Here is another photo that I took that evening when I was flying in a helicopter around downtown Chicago. The pilots were cool enough to take off the door to give me an unencumbered view. That part was great — the thing I did not expect was the 200 MPH backwash flying through the cavity. It made it rather tough to keep the camera steady!

This is a shot (on Facebook) that Fiona got of me hanging out of the helicopter (albeit on the ground!).

Now, I know some of you EXIF-hunters love to know all the dirty details of the exposure. I keep it inside the Flickr page if you click on More Properties. But to save you the time, here is the basic info. BTW, this is a single-exposure RAW file that I converted into an HDR. This was shot at f/2.8 with an Exposure Bias of -5. The shutter was 1/8000, the ISO 800, and it was shot at 18mm. The camera was the Nikon D3X and it was shot with the 14-24mm 2.8 lens. I have details of all that stuff over there in the HDR Camera equipment area.

Filed under the categories: Chicago, Illinois, Nikon D3X, Travel

I would love to have a mad scientist lab that is only accessible via a retinal scan and a special dance. Inside I would have all kinds of fabulous things, including a clone chamber where I would clone myself several times so that I could keep track of all my various social networks. The clone would, of course, have the same retina, but it could not gain access into the mad science lab because it would fail the special dance bit.

I’d very much like to record a music video in here alongside Flight of the Conchords.

As you can see from my intricate tagging system, this was shot in Chicago. Who is the first to know this location? ..and my Chicago insider is not allowed to say!

Filed under the categories: Chicago, Illinois, Nikon D3X, Travel

The Crimson Lounge sits behind some ornate doors in the lobby of the Hotel Sax in Chicago. I was lucky enough to get a private tour of this beautiful and secret place. It would be callously gauche to call this a hotel bar, because it is so much more.

There are about a dozen little rooms, enclaves, and velvet-curtained grottos that make up a textured complex of rooms that are just waiting around for me to lounge in while drinking something with an absurd name.

I collected a variety of other shots from this little gem of a place that I will be sprinkling into the blog over the next few months and years…

Filed under the categories: Chicago, Illinois, Nikon D3X, Travel

Here is a shot of our pilots for the shot below, Bill and Jeff, circling back towards the city about an hour before the sunset.

(also, the site is going through a redesign… please ignore any changes you see that might mess up in IE or Safari… getting it worked out…! thanks for your patience).

Daily Photo – Chicago Thaws into Spring

I was lucky enough to be in a helicopter over Chicago at sunset. A big thanks to Fiona and our pilots Bill and Jeff. They took the door off the helicopter for me, which sounds like a good idea until you are experiencing 100 MPH of chopper backwash while hanging out trying to get this kind of shot!

It was a fun day. We stayed up for a few hours and circled around the city several times. I got hundreds of amazing shots. I haven’t had time to process any of them except for this one… but I wanted to go ahead and get it up since I know the Twitter and Facebook crowd has been waiting on it since I mentioned it on there. Also my mom was very worried about the whole door-off-the-helicopter thing.

Right in the center of the shot on the bottom is the famous Navy Pier. We timed this shot to get at the right height the second the sun dipped below the horizon to cast a rainbow of hues into the sky.

Filed under the categories: Chicago, Illinois, Nikon D3X, Travel

It was a great (but freezing!) weekend in Chicago for the holidays. It was adventurous and relaxing. The first shot here is from the amazing tree in front of Bloomingdale’s off Michigan Avenue.

I also spent a lot of time in the Art Institute of Chicago, coming away from my favorite room with the great Impressionists — the room is filled with over $100 million in Renoirs, Monets, and Cézannes. After coming out of that forum, I always get a bit melancholy… a strange combination of inspiration while feeling like I have no talent at all.

The final shot is one of a wonderful little adventure journal that I thought you might enjoy. The other captures are little bits from here and there around my room… freezing some time, perhaps.

Filed under the categories: Chicago, Illinois, Musings, Travel

I was thinking about that nice black water from yesterday and remembered a cold night in Chicago a while ago with more nice black water… glassy and reflective…

Filed under the categories: Chicago, Illinois, Travel

This one was shot from the John Hancock building during sunset. I believe I was facing south with this one… Which reminds me… the other day Ethan asked why “south” is called “south”. I did not have a good answer.

Filed under the categories: Chicago, Illinois, Travel

This may be the dumbest name for a post I have ever made, but I hope to surpass it some day with something more stupider. This was shot in Chicago in the dead of winter, which seems to be most of the time in Chicago. You can still see the frost on the ground there in front of the castle.

Filed under the categories: Chicago, Illinois, Travel

I found this on the way to Hong Kong… so I stopped for a quick shot while security eyed me with suspicion… But they have those cool TSA badges that makes them look all official and everything, but I just ignored them.

Filed under the categories: Chicago, Illinois, Travel

Chicago! You can’t go wrong with photographing this city just before or after it gets dark. All the light from the city casts sort of a matrix-glow up into the sky. It’s always a neat effect and this area around Millennium Park is always a prime area for shooting.

It’s been a while since I posted any shots from Chicago, so I am also posting another one I took several months ago that you may enjoy if you have never seen it.

Filed under the categories: Chicago, Illinois, Travel

The below mobile-phone shot shows one of my Chicago photographs being used for commercial purposes (without my permission) at a Kodak print shop on Hanover street, Edinburgh. It was shot by Paddy Patterson, so I wanted to thank him for sending this. The shot was taken on March 22, 2007 at 1.26pm GMT.

Someone else put this on DIGG (thanks, btw) – you can digg it here: Kodak steals from one of Digg’s favorite photographers

Here is another picture of Chicago below that I took around the same time.

Filed under the categories: Chicago, Travel

This is my favorite shot of Chicago. I was happy to capture a bit of the blue lake and be lucky enough to catch the particolored sunset. This shot is facing one direction and the one below it faces the other direction. The latter was taken about 30 minutes before the upper one.

Filed under the categories: Chicago, Illinois, Musings, Travel