North Avenue Beach
Chicago, IL
July 2020

In ancient times, it was common to track the changing seasons by following the lunar month rather than the solar year. In the North America and Europe, the full moon for the month of July is called the Buck Moon, as new antlers emerge from bucks' foreheads around this time of the year.

Buck Moon over Chicago by Paul Sager, on Flickr


In early July the sunrise in Chicago is about 5:20am.

Lake Michigan Sunrise


The 1939 completion of North Avenue Beach was one of many projects in Lincoln Park (Chicago) funded through the New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Chicago Skyline


The Chicago Skyline images seen from this perspective use the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM mounted to an EOS 5DIII, captured in RAW and processed in Lightroom 6.

Chicago Skyline


Streeterville is a neighborhood on the Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois, north of the Chicago River. In 1834, the first pier was built where Chicago's Navy Pier now resides. Silt and sand accumulated north of this pier, creating usable land that was later nicknamed "The Sands". Squatters and a vice district quickly developed on this northern outskit of the City, then primarily located south of the Chicago River.

In 1886 George Wellington Streeter (1837–1921) stranded his boat on the Sands. "Cap'n Streeter" claimed his grounded ship created this undeveloped land, which was therefore outside of Illinois' jurisdiction. He declared the area an independent territory which he called the District of Lake Michigan. Ownership disputes over the area went on for nearly 40 years, until in 1918 the courts ruled against Streeter's claim of sovereignty.

As the City grew north, especially after the 1920 opening of the Michigan Avenue Bridge, the Near North Side became a luxury shopping district on North Michigan Avenue. Numerous high rises and skyscrapers were built east of the "Mag Mile" starting in the 1920s. The tallest building in Streeterville is the 100-story (former) John Hancock Center, completed in 1969.

Chicago Skyline


These images are sized to fill your wide-screen display. Try using <F11> to maximize your browser window for the full effect. If the images overshoot your display, such as a laptop, just click on the image or the URL link and they'll resize to your screen from the host Flickr site. You can click a bit further into the image details on the Flickr page, if desired. EXIF data is available from the host Flickr pages as well. On the Flickr site, use your <L>key for Large and the <F11> for the full-screen.

Do you find it Difficult to photograph a car show??? Has every angle and idea already been done before? Are you like me and get stuck shooting the "same old shots and angles"? I challenge you on your next car show shoot to use your creative mind and look for different shots than the "TYPICAL" eye view standard car show photographs. Here are some ideas: maybe zoom in on a specific detail or lower your camera angle, maybe raise your camera angle. Find "humor" somehow, like in my series here of #10. Be creative!!! I'm sure we all have seen those "typical" shots of car shows.....break out, change your composition! Think outside of the box!!!! I've put together 10 photos to help give you a slightly different idea of the typical. These are all of a Huntington Beach car show in California. Of course they all look best in download.

I have been doing ancestral research for the past three years. If you start down this “rabbit hole” you may, like me, find a very small number of photos of your ancestors. But each one you find is priceless.

Now I know photography as you go back in time gets increasingly rare and expensive. It eventually disappears entirely because it hasn’t been discovered yet. The topic here is going forward. If you are like me you have thousands of images and all are in an assortment of digital formats. Maybe you, like me, have even scanned old slides. Again they are in jpeg format. And now the suggestion. Print images of people in your life. Print them with archival ink. Then write names and dates on the back. In 50, 100, or even 200 years someone is going to find them doing ancestry and love you for it.

You say “I’ve got the originals”. I do too. But file formats change or even die. (Anyone have a Betamax?) Storage changes. Tape drives for backup; gone. CD’s virtually gone. DVD’s, dying. And that doesn’t even include corrupted drives or cloud businesses that fail. No need to print them all. Just people. I have exactly one photo each of my grandparents. I wish I had more. I also wish I could find all those old negatives.