Land/cityscape in Black and White

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There are not that many obvious or "traditional" landscape shooting opportunities in Chicago. I am not looking hard enough. I live just over two miles from Lake Michigan so the lakefront is a good spot for doing some landscapes. But they are technically cityscapes.

This particular day was a fairly nice day. It started with nice blue sky with puffy white clouds, but it was windy and rain was coming. Thicker clouds started rolling in. I envisioned taking these shots as monochromes from the start. Even though the sky started nicely blue, the images were just too blue because the water was blue as well, and there were no other interesting colors present.

I used Fujifilm's Acros black and white film simulation with a red filter as my base. Then I adjusted whites, blacks, highlights, and shadows in post.

View of downtown from the south side

I wished there were some more clouds in the sky for the shot below to balance it out better.

The clouds thickened and made for more drama.

Rain coming

As an aside I do not currently own any zoom lenses on my Fujifilm X system. When I was shooting Canon my main lens was a zoom lens. For all of these shots I may have either zoomed in or out if I had a zoom. However, I am enjoying using just prime lenses. I see things differently, and I do not miss having a zoom at all. I used to shoot just primes prior to my Canon system so it is not something new to me. I also do not feel that one type of lens is "better" than the other. They are all tools, just with different applications. It is up to the individual to utilize them as they see fit.

Click images to view on black.

Chicago in a fog

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Chicago was enveloped in fog for a few days last week. I ventured out to the Museum Campus area by the lake, first not knowing what I would capture. When I saw that visibility over the water wasn't very far I knew I wanted to show that in a minimalist shot like this in a square format.

Minimalist

The thickness of the fog made it difficult to see the museums from afar. I thought I would use some humor with this caption because the Adler Planetarium is supposed to be at the end of this embankment. I originally wanted to make monochrome images because of the gray day. But I decided to stay with color and gave them a bit of tone, blue for the images above and below this one because of the water, and just a hint of green for this image because trees are an element.

Behold! The Adler Planetarium

The building in the foreground is the John G Shedd Aquarium. Normally in the background would be the great Chicago skyline. It could not be seen on this day until I got to the other side of the aquarium where the fog wasn't as dense as it is here.

Two men enjoying the beautiful Chicago skyline

Click images to view on black.