"Frosty Chicago (1 of 3)" © Andy Marfia 2014 All Rights Reserved. Sony RX100, 1/30sec at f2.8, ISO320


"Frosty Chicago (2 of 3)" © Andy Marfia 2014 All Rights Reserved. Sony RX100, 1/30sec at f2.8, ISO320


"Frosty Chicago (3 of 3)" © Andy Marfia 2014 All Rights Reserved. Sony RX100, 1/30sec at f2.8, ISO640

My photo taking captured the attention of several others, who stopped to take their own shots.  One guy said this to me:

Guy standing near me as I take a picture: "That's a great Instagram photo." Me: "It's just a great photo." We agree.

— Andy Marfia (@AndyMarfia) January 9, 2015

Of course, I did eventually put them on Instagram, so I guess we were both right!

Update: the third photo in this set was featured in the Gapers Block's Rearview on 1/16/14.

Photo of the Week: urban re-renewal

The phenomenon of fast food restaurants being converted into discount insurance stores has always fascinated me.  Okay, maybe it's not a phenomenon-- maybe it's something that's limited to Chicago, and maybe even just to my area-- but I can think of at least three locations where this has happened.  One, the store pictures above, and two Taco Bells.

So I was amused the other day when I noticed that this former Checkers, which for several years had been turned into an insurance store, had now been turned back into a fast food restaurant.  Urban re-renewal.  Or Urban re-repurposing.  Or whatever you want to call it.  I thought it was kind of cool.

This is at Devon and Broadway, kiddie corner to Loyola University's north side campus.  A good location for a 24 hour fast food joint, though no where near Maxwell Street, as the name would imply. 

I got off the train a few stops early in order to get this shot-- it wasn't quite twilight yet, so I walked around the area for about 10 to 15 minutes, waiting for the sky to turn a nice shade of blue.  Sometimes the difference between a successful photo and just an average one is 10 minutes.

Photo Details: Canon S95 at 28mm, 1/40sec at f2.0, ISO80.

Photo of the Week: passage

A tunnel under the Metra tracks connects the neighborhoods of Andersonville and Bowmanville in Chicago.  I shot this handheld at 1/30sec.  This is a rare example of a photo that required zero post processing.  Not that I normally do a ton anyway... still, it’s gratifying to open an image in Photoshop and it just sings to you from the start.

Photo details: Nikon D90 with 16-85mm lens, 1/30sec at f3.5 and ISO400.

Photo of the Week: "twilight train"

An elevated Brown Line train heads north, about to cross the Chicago River at Wacker and Wells street.  I shot this photo at 1/6th of a second, f4.2 and ISO400, with my D90 mounted on a mini-tripod (a very useful little device).  I would have preferred to use ISO200 and a smaller aperture (f8 or so), but that would have meant a longer exposure, and I didn't want to go overboard with the motion blur in this shot.

I corrected the perspective and sharpened the photo with Photoshop CS4.

The title is from the time of day, twilight, and has nothing to do with teenagers or vampires or forbidden love.  Unless you'd like to think that it does, which is okay-- I can't stop you.

Third Base Line

A baseball diamond in Eckhart Park, in Chicago's Noble Square area.  I was tempted to run the bases, but I was running out of twilight, and there was this liquor store on Chicago Ave that I wanted to photograph.

expressway, dusk

This shot is a perfect example of how flickr mystifies me sometimes, but mystifies me in a good and interesting and instructive way.  I was really... pardon the pun... on the fence with this photo.  The narrow depth of field is nice, but it was a little too dark, I thought, and I didn't expect it to get much of a reaction.  I was wrong, of course.

Nikon D50 with 24mm lens set at f2.8.  I boosted the saturation via the RAW processing, in order to make those car and streetlights really pop.

poptastic!

After avoiding the pop-up flash on my camera for the last two years, I've been finding some good uses for it lately, as fill flash.  This is one such example.  I turned down the flash by about 3 stops for this shot... just enough to illuminate the blossoms in the foreground, but not enough to alter the exposure of the sky.

I suggest viewing the larger version at flickr.

Nikon D50 with 24mm lens.