Went over to the Joliet Iron & Steel works with a good buddy and excellent photogapher – Mark Baldwin. Lately we’ve been hitting the road to go further afield at 4.30am, so this local jaunt felt quite relaxed, even got to lay in a bit and we still made it there for 7am. As we had suspected, the park was open at 7am even though it states that it doesn’t open till 8am, there was a chain across the parking lot entrance, but it wasn’t in use. Had this not been the first time we’d visited this site, we probably wouldn’t have bothered, the light was terrible, nothing in the sky at all, but it was close, not cold and dry, so we checked it out anyway. There are some shots in this place, just not sure I got them today, I think once the snow has gone and perhaps with a little more colour in the sky the shots would be better, as it is I think more intimate detail shots were the way to go on this occasion, basically anything that didn’t include the sky. I did manage a few shots worthy of processing, the colours in the bricks are amazing, but the remnants of snow made framing difficult.

Across the road was a different story, some really colourful old disused factories which would make for some amazing photographs, unfortunately one end of the factory was still in use, and thus the whole place was fenced and gaurded off with security; shame, especially as in trying to see if there was an easy way in I managed to add a nice shiny bolt to my front right car tyre. It looked to be lodged in the tyre very well, so we drove on it home rather than attempt to pull it out, we made it home and the car is in the shop as we speak .

For a couple of hours today it looked like I might be making a 1am trip up the coast to north Wisconsin to get to Cave Point in time for pre dawn at about 6.30am tomorrow (Sunday), thats a 5 1/2hr drive from Naperville, then sanity dawned and I decided to save that one for another day, had I not had to work on Monday I’d have probably gone, good luck up there Josh, sure you’ll get some awesome shots and I’ll wish I’d joined you!

Instead a few of us are gonna be checking out the more local, now defunct Joliet Iron & Steel Works. From my flickr scouting there looks to be some interesting stuff there, but not too many good shots, so I’m wondering if this is target rich for photography or not, we’ll see, not too far away to find out, the bigger issue is knowing which set of lenses to take, usually when this happens I end up taking every lens except for the one I needed! We’ll see. We plan to be there for 7am, the place opens at 8am, but doesn’t look like entry is blocked before there, hopefully the morning light will be a bit better than today and worse case we’ll know if this place is worth a revisit or not!

Was lucky enough to have the opportunity of making the most of the long weekend, celebrated Valentines Day on Saturday with Stephanie and then met up with flickr contact Andrew who I’d met the week before and had been following his photo stream for a while.

I set off from my house at 4.30am, collected Andrew on the way, then hit I55 towards Chicago, next stop Michigan City Lighthouse, Indiana. We made it there for approx 6.30am, bang on schedule for the sunrise, not a minute too late actually as the sun was already on the move. Sunrise is a difficult subject on the south & eastern side of Lake Michigan as it rises over the land rather than over the water, and most often, the skyline of the land is not something you want in a photo in this case! The Michigan City lighthouse is great for sunrise however as you can get to the sun lit side of it quite easily, this time of year there is so much ice that you can happily walk well out into what is the lake in the summer to get some unique angles on the lighthouse…

Once the sun was starting to become harsh, we made a move and headed for Big Red in Holland, Michigan. The weather looked good, but everything we’d read was telling us it should be cloudy, though experience told us that the weather forecasts are often not accurate, especially after looking closely at the radar map the night before, still we felt we needed to move while we had the light.

We jetted up the interstate into Michigan and northwards along the east side of Lake Michigan, slowing only for the Highway Patrol . Three miles from Big Red and it was starting to cloud over, two miles from Big Red and it was a complete snow blizzard white out, so close! We made a uturn and headed back south towards Saint Josephs, we felt we were in a bit of a race now as the clouds where moving south.

We beat the weather to South Haven, but the subject was a little less interesting that Michigan City, very little ice also compared to the previous year, still we made a few photos then hit a diner for lunch, we knew we were not gonna outrun the weather for much longer, so just went with it…

Next and final stop was Saint Josephs which is a very similar design to Michigan City, by now the clouds had caught us, not so bad though as there was some texture in them, Black & White photos seemed like an obvious choice. Ironically other than the clouds, Saint Josephs was quite civilized, there was little ice, the concrete break water was dry, a little windy, but actually quite pleasant shooting conditions. There was plenty of movement in the clouds for long exposures also…

From here we headed home in time for dinner in the end, though we nearly got stuck in Michigan, we had got chatting away and I didn’t notice the gas warning gauge, luckily we were only a couple of miles form a gas station, I think we had 1/2 a gallon left in the tank! A long day but a pretty productive day, next time Big Red, next time!!!

