Canghuixu: Photos from an early evening walk along the Chicago River, November 2010

Monday, November 22, 2010

Photos from an early evening walk along the Chicago River, November 2010

I went to Chicago last week. I was busy most of the time, but I did have one evening free to take pictures. Actually it was late afternoon, before a dinner at an Italian place called Volare, but the sun was already down, so I will call it evening.

I spent most of my time along the Chicago River, going west from Wabash Avenue to Lake Street and then back. The weather was fairly nice. It was on the cool side, but the sky was generally clear. I have always thought that this is one of the nicest places for nighttime urban landscape photography because of the combination of the river, the bridges, and of course the interesting architecture. The river is narrow enough that you can have nice shots of the buildings on the other side without using a long lens. By contrast, when I took pictures of the Central skyline in HK, Tsim Sha Tsui was really too far away to do much without a very long lens, so I took my favorite shots with a long lens. At some level the river between the Bund and the Pudong is also too wide, at least for someone with my very limited skills.

But the Chicago River is just right. I can stand on one side of the river and take interesting pictures of the other side with my trusty image-stabilized 17-55. In a few cases, of course, I would have probably been better off with my superwide Tokina, with lots of perspective correction in post-processing, but I didn't bring it this time.

Here is the whole gallery:
http://www.canghuixu.com/United-States/Chicago/Chicago-River-at-Night/14759629_BcyCZ

If you're in a hurry, a selection of favorites...
http://www.canghuixu.com/keyword/favorite-ordnov2010

A handful of real favorites...

Looking south from the Randolph Street bridge...