Millennium Park was only one of my destinations that evening. I got it into my head that I must walk all the way to the Planetarium and take a panoramic shot of the Chicago downtown skyline at sunset. The best way I could get there was walking along the lake shore. Unfortunately it wasn’t that easy. I had “slightly” misjudged the distance and ended up walking a lot more than I had bargained for. I kept wishing that it would all end, but I was determined to get my shot. So I walked and walked. These are the photos that I took on this leg of the journey. This is also the last part of my series. Unfortunately the panorama didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. I took about 5-6 pictures from the tripod (which I had to carry all the way on my back) and assembled the whole thing in Photoshop. Problem is, one of the buildings looks like it’s about to collapse, and I gave up trying to fix it. So I’m not gonna show the panorama here. Another reason would be WordPress, which has a bit of a problem with really wide images. It’s unlikely I’m gonna find a workaround for that either.

Enough blabbing, here’s the real stuff I assume you, my visitors, want to see.

There are many trashcans on the sidewalk that goes along the lake shore. There are also many squirrels. Squirrel + trashcan = love. This one was watching me very attentively while I tried to close up on it. Sadly I only had the Canon 50mm f/1.4 and that’s about as far as I could get before it scampered away.

Next was the Buckingham Fountain which is famous for its dancing light shows at night. I tried a contre-jour and this is what I got. Even though this shot suffers from having too many elements, I rather like it because it has what I would call “urban spirit”. The sun beating down on the fountain, the telephone wires and the street lamps, the buildings in the background and the crane; they all spell “urban” to me.

Here’s one of the views I got while approaching my destination. A lot of boats and small yachts are parked in the bay and the Chicago buildings make a very nice background.

This is the very pier from which I shot my panorama. Another contre-jour. The sun was beating down with golden-orange rays but I changed this a bit in Photoshop for a different look. I like it just the way it turned out.

Finally, on my way back to the car, light was failing fast, and I took a very last shot at f/1.4. I guess I’ve never tested my Canon 50mm f/1.4 at the maximum aperture before and I gave it a try. It turned out pretty good, though a bit soft, which was expected, but on the other hand some of that softness comes from hand-holding the camera.

I really hope you have enjoyed this series and thanks for visiting!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel, Street. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.