Tall Grass in Crow Island Woods 2

While taking pictures at Crow Island Woods during dusk the other day, I placed my 

camera and small tripod a few feet off the trail amid the tall grass and angled the shot 

so that there would be minimal view of the ground. It was cold and although I had to 

bend very low to the ground to compose the shot the sharp undergrowth prohibited me 

from sitting down. It also took me about fifteen attempts to get the framing right.

The warped and atmospheric perspective of the grass shooting upwards is very surreal.

 Because of the jagged and schematic shapes of all the crumpled leaves, it looks as 

though there's a lot of movement. The towering nature of the grass and the perceived

 movement sort of conjure an association with buildings in a city. 

Winnetka

Taken in November 2012

Tall Grass in Crow Island Woods

I checked out a book by Ansel Adams from the library about how he conceived 

40 of his photographs, and for one of his stark landscapes Adams mentioned 

using a red filter to increase contrast. I piled two fluorescent filters and an orange 

graduated filter onto my 18-55mm and twisted a mini tripod onto the bottom of my 

camera and trekked to Crow Island Woods at dusk. I set the camera on the wood-chip

 path and took several low-angle, long exposures of shrubs and foliage. 

Over Thanksgiving break I briefly became obsessed with old photographs and 

spent days venturing across the internet unearthing daguerreotypists (especially 

Roger Fenton and Gustave Le Gray) who artistically documented 19th century events.

 Eventually I organized the best of my findings, from pre-Civil War presidents to 

painted tipis into a blog that I've now abandoned: http://historicalphotographs.tumblr.com

(there are two pages of posts). Either there's something mesmerizing about the quality of 

daguerreotypes themselves or the artistic integrity of daguerreotypists when documenting 

the archaic events and subjects around them. 

Winnetka

Taken in November 2012

Waterfowl at Sunset on the Skokie Lagoons

Several times, when the inner-forest trail on the Skokie Lagoons gave way to

 the water, I spotted waterfowl quickly floating in the opposite direction. Along with the

 typical throng of mallards and canadian geese, there were pie-billed grebes and coots 

(pictured above). Naturally the birds were nowhere to be seen until sunset, where a brief 

window of warm golden sunlight allowed for unique shots.

I like discovering new birds that I haven't seen before. It gives nature hikes a sense 

of adventure. I guess nature hikes are actually really mundane, and so are birds. There's

 no legitimate point to birdwatching or nature photography in general. It probably 

depends more on whether or not you aren't bored to death by exploring suburban forests 

than on whether or not you have a strong bias towards the purpose of recording nature 

that people already know exists.

Winnetka

Taken in November 2012

Chicago Garter Snake on the Skokie Lagoons

For some reason I spent noon till sunset hiking along the inner-forest trails of the Skokie

 Lagoons with my telephoto lens. It was interesting to discover new paths, islands, 

and fields that I hadn't been to before, but as a photography hike there were relatively

 few interesting plants and birds. One exception was a garter snake which wriggled

 through the dry leaves and froze a few feet away from the trail. I spent about five

 minutes taking pictures of the snake from a bunch of different angles as it remained

 frozen, and after I got a few shots that seemed nice enough I went back on my way.

I've seen a few snakes in the woods before, but it was still surprising when I spotted 

this one. They're not dangerous, but in a pretty zoologically vanilla environment it's

 different and somewhat enthralling to see a reptile.

Winnetka

Taken in November 2012

A Muskrat Nest on the Skokie Lagoons

While hiking along the banks of the Skokie Lagoons the other night during dusk, I 

spotted a muskrat. I hadn't had time to photograph waterfowl in a while, and I thought 

that it was late enough in the year that there would be some on the Lagoon, but other 

than a few mallards the Lagoon was deserted. As I passed a collection of reeds next to a

 fallen branch, I heard a splash and a muskrat (what looks like a mini-beaver) swam out 

of the reeds and dove under the water.

I read an article in the Winnetka Historical Society's Gazette about the swamps that 

were around prior to the New Deal, and the diversity of wildlife that was around sounds

 extraordinary. It makes sense that wildlife in Winnetka is now limited to this finite stretch

 of wetlands which is surrounded by major roads and highways, but it's odd how few and

 scattered the zoological population of the Skokie Lagoons is. It's nice to see something like

 a muskrat every once and a while just because it shows that the conservation effort of

 the Lagoons is amounting to something.

Winnetka

Taken in November 2012

Rainy Day on Elm Street

Around a month ago I frantically biked from school to home and back again to get my 

camera and take a picture of a play rehearsal for a paper that would finish being 

edited several hours later. On the way back to school, I took photographs of damp 

autumn leaves littering the streets. I ended up using the top photo as inspiration for

 one of my college essays about how isolated and elitist Winnetka is. 

I probably shouldn't use my camera while riding a bike. I bike so often that I can

 comfortably pedal without holding onto the handlebars, and since I'm so used to 

riding along the side of highways and cars not stopping at stop signs on my way to

 school in the morning (usually moms texting while driving), I feel relatively competent

 with holding up a small plastic/metal box and pressing a button while riding my bike. 

Nevertheless, these depressing shots are quite nice.

Winnetka

Taken in October 2012

Statues in Allerton Park

Another rural Illinois town near Champaign that we travelled to was Monticello, which

 like Tuscola is situated around a grain elevator and railroad. Fifteen minutes past the

 town is Allerton Park, a unexpectedly expansive American Versailles and state park 

with a multitude of classical and Chinese statues. Statues make for interesting subjects

 both as part of a landscape and individually as a portrait so while walking through 

the high walls of topiary I took pictures of statues with a wide aperture for the purpose

 of compositionally isolating them.

