Return to Wrigley ... and Wrigleyville

In February, I had occasion to walk through the Wrigleyville neighborhood of Chicago's Northside and snagged a few photos on my iPhone 6s Plus that I included in a post here. I was up there for the occasion of my granddaughter's birth.

Anniston will mark her five-months-old birthday in a few days but will do so in a different home elsewhere in the Chicago area. Her parents spent last week and weekend packing and moving, and I was up there to help care for the two children (Anniston has a 2-year-old brother, Maddox) while their mom could pack and run errands.

So while I was there, I made what probably will be a final swing through that interesting neighborhood -- named for the Chicago Cubs ballpark it surrounds -- and present these for posterity. In just a couple visit, I came to enjoy the neighborhood ... and the proximity of the ballpark, even though I've long lost my fanaticism for baseball.

All of these photos were taken with the iPhone on two different days. On the first swing, which was east toward the lake (Michigan), I was by myself on a walking errand to a Jewell/Osco store at 3531 North Broadway. The second came the next day -- with Lee Ann and the two grandchildren. This time we worked our way west, winding around the ballpark, in pursuit of a hardware store that had a T4 size screwdriver. (We didn't find the screwdriver then, but I did get one later in the day in a car drive to Clark-Devon Hardware, which is about 30 blocks north of where we were).

On that second trip, which was Wednesday, two days before the Cubs would open a short homestand against the Texas Rangers and New York Mets, emergency officials were conducting what they told us was a terrorism drill at Wrigley Field. News stories on the drill described it as "an active shooter drill." Waveland Avenue behind the ballpark was blocked off to vehicular traffic. It made for an interesting trip.

I thought I'd start the post with my ballpark photos, beginning with the one leading off the post, which is a look at statues of two venerable Cubs (Billy Williams on the left, Ron Santo on the right). You can find these at the corner of Addison Street and Sheffield Avenue. The first photo below features a statue of longtime Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray (1982-97) outside the main bleachers ticket windows at the corner of Sheffield and Waveland.

Above: A pullback from the Caray statue scene above, looking down the Waveland Avenue portion of the ballpark's back side. 

Above is the brick sidewalk along Waveland Avenue (behind left field) with memorials purchased by fans. You can read some of the memorials if you click on the photo below. Periodically along the path, a larger inlay appears with the name of a famous Cubs player. The player's name in the foreground above is Joe Tinker (of "Tinker to Evans to Chance" fame); the one in the photo below is of Ernie "Let's Play Two" Banks. 

Above: One of the emergency vehicles outside the ballpark along Waveland Avenue.

Above and below: The most familiar views of the ballpark, as seen from Clark Street near Addison. Lots of tourists were around who, like me, were taking snapshots of the facade.

Above: A look east down Addison a block west of the ballpark.

Above: Construction on the ballpark grounds along Waveland near Clark.

Two different scenes along Clark Street -- looking south (above) from Waveland, and Rockit Burger Bar (below), which is in the first block north of Waveland.  

Above: D'Agostino's at 1351 W. Addison, about five blocks from the ballpark.

Shots above and quite a few below reflect residential buildings in an around the ballpark, mostly along Cornelia Avenue but also a couple of the intersecting streets. 

Above: Peet's coffee shop at 3500 N. Halstead St. I ducked into this nice shop during a brief rain on yet another walk during my visit to Chicago. A view from just outside Peet's is below.

Above and next two below: Views of Broadway (northside above, southside below) and of the exterior of an Asian restaurant at its intersection with Cornelia. 

A cafe Americana (above) grabbed at Julius Meinl (below) at Sourthport and Addison while on the pedestrian hunt for the T4 screwdriver. The sugar was not used. 

Above and remainder below: Exteriors of a couple businesses, churches and a full commercial block along Addison Street on the trip home from the screwdriver hunt. 

Reflecting on a photo in Garfield Park

Those of you who have looked in on this blog for a while know that Garfield Park in Indianapolis is a favorite place of mine to shoot. The park is easy walking distance from my home, and each time I visit it, I challenge myself to find something different to photograph.

Light Co., makers of the new L16 compact camera that already is sold out until 2017 (according to its website), sent me an invitation recently to compose a blog post devoted to a favorite image of mine ... a post that would tell the story of how the image came about. The post will be a part of Light Co.'s Vantage Point Project on Pinterest, and I want readers to know I am not receiving anything in return except, perhaps, for a little exposure. That is the genesis of this post.

Of the thousands of pictures I've made in Garfield Park, the one that jumps to mind first when I think of my favorites there was taken during a pretty heavy snowstorm in February 2011. My challenge that day was the snowfall itself -- specifically, seeing if I could get something creative using the barrage of falling flakes around me.