Not much time for any Landscape shooting this weekend, but after watching United resoundingly beat Arsenal today, Cole and myself headed to the Arb to check out the Husky dogs and a demonstration of sled pulling, well kind of, there wasnt much snow, so they were pulling bike like contraptions, as good as it was in Coles eyes it didn’t compare to the climbing frames that he knew the Arb had on offer, so we quickly headed over to the expansive play area. It really is true that kids don’t feel the cold, we spent a full two hours there, I just couldn’t feel my feet, but I got a few shots of Cole out of the afternoon, first of 2010 in fact! Took the 5DmkII with the 135L attached, the snow is awesome for fill light when the sun is out.

As for Ben, he wasn’t a happy camper today and instead spent the afternoon sleeping off a cold!

Funny month really, I think I spent the most time I have in nearly a year with Landscape photography. For portraits I’ll typically average 1000 shots in 2 hours, this month I took 485 photos in total (not counting immediate deletes on import), that said I think I got a few keepers, became aquatinted with Fort Sheridan, and visited a few new Lighthouses which need to be revisited. I also wrote my own iPhone app to assist with long exposures, and got some nice shots using it!

Enjoy the slideshow… here.

Heading up to Wisconsin on Sunday for the annual freeze your butt off Lighthouse shoot with the guys from lake effects . Should be fun, though Hank isn’t keen on early starts, so we’ll be starting out at the Gross Point Lighthouse in Evanston at about 6am shortly followed by a good helping of breakfast at a local diner and then head up to Wisconsin to start the dayshoot, gonna be a long day of photography, but should hopefully yield some good photos, here are a few from the same tour last year, though that time we headed to Michigan, that was the day I snapped my Gitzo carbon fiber tripod also – luckily it was less than 30 days old and was promptly exchanged!

4am start to get to my fellow photog buddys house for 4.45am and then on to the north beach of the Fort Sheridan Preserve. Not much traffic on the interstate at that time of the day, so we were there for 5.22am, given how foggy it was, it was pitch black darkness, luckily Starbucks was open, so we warmed up with a cup o’ Joe!

It was still dark when we got to the preserve, but we walked into the preserve from the carpark anyway, luckily Mark had remembered his head torch which provided us some light while clambering over the ice. If you wanna go to this preserve, park in the parking lot at the end of cliff road and walk down the road, you’ll come to an iron gate, you can walk around the gate and continue down the road towards the preserve. I think there is actually a path, but with the amount of snow on the ground, its easier and safer to walk down the road. The shoreline is not far from the parking lot, maybe 1/4 of a mile at the most.

Again, it was still dark once we got the shoreline, but we’d grown used to the darkness and could make out where the water breaks were etc. We had a walk up and down the shoreline, there isn’t much to walk up and down, at least when the snow is there, so we quickly decided on the best spot for ’sunrise’ and setup the tripods. We started with a few frames, but even with no filters we were looking at the 60-120second exposure range, very tricky. Soon and quickly things brightened up though.

We were greeted with some awesome fog and completely still lake water, I wasn’t sure if the lake would still be frozen or not given the warmer tempratures we’ve had, but they were pretty much ice free, I suspect the stillness was caused by ice further out causing a damming effect and blocking any waves. The fog was fantastic, thre was enough visibility for some contrast between the water and ice, but not enough for you to see any horizon line.

I’ve visited this place three times in the last three weeks, each time it has been completely different, well worth a visit if you’re dedicated enough to get up early. As the preserve is on the westside of the lake, the best time is sunrise… even if there isn’t one .

More photos can be seen on my flickr set here

I get alot of requests from people wanting to go out and shoot together, well I plan to be at the North end of Openlands Preserve tomorrow morning between 6am & 10am with a few other photogs, I’ll be one of the guys with a camera!

Maybe see you tomorrow!

Take care,
Jonathan

Version v1.1 (free update to previous versions) of PerfectShot is in Apples approval queue. This update adds a new screen to the app dedicated to bracket calculations (screenshot below), this is quite useful for those shooting HDR photos, especially with Canon cameras which only allow for 3 shot brackets (come on Canon!), personally for HDR’s I usually like to shoot 5 or 7 shots with a spacing between each shot of 1 stop. Using my old method I’d determine the correct exposure, then click the command dial 3 times per stop until I was at my longest exposure, then click back 3 clicks at a time. Now with the bracket calculator I can dial the longest exposure straight in and see each shutter speed value to dial to for the next shot in the sequence.

I add features to this app mainly for my own use, but let me know of suggestions that you may want adding, I may be working on them already, have not thought of them, or have a reason not to add them, you don’t know until you ask!

Next up is hyperfocal distance for v1.2.

Take care
Jonathan

Just a quick note to mention that v1.0.1 of PerfectShot is in Apples approval queue, it has been in the queue for a couple of days, so hopefully it’ll be approved soon. The update adds 1/3 stops to the exposure selections which should make it easier to dial in your base exposure, I tested this on some recent shots at the Openlands preserve…

I’m also working on v1.1 which will involve a UI facelift and some interesting new features if you shoot HDR, v1.1 will be a free update if you have already purchased PerfectShot v1.0 or v1.0.1.

Take care
Jonathan