AaronSpruit

As I was heading back down the stairs from taking the Heading Home 2 picture, this doll was laying on the ground.  No idea how it got there, but the textures of it and the ground around it made me snap a picture.

The weekend when I walked around by myself was actually quite nice.  I put some new music on my iPod and just cruised around.  All in all I think I took over 200 shots in just under 4 hours.  As the seasons keep changing I’m going to keep trying to do it more.  Hopefully I’ll be able to capture some more seasonal shots and get them up here.

**Update**
Woohoo, my new lens has arrived (along with the two extra batteries).  This is way too much fun.

I love walking around the city and finding so many interesting sites.  This was actually found on Racine St as the facade to Big Monster Toys (at the time of posting this the website didn’t work).  As wikipedia mentions, this is their front door.

How fun!

Oh yeah, Happy Halloween!  I saved the Monster picture for just this occasion.

**Update** My new macro lens will be here tomorrow.  Yay!

Nothing like an abandoned, boarded up stairwell for some fun line analysis.  Where the missing pillars are on the bottom stairwell are interesting because of the pillars directly behind them.  Also, the erected fence adds even more to this.

Outside of the picture it’s weird though.  I have no idea why they decided to not allow people to use these stairs.  They go from the lake shore to Michigan Ave and the Lakefront Trail.  Since these stairs are closed, you have to walk all the way around and take a ramp up with all the bikes and runners on the Lakefront Trail.  They did the same thing on the other side of the river by Navy Pier too.  Maybe they’re closed for the liability?  Regardless, they make great pictures.

I purposely posted this image on a Friday, because I want it to have a three day exposure.  This image was taken near the bus station on Harrison St.  I was actually on the other side of the street when I saw him sitting alone on the other side of the street.  When I first saw him, he was talking on his phone.  However, I then approached and asked if I could take his picture.  I’m not really good at taking pictures of strangers on the street, and when I do take portraits, I like them to be as candid as possible.  Well, he starts to put away his phone, and I ask him to just be normal about it and pretend I’m not there.

Out of the four or so that I took, I think this one captures what I wanted.  The down side was that I didn’t actually check the images before I gave him my business card and walked off.  Because I was playing with the camera a few shots before I met him, I forgot that I had left it on the manual setting.  This is why the image is so blown out.  At first I was disappointed and almost turned around.  However it grew on me very quickly, and it seemed to actually capture more of what I had seen originally than I had thought.  I hope you guys enjoy it too.  I would definitely recommend the light CSS setting for this one.

This is the other image that I mentioned yesterday.  Basically, this is an identical image, except this one was taken from the top of a parking garage instead of on street level like the other one.  I think I like the other one better though because of the lights in this one.  However, I really like the multiple modes of transportation shown in this one: train, automobile, and air (blimp).  The blimp is slightly hard to find, but it’s there.

As this image has a number in it, it’s actually from a group of shots that I did.  The other one will be posted tomorrow.  I figured I should start posting a few images of great town that I live in, and I think this one fits the bill nicely.

The other weekend (I guess it’s been about 4 ago now) I went for a walk and last weeks and this weeks images are from that walk.  Actually, the next few weeks probably will be.  Normally when I walk around with my camera I head straight for the lake.  It’s not that far from my place and there’s usually a lot going on.  However for this stroll I decided to stay in the West Loop and actually head more South.

Driving from the suburbs every once in awhile, I can always gauge how close I am from the city based on how large the Sears Tower is.  In fact, I usually use this as a marker even when I’m driving around town.  Anyways, as I head home into the city on the Eisenhower this is the image I get.

This was taken in the courtyard of the church on the magnificent mile.  It’s quite fun living downtown and being able to walk to all of these great areas.  Anyways, this was the best angle I was able to find for this fountain.  I like how the light catches the downspout and the water is frozen.  I had to do a little bit of touchups to this image, but nothing drastic (as most of my images are unless otherwise said).  Mostly this consisted of a little dodging burning to separate the subject from the background.

In other news, I really hope everyone is enjoying the dark CSS style.  I actually think I enjoy looking at most of my images with it, along with the rest of the site.  What do you think?

Yet another image that I was playing with the white balance.  Without that added color, there really wasn’t anything special about this image.  It’s simply the grooves in the facade of a building.  Granted, I rotated the image 90 degrees.  I really can’t get over the detail of this image for as simple as it is.  I can’t wait till J&R gets the 105mm macro lens back in stock so that I can explore this type of stuff (and even closer) more.

I’ll be out of town for this week, so hopefully everything still gets posted correctly.  Thankfully the software that runs this site has future entries, which I’ve been taking advantage of.  That way I can post multiple weeks worth of entries at a time.

This is some basic studio work that I did.  Nothing overly complex, just a single diffused light.  I was going to use something along the lines of these images as a theme to wrap this website around.  Unfortunately, that would’ve taken too much effort, and what I have now just sort of flowed out of me.

This was my Dad’s camera, but he gave it to me.  It’s actually in good shape, as I’ve cleaned it up and made sure all the mechanics work correctly.  At some point I may actually go through the intro to photography class again as a film student, mostly to get into the darkroom experience.  However, I can’t get over how long it takes to just take a simple image with this thing.  Between the manual focus, aligning the exposure meter (which is still in working condition even after not replacing the battery), having to manually set the f-stops and shutter speeds.  And yet, everything about it is so fastinating.  It’s quite primitive to what I currently shoot with.  It’s amazing how much has changed in 30 years.

This is another close to home shot.  Taken under one of the Metra lines, this toilet seat lid has been meticulously placed against the metal I beam.  What makes this even stranger is that it has been there for around 6 months now.  Everytime I walk home that way, I’ve told myself I needed to take a picture of it.  Well, I finally got around to it.

I’m adding another category also: Sepia.  This is because many of the images I’ve uploaded aren’t really black & white, but instead Sepia tones.  I figure I should fix that now before it gets out of hand with too many entries.