ANGELA B. PAN

I just got back from my second trip to Chicago but my first real time visiting with a camera in my hand. I booked this trip with the intention to scout out photo locations for our upcoming photo workshop in Chicago. I wanted to get a feel for the city and the logicistics of getting around. So if you’re interested in joining me for a week in Chicago, click here.

In general, I loved visiting the city. Compared to New York City or even Washington DC, it’s a lot quieter as far as car noises and even people walking around. It’s so photogenic, meaning everywhere you turned could be a great new image. With the so many different elevated views, it was difficult to take a bad picture. I especially liked being among the skyscrapers. Even during the middle of the day, you can find some very interesting shadow play. Overall you can’t go wrong with a photo adventure in Chicago – even if it’s just for a few days.

Side note, they don’t call it the “windy city’ for nothing. Even on a nice, sunshining day, it can get really cold with the wind. I highly suggest packing at least gloves and a hat in your camera bag for those just in case moments. You don’t want to let being too cold be the reason why you don’t capture your shot. I was there at the very end of March and I wore my gloves everyday.

So we had a good 72 hours in Chicago packed full of photography. Here’s what we did:

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If you haven’t noticed yet, the key to capturing Chicago images is definietly self parking garages. LOL. There’s just so many around and if you just poke your head out a little bit, there are some really interesting compositions you can get. This one was taken from a parking garage off of Kinzie St.

So I went to this parking garage to capture some images of the L train from above (how many times have we heard this story?) and in between time I ended up throwing on my zoom lens onto the camera to try to find interesting compositions. In this particular scene, I really liked how the L train was curving so I waited for someone to walk underneath it. It didn’t take long for these two girls to enter the scene. I particularly like the one wearing the pink coat. I think it stands out so nicely in the urban setting.

In other news, I’m leading another photowalk! If you’re in the DC area on June 1st, I’d love for you to join me at the Tidal Basin for a sunrise photowalk. I’ll be there with the Focus on the Story photo festival as we enjoy a (hopefully) beautiful Saturday morning together. It’s free to join, just click here to register. Meet at the Martin Luther King Jr memorial 🙂

My camera settings for this image is F4.5 at 1/640th sec and ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

This image was taken at the same time as this one. It’s just a little more in focus. LOL.

So Andrew and I actually spent quite a bit of time looking for this spot. I knew there was a train station that had a pretty cool view of the Trump International Hotel and Tower but for some reason we couldn’t figure where. We walked up and down the street and thought the trains only ran parallel to it instead of appearing like it went straight for it.

So we kinda just gave up.

We spent the rest of the day taking other pictures, eating lots of food and eventually wanted to spend some time at Millennium Park. While walking over, we finally figured out the L train station and I was so excited. Since I had no plans of actually going anywhere, we figured we would just wait a little bit closer to sunset for the better light and went back to our plan of going to Millennium Park.

The park was great and all but it was sooo packed. It was difficult to comprehend what was actually going on just because there was so many people. Not my scene at all. I’m glad I got to scope it out but decided to just go back to the train station when it was around 5p when sunset was closer to 8p. I slapped on a neutral density filter to help with the long exposure and create the blur with the trains.

I think it worked out well. I captured these two trains separately and then just photoshopped them together to look like they were passing. I think it just made the one image a little more interesting.

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 0.5 sec and ISO 3200 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

Home from Chicago and it was a fantastic trip. At one point on Saturday night while we were walking back to our hotel for the night, Andrew turned to me and said “How come all of your vacations involve a lot of walking?” LOL I’m pretty sure he was joking but not really. Because it’s true. I think when you walk around a city, you just get to know it better and there’s so much more you get to see when you’re going a little bit slower. I like it better than just driving everywhere or taking public transportation.

But my legs, feet and back are definietly feeling it right now.

This image was taken from a L train station. The light blue building in the center is the Trump International Hotel and Tower and found this to be a cool point of view with buildings framing it. Below me were some train tracks that I was taking pictures of but in between trains coming and going, I was messing around with long exposure on the buildings. I love the way it turned out and I think this is a very accurate depiction of what it feels like after exploring the city for 48 hours. I didn’t think much of it while I was taking the picture but thought it turned out really cool in the end.

Overall, I had a great weekend. I loved walking up and down the riverwalk and finding different angles to photograph the high rise buildings. I also really enjoyed eating deep dish pizza and Italian beef sandwiches. So you can say I’m a big fan of Chicago’s scenery and food 🙂

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at .4 seconds and ISO 3200 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens and my 10 stop neutral density filter.