maybe it's the cold air

or maybe it's the fact that i've gotten some sleep in the past few days. regardless, something has my creative juices flowing.

the pictures:

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the platform was being repaired at my local el station the other day, so trains were routed to the outside track which is usually closed. this meant i got to take some pictures i otherwise would never see. this is the ramp to the purple line platform.



the silhouette of the worker on the usual platform



from an ad for skating in millennium park, i was hoping that focusing on one character would give the poster a surreal 3D feel.






good composition



field covered in ice






the crane at the far end of chicago ave catches the sunlight perfectly









the ice covered field again, this time at dusk w/ a filter


i also videotaped myself dancing on the ice.

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WARNING!

The following images are graphic in nature and may not be suitable for some viewers. I photographed a half-eaten bird corpse sticking out of an ice puddle. I photographed this as I found it, and did not kill, maim, harm or otherwise alter the bird in any way. As far as I can reasonably tell, the bird died of natural causes. I do not in any way condone violence to animals. If images of natural processes do not appeal to you, please do not look at these images. I have made these thumbnails smaller so as to protect those viewers who do not wish to see them.

...then here's the more

i was in such a hurry to upload those pics that i didn't bother to write about them.

herewith, some background

the pictures are in chronological order, starting with february 11

1, 2: a lighted tree on michigan avenue, as seen via a stairwell from the underpass below. en route to work, 6:20 am

3: snowflakes dancing around a street lamp. 8:26 pm

4, 5: chicago theater, extended exposure

6: taking pictures of people on the train

7: got noticed by a passenger, then i tried to take his picture. luckily he didn't punch my lights out. cute. 8:50 pm

8, 9: holding the camera as still as possible, trying to get a double-exposure effect with doors open and closed.

february 12

10, 11, 12: toyed with all sorts of settings, including white balance and exposure. commuted home in the snow.

february 13, chicago auto show

13, 14: car parts up close. surprisingly, both from gm vehicles

15: the word "suburban" literally stretches on forever, similar to the object itself. notice the dirt caked in between the curves of the letter S

16: paper model cars assembled at the honda display. macro focus.

17, 18, 21: parts of volvo and mercedes-benz cars, respectively

19, 20: the main hall at the mccormick place convention center. dramatic. awesome. sepia.

february 14

22, 23: tried to get pics of trains passing, sparks flying from my window, but no such luck. ended up with extended exposure pictures of the neighborhood on an otherwise dark night.

24: too little light in the room, even with extended exposure, for a clear picture, but foxy did do a double-take. eerie effect.

25: view from the john hancock building

26: new friends from work, interns from the uk (well, sort of). we had a blast. i'm such a tour guide...

if less is more...

i had a lot to choose from from the el ride for favourite, this one made the cut

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i hope you're reading this

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this is what i was trying to get

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i want to sell this one to buick

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look closely

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i purposely made this thumb bigger

latest and greatest

so as i get used to my new computer, and tweak it to just the way i like it, i've adopted google's picasa photo manager. it's pretty slick and does just about everything i want it to do. also, toots toots, this machine has an sd slot right on the side, so i don't even need to plug in the camera. no more usb cables--yay!

in addition to exporting pictures from the card to my pc, picasa also lets me upload them to a web album. and google owns blogger, too, so now i'm hunting for a really easy way to show off the pictures here.

i expect i'll move everything that's in photobucket now to picasa soon, but that's a project for another night. in the meantime, here are pictures from chicago this weekend. the temperatures were absolutely frigid (high of 0 today, with windchill another 20 degrees below). that resulted in some beautiful blue sky shots, and a lot of pictures taken through windows.

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millennium park, prudential building, aon center

this is a reflection in a puddle on the sidewalk.

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millennium park, the bean, b&w

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michigan ave, chicago fire relief

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ontario st, abstract

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el, macro, window, abstract

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el, macro, window, abstract

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el, macro, window, abstract

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el, portrait, b&w

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picasa also gives you a cool option i'd figured google would add, which is to pinpoint where each picture was taken on a google map. that means, you can check out the area where most of my pictures were taken via google's street-level imagery. pretty nifty. as i add more pictures to picasa from photobucket, i'll definitely try to keep up on that.

camera back

on a whim, i called the cta this morning and, after a few minutes on hold, talked to a wonderful woman at the north park garage who told me she had my camera in her hand.

a quick ZipTrip (tm) later, i am showing off the cool pictures i took yesterday!

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cta, train, weather, color

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cta, train, weather, b&w

notice that the only thing that varies between these two pictures is the orange on the billboard? it was such a cold, miserable gray day, nothing else had any colour to it. the effect is even more pronounced in the pictures i took of the currency exchange across the street.

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weather, color, wilson, broadway

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weather, b&w, wilson, broadway