Past Pictures

Through my off and on years of dabbling in photography, I'm still convinced that one doesn't really need a "nice" camera to take good pictures. This is something that every photographer I know has told me ever since I picked up my first 35mm. Most of the time it doesn't matter much whether you have a $100 p&s camera or a $3,000 dSLR setup.

I have an old point & shoot Pentax camera. It's waterproof and dustproof, and so whenever I do anything outdoors, it's strapped to me. Despite being a relatively cheap point & shoot, 4+ years old, left out in sub-zero temperatures, dropped in rivers, dropped on concrete, lost on sandy beaches, and fetched by Quentin, it still takes great pictures.

Anyway, I started occasionally kayaking about 4 years ago. I would take a random weekend, drive somewhere, and paddle down a river or around a lake for a day or two. I'd pretty much spend the better part of 3 days not speaking a word to anyone, and just exercise and meditate. It's a lot more fun than it sounds.

Two of my favorite photos, taken with that p&s:


Found these two lonely (dead?) trees in the middle of the lake.

Paddling back to shore, I turned around for a minute to look at the lake.

Navy Pier Sunrise

This past Saturday, I woke up at around 5 am, and headed out to Navy Pier to catch a sunrise. Dusk and dawn are two of the best times to take photographs of pretty much anything, as the lighting is ideal. It was my first time walking around the Loop that early in the morning, and it has never felt more empty - I like it a lot. I also felt like I was going to get mugged with every step I took.

Unfortunately, it was windy that morning, and that introduced excessive blur in most of my photos. Even the ones I did keep weren't that great, but oh well:


Cathy commented that it looks like there's a big fire off to the right, and yeah, it does look like that. It's actually the street lights from the city.


About 5 minutes after the first picture, but to the north a bit. The orange glow is from the sun in this one.

Seagull on the Rocks

I took a random drive around the city today, and found myself down by the lake. Next thing I knew, I was deciding that taking a frigid walk along the lake would be a great idea.

As I was walking toward the lake, I saw a beaver in a puddle water chewing on a tree branch. What was odd about this (besides the very existence of a beaver in the city) was that he was about two feet from the sidewalk, and didn't seem to mind the couple of people that passed by and stared at him, including me. I should have taken a picture, but the fact that he was sitting in what looked like road runoff and was surrounded by trash was just too depressing for me to want to memorialize.

It was pretty quiet for once on the beaches, except for some people walking their dogs. Huge portions of the lake by the shore were completely frozen over, and you could hear the sheets of ice cracking and grinding themselves to pieces.


I also found a seagull, standing on some ice. He looked pretty miserable.


I also decided to try to photograph seagulls in flight today. It was a pain in the ass. And not because of the flight itself but mainly because seagulls like to sit very still when it is cold out.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone.

Lincoln's Birthday

I have the day off for Lincoln's Birthday. No really, I'm serious.

Taking something like this was pretty much impractical for me in the past unless I wanted to spend tons of money and time developing film and anxiously waiting, hoping one of the shots came out. Not so much anymore. I spent about 10 minutes getting the above photo.