a daily photo from joshua l. smith
Yesterday, on my walk through Elgin with a friend, I photographed this same scene; but I already had a monochrome for yesterday, so Sarah and I went back tonight to capture the scene again for today’s monochrome.
I’ve captured Elgin’s fireworks shows from the Chicago Street bridge a few times (link to the most recent set of photos), so last year I wanted to photograph them from a different viewpoint. We parked near the riverwalk and then walked just north of the Highway 20 bridge. I never posted the resulting images since I’d just come back from my July waterfall trip (link); however, this image definitely works to celebrate the New Year!
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
For the second full week of Black & White February, I decided to follow up on an idea that I’d had for a few months – to shoot light trails in Elgin. I enjoy capturing long exposures, but the added challenge of capturing light trails in downtown Elgin instead of Chicago (where there’s more traffic) seemed challenging.
While we were out in the bitter cold for the January Lunar Eclipse, I realized that Elgin’s parking garages would make a great vantage point for some light trail images. I’d taken images from the top of the Spring Street garage, in fact, I’ve led photo walks in downtown Elgin and used the Spring Street garage as a vantage point.
However, I decided to add one more aspect to the week’s photos: I would attempt to shoot 7 images and capture 7 photos that I was proud of…I didn’t quite make it. Capturing light trails of traffic when there’s very little traffic turned out to be a bit more challenging than I expected. But I took 14 images, from 6 vantage points, and captured 7 images that I’m proud of.