I don't see any sense in photographing works of art or monuments or famous sites. 

You always see photos of people huddling around things like the Mona Lisa and 

stretching their point-and-shoots above the throng. I don't get it. Which, of course, doesn't

 mean that I don't do this myself, although when I take pictures of monuments I usually 

pursue a more journalistic perspective to capture an angle that might not have been seen 

or published before by other people. In that sense, it's sort of like turning artwork into 

artwork, if that makes sense.

Monticello

Taken in November 2012

Grain Elevator in Tuscola

My family and I spent the past three days in Champaign and travelled to several

 nearby sites in rural Illinois. One of them was Tuscola, a neat line of authentic, small

 brick buildings situated around a grain elevator and a railroad. Grain elevators are a 

commonplace in southern Illinois and can constantly be spotted along the horizon, but 

Tuscola was my only chance of actually being able to frame a shot of one from a 

reasonable distance (even though I forgot to switch my 50mm to a wider lens and was

 pressured by my family to just take a picture and move along). Most other southern

 Illinois towns are situated around grain elevators, but Tuscola had a diner and a couple 

collectibles shops that were worth getting out of the car for.

There's a very eloquent description that poet Carl Sandburg wrote about grain elevators 

on Chicago's skyline but I can't find it, although I did find a passage in his "City

 of Big Shoulders" poem where Sandburg alludes to grain elevators and railroads 

playing key roles in Chicago's economic rise. In a sense, grain elevators are poetic. 

They're rural skyscrapers, out of place in their farmland setting as grimy, 

concrete, antiquated economic engines for a gleaming city. Like Roman ruins, there's

 something monumentally dead about them that connotes a non-modern (and in this

 case non-urban) labor intensive system which seems altogether alien nowadays. There's 

also the design element to it too, with the verticality of the grain elevators awkwardly

 protruding out of an extremely horizontal landscape.

Tuscola

Taken in November 2012

Bike Trail on the Skokie Lagoon

Back in March I got a bunch of camera equipment for my birthday. Among 

other things, I got a few tinted graduated filters and a lens widener. The next 

day, to see how everything worked, I filled my cargo pants with lens extensions

 and filters and biked through the Skokie Lagoons. I figured out that the blue tinted 

graduated filter made the sky bluer and the lens widener heavily vignetted the frame

and provided more of a perspective.

Camera toys are fun but they really don't make a photo look better. Graduated filters

 are a bit messier than photoshop, and lens wideners don't allow a lens to zoom out 

significantly without massive vignetting. Additionally, adding layers of glass to a lens 

diminishes detail. Still, lens extensions are nifty, and as someone who takes a lot of 

pictures it's nice to have a slightly different medium.

Winnetka

Taken in March 2012

Campaign Signs lining Willow Road

Today is Election Day, and I was an election judge at precinct 11. During a lull at 

the voting station I took a break to bike home and walk my dog. I had been waiting 

all year to finally get a photo illustrating the clutter of political signs in front of 

polling places, so I brought my camera with me as I biked back to the voting 

station and took a few shots of signs in front of Crow Island Elementary School 

and the Presbyterian Church on Willow Road. Unfortunately the scene doesn't 

look as cluttered as I would've liked, but it still illustrates the inanimate nature of 

the signs and how their bright colors are obviously intended to sway undecided 

voters, like a bull charging at a bright red cape.

At any rate, I'm in a political science class and I was an election judge today and 

during the primary and I've been to a state senate and house debate as well as 

two congressional debates in the past month and I recently phoned people for a 

congressman so I'm not intending to be too cynical, although campaign propaganda 

is undeniably visual pollution that deserves to have a Warholesque rendering 

of it through art. 

Winnetka

Taken in November 2012

Urban Bridges on the Chicago River

At the start of summer I took a course on the history of Chicago, and one of the 

main units was the importance of geography in Chicago's development. This mostly

 involved reading about the different bodies of water and how they helped expand commerce, 

and on one of our excursions into the city we canoed along the Chicago River in 

downtown Chicago. I brought my film camera in hopes of capturing unique angles of

 buildings and bridges, although it ended up inciting some worry from others who

 thought that the camera was expensive and was going to get damaged by water. 

Industrial bridges make for awesome black and white photographs, but I either 

developed this film incorrectly or left the roll of film in my camera for too long (I've 

been using this same roll of film for several months so that I could practice taking

 more deliberate shots). The edges are faded and a few shots are overexposed or 

out of focus. Film photography certainly yields more detailed results but without 

any technical knowhow for the developing process it can be a frustrating and 

antiquated alternative to digital photography.

Chicago

Taken in June 2012

Churches in Wilmette

While biking around the suburbs at sunset during Halloween in search of election

 signs for a photo essay I want to make for the school newspaper, I passed several 

churches. The orange sunlight struck the bricks of the churches and produced a warm 

glow. A Latter Day Saints Church and cathedral caught my attention so I quickly 

took a few pictures and went on my way.

I've been wanting to make a photo essay of churches on the North Shore for a while. 

Ever since I biked to North Chicago and spotted a small rundown church next to an 

auto-body shop, I thought that it'd be interesting to photograph churches from all over 

the metropolitan area and compose the shots similarly so that the design is the only 

contrast. So far I've neither had the time nor integrity to get started on this, but passing 

by these churches reminded me that this photo essay was something that I wanted to

 do eventually.

Wilmette

Taken in October 2012