The shoot also happened to represent one of my first forays into shooting scenes that I would later process in high-dynamic range (HDR) software. HDR, for those not familiar, is a process of melding multiple images of different exposures to cull maximum detail out of the very bright or dark portions of a composition. Often, especially in contrasty lighting, a "normal" exposure will have very blacked out darks or blinding whites. HDR gives you a chance to get detail out of those light extremes.

To accomplish this, I bracketed all of my shots that day, taking three exposures of each -- one at "normal" exposure (the one my light meter told me was correct), one a full stop less light than the normal exposure, and one with a full stop more light than the normal one.

There were only a handful or so of shots that I really liked from the shoot, but the one that stood out for me I got by pure luck; it was not something I could have planned. Because it was snowing so heavily, for the first 20 minutes I was shooting in the park, I didn't see another person on foot (like me) anywhere -- and very few motor vehicles. I was pretty certain I was the only person foolish enough to be out in that weather ...

... until I approached the park's iconic pagoda, where I thought I'd go to craft some shots integrating the ornamental ironwork installed around the perimeter of the concrete floor. There, a lone individual clad in denim slacks and hooded sweatshirt -- I presumed it was a man -- stood next to the fence portion of the ironwork while staring out, apparently in reflection, to the snow-covered meadow. I came upon the scene from the rear, so the person didn't see me right away. I immediately, and quietly, positioned my tripod on the sidewalk below a set of steps leading up to the pagoda platform, where I had a great angle to compose a shot of the individual in reflection.

I took two or three photos of the person before walking up the steps and composing the landscape shots I originally had planned, starting on the opposite side of the pagoda from where the other person was standing. This time, my back was to him or her. At some point, that person left, unbeknownst to me. By the time I turned around to look to move on to other areas to make pictures, he or she was gone.

I took the picture seen in this post using a Canon 7D equipped with a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens set at maximum focal length (75mm). The aperture was set at f/9 and ISO at 100. My shutter served as the variable to get me my three different exposures. For the normal exposure, I used a shutter of 1/160, so I'm presuming my "minus" and "plus" exposure shutter speeds were in the vicinity of 1/125 and 1/200.

Processing the photo proved to be quite deliberative. In fact, it extended over two editing sessions. This was the shot I was most interested in when I finished my swing through the park, so after I got home and pushed the image through Photomatix software for the HDR treatment, I was pleased with how the ironwork framed the individual, and that the snowfall blurred the background -- especially those trees just above the lower ornamental fence -- even more so than the blur in inherent depth of field blur. And I liked the footprints on the platform in the foreground; I had the feeling that the prints told a viewer where the individual came from before settling at the position shown in the picture. And, of course, there was that meditation thing going on ...

I made both color and monochrome versions of the picture, and the monochrome version appealed to me the most. So much key to the image was either black (the ironwork) or white (the snow) that it seemed natural for monochrome to be the way to go. The little bit of color in the composition ... particularly the pagoda ceiling and some playground equipment in the very far -- and low -- background (both of which are undetectable in the monochrome version) ... struck me as distracting. However, I did like how the in-focus colors in the individual's clothing contrasted with the black and white softness around it, and the colors better brought out the detail in the snowflakes on the clothing. Yet it didn't occur to me at that point that I could have the best of both worlds. So at that first editing session, I settled upon the black and white image and moved on.

A couple weeks later, I happened to come across a tutorial of some sort (I can't remember if it was online or at a photo club meeting) on the use of selective color in images. I was very interested, because I'd seen such images before but never pursued it myself. I hunted around on the Internet to find a YouTube video on selective color using Photoshop Elements, my primary editing software at the time. As I watched the video, the pagoda image came to mind as something I could use this on -- to get that "best of both worlds" idea that occurred to me weeks earlier.

So, I did another edit session on the image, following the process delineated in the video. The process, as I recall, involved first converting the color image to black and white, then using tools found somewhere in the bar at the top of the Elements edit window to restore color to just the areas I wanted.

I liked the outcome a lot, and I tried selective color on another dozen or so of my images in the weeks after. Perhaps oddly, I haven't used it much since, though. That's not to say I wouldn't ... if the idea to do so struck me. As I composed this post, I decided to try to do it again. I have a much newer version of Elements now, and I tried to replicate my actions in 2011, but I didn't find the tool I needed from the editing window tool bar.

I did, however, find another YouTube video that got me up to date, and I'm pleased to say it worked ... although in this video, you don't convert the image to black and white first. You deal with the color version, use the smart brush tool after selecting the black and white option from a drop-down menu in a pop-up that appears when selecting the brush tool.

As always, click on the image to see a larger, and sharper version; this is particularly important if you access the post from a mobile device.

