Haven't posted photos here in quite a while, but I realized I never posted these shots from the Friday before Halloween. Shot at our place before we headed out dancing.

A Graphic Novel, and Edward Scissorhands.

The Museum of Science and Industry - formerly the Palace of Fine Arts at the 1893 Worlds Fair.

A few trees have grown in, and a few statues are missing, but its essentially the same 116 years later.




Available here.

The modern digital version:



Some huge resources are putting their collections on flickr, with no known copyright on many. Like the Smithsonian, Field Museum, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, and some more links here. Many of the photos are up only within the last few months. Fascinating to look through, and a great design resource too.

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This is a duplicate post from my new journal. For anybody on livejournal who liked my photos, I've moved my photography journal over to:



You can follow them if you're on blogger/blogspot, on most readers through feedburner, or you can add the feed as a LJ friend to see them show up here. They're also all linking from flickr.

Thanks much to everyone who has commented and/or liked my photos over the last few years. I've received many compliments, and they certainly help with the motivation to keep pushing the boundaries of my skill set. I always appreciate any feedback you may have.

This journal will remain for more personal use. Thanks.

- Rob

The larger version, 6 raw images stitched together. Heh, only 315mb.



Clicky for the bigger one.

I've been trying a bunch of new things lately, and in that process I've been spending a bunch of time researching new photoshop techniques. Always more to learn, there is. Toss in a few of my own methods, and I'm really liking what i've been coming up with.

This was a 60° day a few weeks back, and all of the ice was breaking up. It was a great day to get out for a ride. It should be back up to the 60's next week, and I want to ride and get a lot more photos.

Below: 3 RAW photos, merged, pretty heavily edited.



I think I have enough other shots to stitch together a panoramic from this same spot. Hmmm.

Last friday in the fog, I went out for about 2 hours taking pictures along the lakefront. Actually brought along a tripod this time, so I redid some photos I took a few years ago that I really liked, but now I have multiple aligned exposures to play with.

These are some others that I took.

3 exposures combined



( Cut for 2 more )

Along the Chicago River last Wednesday, 2-shot composite

I like mixed light sources - the orange-ish sodium-vapor contrasted with whatever the white is from the factory lights.

I have a set of macro extension tubes I picked up on ebay a while back, and I experimented a while back with some old lenses. I didn't like what I was able to do with them due to the poor glass, and they sat in the back of a closet after I purchased the canon 100mm macro lens. I hadn't tried both together until a few days ago.

The main problem is that you really don't have control over the depth of field, It locks in at full open (f/2.8) as the electronic connection between the lens and camera is severed. The metering goes wonky as well, to the point of being unusable. I can get awfully close, though, and I find myself wanting to photograph all kinds of everyday objects.

2 raw photos merged, macro + extension tubes, halogen flood, tripod

Friends we were with, moments after Obama was declared the winner when the west coast polls closed.

Grant Park, Chicago, November 4th 2008

It was an absolutely amazing experience. I don't have the ability in words to describe the evening, but I found a blog that gets close.

erzulie and I headed out to meet her folks for dinner after work the other day, and we had a few minutes to kill.

This is the inbound Kennedy, from the Cumberland overpass near O'hare. I used to do that commute every day for about a year, from Itasca to Wrigleyville. Ugh, do I not miss that...

Walking around this past weekend in Edgewater, we walked past this church.

Ape at the Lincoln Park Zoo this past Saturday.

1/160 | f/4.5 | iso400

A bear, chilling for dinner at the Lincoln Park Zoo on Saturday. Laying on its back in the sun with a big chunk of meat... I was a little jealous.

Taken with a borrowed 100-400 f4.5-5.6L. It wouldn't be a good lens for indoors at all, and I still had to kick it up to 1/200 | f/5 | iso400 to get this, but it seemed to be a great outdoor lens.

Last night I shot sequences of a full box's worth... and finally dialed in on the settings I wanted to catch the little eddies of fire. 1/400 | f/6.3 | iso100 | 2 halogen floods

I have tons of these now, including a bunch with the fire *just* starting, I got great detail on the match head. I'm thinking of framing up a sequence, like the animation below, but it would be a pain to mat.

My new glasses. The temples and bridge are interchangeable, they're from this funky italian company.

Macro shots of transparent, reflective objects on a black background is a royal pain. Every single speck of dust shows up, and no matter how careful I was to wipe it all down with lint-free cloth, there's still retouching involved.

Shooting tent, 2 halogen floods, black glass, tripod, 1/8sec, f/8, iso100, ring-mounted 100mm macro, cable release

3 raw exposures, melded together to retain as many details and textures as I could, using bracketed exposures and "apply image", as-is for the dark layer, inverted for the light layer.

HDR without the tell-tale signs of it. I've been experimenting with ways to get lots of detail without it looking cartoonish.

The rose is from my grandfather's funeral last year.

Caught a few hours of the air show on Saturday. I don't want to deal with the millions of people crowded into the main viewing area, but walking distance from my place the lake juts out quite a bit, allowing for a clear view downtown. Also, the planes (especially the blue angels) make their inbound passes a few hundred feet away.





Awesome, in the truest sense of the word. They come by so low and fast, that after they pass I devolve into this maniacal giggle... This next pic is only at 80mm. 1/1300, f/8, iso400. They're close.

( Cut for two more )

There were a bunch of passes from a B2, F15, and a lot of a F-22 showing off its thrust-vectoring tricks, including a slow pass sliding sideways through the air. It doesn't really come across in still pictures, nor did the formation of a P-51, F-4, F-15 and F-22, showing the generations of aircraft. The Blue Angels always put on a good show, though.

Hiking near the Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan.

Big-ass dandelion.

Flowers in Glen Arbor, 100mm macro.

The colors are *barely* edited. Yet again, I have no idea what kind this is. It was in a garden, so its likely common.