In April 2016, I chaperoned on my son's high school band trip. We stayed at the Hyatt Place, Chicago/Downtown. 300 high school kids in one hotel. I felt for the other guests.
On the edge of the core, the Hyatt Place Chicago/Downtown is three blocks north of the Willis Tower and eight blocks west of the Cloud Gate (The Bean).
To ensure the kids kept quite after lights out we would put a strip of scotch tape across the door to each room. That way we could tell if someone had left the room.
Like prison guards, the chaperones were assigned patrol details to walk the halls throughout the night and ensure our charges were not having too much fun.
That's how I found myself in the fire escape stairwell. I found it easier to move between the floors using the stairwell than the elevators. In addition, it eliminated those annoying elevator chimes that I hate when my own hotel room is too close to the elevators.
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The camera I took with me on that trip was my Canon S100. I was there as a chaperone, not the photographer so I didn't pack my SLR gear.
This was my first, and so far only, non-business trip to Chicago. In the mid-late nineties, I went there many times. However, those trips were always airport, hotel, office, airport. In and out. Arrive in darkness, leave in darkness. I didn't get to see any of the city.
Having taken classes in paleontology while in college and studied photo composition, I'm familiar with the Fibonacci sequence. The Fibonacci sequence converges on the Golden Ratio which is one of the classic photography “rules of composition.”
It was that sequence which drew my eye to this particular scene.
Image Processing
My original composition was wider. I used the Golden Ratio overlay in Lightroom to crop my image.
For this image I:
- Created an hdr in Adobe Lightroom combining the +2 and -2 stops images of an hdr bracket then cropped and made basic adjustments.
- Cleaned up the noise using Topaz DeNoise AI. (Note that DeNoise AI is on sale through June 12, 2020. Save $20 / 20% off the regular price)
- Used Adobe Photoshop to align the image
- Used Adobe Lightroom to convert the image to black and white
Camera
I mentioned above, I used a Canon S100 for this shot. That camera died on me with a lens failure, which made me really sad.
When I travel, I like to have a point-and-shoot camera with me, in addition to my phone. I always look for a camera that can output in RAW.
I replaced it with the Canon PowerShot G9 X Mark II. That itself is getting a little old but I think it's reasonably priced at $429 at B&H.