Refurbished shelter holds a special place in local transportation history

Five years ago, while making a winter swing through Garfield Park in Indianapolis to explore the nuts and bolts of taking high-dynamic range (HDR) photos, I took a few pictures of a rotting structure I came across at the end of my shoot.

I had no idea what the structure was at the time, and my photo caption in the blog post I put together at the time offers no detail about it. It turns out it had been infested by termites, its arch supports were decaying (or in some cases, missing), the concrete foundation was cracked or broken off, the roof was missing some roof shingles and decking, and the whole structure was leaning off-center.

I have since learned that the structure, located at the southwest corner of the park not far from Southern Avenue and the railroad tracks, is believed to be one of the last wooden-splayed arched trolley shelters in the state and, indeed, of its kind in all of the Midwest. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places in the Indianapolis Park & Boulevard Historic System District (Kessler Plan).

The trolley system of transportation -- also known as streetcars and, especially in Indianapolis, the interurban -- had its halycon era in the United States between the two world wars. They fell into disfavor and eventually disappeared as individual automobile ownership became increasingly prevalent. The shelter in Garfield Park was near one stop on an old interurban route along Southern Avenue.

Within the last few months, efforts to restore the shelter, which began two years ago, came to fruition. The shelter has been restored, complete with new roofing, new support beams and a new concrete foundation. I happened to notice it today when driving past it on a route I don't often take anymore, which is why I hadn't noticed the finished work previously.

The restoration effort was supported by the National Park Service Historic Preservation Fund administered by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources Division of Historic Preservation. Also participating in the project were the City of Indianapolis Parks Department, the Indianapolis Parks Foundation, Friends of Garfield Park Inc., Indiana Landmarks, Efroymson Family Fun and Indianapolis Trails Fund Inc. Project coordinator was city/county parks department's Tina Jones, a park planner for historic landscapes and greenways.

Pictures in the top potion of this post are of the newly restored shelter, taken today (June 15). Below those, to use for comparison, are some of the shots I took in February 2011. In the 2011 photos, my HDR skills as well as the technology in the HDR processing software were still works in progress. (I guess when it comes right down to it, photographers' skills are always in a place called "a work in progress.")

The last two shots of the new ones are photos of recently planted trees in this area of the park, including a dogwood very near the shelter. The other is one in a series of pignut hickorys a bit away from the shelter.

Photo geek stuff: I shot all of these photos with a Canon 6D equipped with a Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens. The lens was equipped with a polarizing filter. For each frame, I bracketed my shots in three exposures, each 0.75 of a stop apart. My shutter was the primary variable; the f/stop was static at 9.0 throughout. I adjusted my ISO depending on my light (which was reduced for each shot because of the polarizing filter). ISOs ranged from 100 to 800.

FROM 2011

An individual look at the "Hamlet" cast

When I arrived to shoot First Folio Productions' dress rehearsal of its spring show, "Hamlet," director Glenn Dobbs told me that in addition to the actual performance, he wanted me to shoot individual photos of cast members from which he could pick an appropriate "album cover." (For a post devoted to my play pictures, see previous post or click on the link in this sentence.)

I didn't ask him about what kind of album he was talking about. Even if I were going to ask him, before I could do that, Dobbs told me he wanted to use the electric bulbs wired into his false brick posts stage props for lighting.

Anyone who knows lighting for photographs knows what kind of pictures will result in the dramatic lighting he was proposing -- modest to wide shadows in and/or under the eyes, or when one side of the face would be illuminated while the other was in dark shadows or turned away from the camera, depending on how you position the subject(s). Portrait photographers know that dramatic lighting can be effective when you seek to present a subject in a certain mood, and that it can work on occasion for male subjects. They also know that such lighting is generally considered unflattering and unappealing for female subjects.

Dramatic lighting is what Dobbs was after, so we went through the full cast trying to position them as best as we could. Dobbs was so excited about the bulb lighting, that when he stood in for a test shot (right), I decided to compose it with one of the bulbs in it. I made both color and monochrome versions of each formal shot. I also made a few informal (candid) color images for Dobbs -- shots from moments during the very short lulls when one individual departed and Dobbs rounded up the next one. And we had to do it fast, because Dobbs needed to get the play rehearsal started on time so we wouldn't be at the theater very late into the evening.

It occurred to me as I processed the images yesterday that it might be of interest to readers here to see what kind of quality can come out of a situation like that. In most cases, I was able to keep the ISO setting on the camera at a reasonable level for my Canon 6D, which can process photos without revealing too much "noise" (or grain) up to about ISO 6400, and sometimes even a bit more. In a few cases, however, I had to push the ISO higher, so while processing the photos, I made decisions to toss a couple shots that would have been usable under better lighting conditions.

From the number of poses we did of everyone, it was clear afterward that Dobbs was looking for one of Hamlet or Hamlet with Ophelia to be on the cover of whatever album he was putting together. We did a lot of different poses with Carey Shea (Hamlet) and of Shea with Devan Mathias (Ophelia). While Dobbs might have his own ideas about what he will want and use, this post is more about how I regarded the results of the shots.

My favorite solo shot of Shea is the one presented in the dual-photo presentation I have leading off the post -- and this dual photo presentation for a lead graphic, incidentally, is a first for Photo Portpourri. Notice the bit of shadow on the right side of Shea's face -- not nearly as dramatic as I would see while exploring and using other poses. In fact, in general, his face in this photo has favorable lighting, and the pensive pose comes off as powerful, I think.

In the spirit of giving credit where it's due, I'll mention here that Dobbs had ideas for poses throughout this quick shoot, and we tried everything he mentioned. He also yielded to me every time I expressed concerns about unacceptable lighting or distracting backgrounds. Indeed, we used his ideas more than half the time, and this one was one of his. To show you examples of what else we came up with, I include a shot of Shea looking directly at the camera (left) and a monochrome conversion of him looking over his shoulder (right).

My favorite of Hamlet and Ophelia (Devan Mathias) together is the one sharing the lead-off spot at the top. Dobbs and I shared the idea for this pose; Dobbs had sought some separation between the two, and when I told him there wasn't ample lighting for both individuals in any separated position without creating a significant depth of field issue (one individual would have to be out of focus), we put Devan in a position facing the camera and gazing at Hamlet. Her face caught a good share of light, so we put her in focus. In the foreground, Shea is prominent ... but thrown out of focus because of the separation.

We took shots of Mathias solo in two poses, one serious, one with her smiling. I think because of what I mentioned above about women come off in an unflattering nature when cast in dramatic lighting, I favor the shot of her smiling (right). For one, it's a genuine, pretty smile, and also I think it goes a long way toward conquering the women-in-dramatic-lighting issue.

Outside of the lead characters, my favorite individual shots -- female and male -- are of Anne Gross and John Mortell (below). Anne has a couple roles in the play, but her main one is as a performer in "The Murder of Gonzago," a play within the play. Even though the right side of her face is cast in shadow (it was virtually unavoidable), I like her shot because of the costuming and how she holds herself in the pose. The latter is also one reason I like Mortell's shot. He exudes confidence, and both individuals have a good sense about how to present themselves. Because I'm familiar with Mortell from previous First Folio shows, I know this is a very accurate representation of his command of the characters he portrays. In "Hamlet," Mortell plays Laertes, brother of Ophelia and son of Polonius.

Here are some more examples of the individual shots:

 Ericka Barker, as Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother

Matthew Anderson portrays Claudius, Hamlet's uncle ... and stepfather ... and is the person responsible for the death of Hamlet's father. There were three poses of Anderson, and this one -- which in a way reminds me of his character's critical prayerful scene before intermission in the play -- seems appropriate.

We also did two poses of the "Hamlet" newlyweds, Claudius and Gertrude. In my opinion, this was the better, although I don't like the shadows on Ericka Becker's face.

 Benjamin Mathis as Horatio, Hamlet's friend and confidante.

We did two poses for Tom Weingartner, who plays Polonius, father of Laertes, one with and without a hat. I liked both, so ... here you have them. 

Scott Stockton as Marcellus and an extra. 

Andy Barnett as the ghost of Hamlet's father, King Hamlet. It seemed appropriate to use the monochrome version for the ghost.

Missy Rump as Bernardo and as a performer in the play within the play. Rump and Gross had similar costumes, and the color version of Rump's photo was just fine. I just like how the monochrome conversion came out.  

Chris Burton has several roles, actually. Here he's dressed for a scene early in the play as an extra for the reception of Gertrude and Claudius' wedding. He also performs as the lead player in the play within a play ... and as the gravedigger.  

 Fred Margison plays Osric and an extra.

Kevin Caraher has dual roles as a priest and an extra.

As always, click any individual images to view a larger and sharper version, which is particularly beneficial if viewing this post in a mobile device.

"Hamlet" has its final shows at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis this weekend -- 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday (June 3-4) and 3:30 p.m . Sunday, June 5.  Follow the link in this sentence to learn more about how to get tickets, which cost $12 (seniors get a $2 discount, students a $4 discount).

Photo geek stuff: I used a Canon 6D equipped with a Sigma 85mm f/1.4 lens for all of the individual shots. I shot using ISO 1600, with the aperture varying from f/1.4 (wide open) to 1.8 and the shutter at around 1/125.