Chicago Done Naturally (Post 10 of 10) - Michigan Avenue and other Public Ways

Michigan Avenue/State Street

First of all, I have to say that there really is a webpage for everything ever invented or even thought of.  Yes, there is a page about the flowers you can find planted around Chicago.

I know this sounds like the strangest idea in the world for shooting living things. But Chicago has a major hang up on the “urbos en hortos” thing. (Which is me butchering Latin for “City in a Garden”.)

Every spring they plant thousands of flowers and plants in the garden plots between the street and the sidewalks on major streets like the Mag Mile and State Street in the Loop.

Near the Water Tower (Chicago Ave. and Michigan) there are gardens of tulips in the spring. Every two months or so through September or October they change the plants to put in something new in bloom. There are lilies and waterfalls in the fall, and a variety of things in the summer. So if you’re here to ‘be a tourist’, but still want to get some good nature shots, take your camera with you as you ‘do Chicago’.

Chicago Done Naturally (Post 5 of 10) - Green City and Other Farmers' Markets

Green City Market 

(and other Chicago Farmers’ Markets) 

Chicago has literally dozens of neighborhood farmers' markets.  Check the link above if you want to see if there's one near you.  I want to check out the downtown ones more thoroughly this summer, but in my experience, the neighborhood ones can be very, very small - like a dozen stalls, and only half of those actually having fruits and vegetables.  So I'm concentrating on the Mother of All Chicago's Farmers' Markets - the Green City Market.

The GCM is across the street from the “Farm in the Zoo” exhibit at Lincoln Park Zoo. It’s outside from May through October (there’s an inside market in the winter, but it’s not quite as good shooting) on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. The GCM and LPZ can make for a really long, but really great day of shooting. Bring a fully-charged battery and lots of memory.  Throw in the Lincoln Park Conservatory and you'll have more pictures than you'll possibly know what to do with in one day.

This is Chicago’s biggest and most well-known Farmers’ Market. Did you watch the Chicago season of Top Chef? Remember the one where the chefs had to make their quick-fire only from things found at the Farmers’ Market? That was this market. There’s a wide variety of foods – fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses and breads – as well as flowers, that change throughout the season. I always ask the stand-operators if I can shoot their stuff, and they’ve always enthusiastically approved, often staging things for me (and showing me things like their Eggplant version of Mr. Potato Head).

 Keep an eye out for the quirky. Last year I got this really fun shot of a crate of green beans with a little chalkboard sign that said “Magic Beans - $1.00 a handful”.

I seem to have lost my shot of Mrs. Eggplant Head.  I'll have to see if they make a new one for this year.

To hit:
Okay, this has nothing to do with photography, but the crepe stand is awesome. The fillings change with the season and everything I’ve tried has been amazing. Also, there’s a stand making hot donut holes on the south edge of the market – to die for. (At least they were on the south edge in 2009. I’m not sure if they’ll be in the same spot this year.) [ETA: They are. ;)]

To miss:
The flowers can make for great shooting, but they do attract Very Large bees. Which can also make for great shooting, but I know a kid who got a bad sting, so watch out. Also, if it’s been raining, wear rainboots or other shoes that handle mud well. They throw down hay after a rain, but the grounds stay pretty soggy.

Chicago Done Naturally (Post 4 of 10) - Lincoln Park Zoo

Lincoln Park Zoo

One of the great things about LPZ is that it’s free. It’s open 365 days a year and if you pack a lunch, you can get in and out without spending a penny. Going to the zoo in the winter in Chicago sounds kind of nuts, but a fair number of the exhibits are indoors, and in the winter there are very few people at the zoo. School groups get thick starting in about April, but the good news is, most of them leave before 1:00 or so. So if you really want to cover the whole zoo when it’s less crowded, think of spending two half-days instead of a whole day. Easy to do when you don’t have to pay admission. Once the schools are out for summer it does not get any better. In fact it may be worse, because that’s when the camp groups start showing up. Again, the later you can go in the day, the less crowded it’ll be.

The grounds are tripod-friendly for the most part, but look out for small children, who don’t see you/your tripod. The vast majority of the indoor exhibits are marked ‘no-flash’, and since most of the exhibits are either glass or plastic-enclosed, you probably wouldn’t want to use it anyway. Outside, flashes are fine.

To hit:There’s a duck pond with several interesting breeds of ducks and geese that you can shoot from the picnic porch without glass, bars or fencing interfering with your shots. The ground is concrete and flat, which makes setting your tripod easy. You’ll see it as you walk through the grounds, near where the flamingos are in warmer weather, but the best shooting is from the opposite side where the picnic tables are under the shelter, so it’s worth taking the walk around.

Regenstein African Journey: The pigmy hippo often likes to sit right in front of the glass, with his mouth open, showing off his teeth. And his tonsils, if he had any. Further down, the meerkats are in an open-air enclosure. The plastic partition is about four feet high – so as long as you’re taller than me , you’ll be able to lean over it, again, shooting without obstruction.

(Yeah, this shot is pretty crap; I think all the good ones got lost in the great I-dropped-a-half-Terabite-harddrive crash earlier this year.)

 

 

 

The monkey house is fun, but it’s very dark, so you’ll need a tripod. Of course, an interesting monkey is a moving monkey, so it’s a tough shot. On the good news side, there’s almost always at least one baby in the exhibit.

To miss:
There is a penguin house, but they have a serious humidity issue and the glass is constantly fogged up and impossible to shoot through.

In the spring and fall they have to soap outside windows (like the ones on the polar bear exhibit and the lion glass observation area) to avoid bird wrecks, which makes them messy and tough to see through, let alone shoot through.

Chicago Done Naturally (Post 3 of 10) - Chicago Botanic Garden

Chicago Botanic Garden

Screwiest admissions system ever. Going to the garden is free. Good deal, right? It’ll cost you $20 to park your car there. Not so bad if you bring three or four others with you, but if you go on your own (and personally, if I’m going to shoot, I prefer not to be worried about if someone else is bored while I shoot the same poppy for half an hour or whatever), it’s a $20 ticket. The website does give public transportation directions, but I’m a veteran of Chicago’s public transit system and it looked a bit daunting to me. I’d lose an insane amount of time in transport and I’d be dragging my gear all over creation… so.. *shrug*.

This is a great place to spend some time learning your camera or a new lens. Obviously what you can see in a huge flower garden will change pretty much monthly. Tulips come in early, but then go out again, roses and peonies come in later, vegetables and fruits flower in the spring and have fruit in the fall…

You’ll run into tons of other photographers out here and relatively few school groups. This place is really big. This place ended up being a big old object lesson for me in Tip #3 - bring your own food. There’s a café attached to the visitor’s center but it’s a little on the pricey side. I normally bring a PB&J, but since I forgot mine, I ended up buying one from them… it was $3 and slightly stale. On the good news side, I’ll remember my own sandwich next time! They do let you fill your reusable water bottle from their tap for free, in fact they don’t even sell bottled water (bottled everything else, sure, but not water) so bring a jug. If you forget, you can get a little recyclable cup, but you can’t exactly troop around with that all day.

The website for the CBG also has a photography section, but it’s a little confusing. The bit that got me was whether or not I needed a permit – for $125. I did not. Unless you’re doing prom or wedding photos or something, you’re good without one. I have not figured out why they list “no alcohol in the garden” as a photography rule. Do we have a rep I don’t know about?

Watch the week’s weather and plan for a bright but calm day if you have a little flexibility. I know Chicago doesn’t get its “Windy City” nickname for its weather, but we can get some good breezes going. Which can really muck with your focus.

For me, at least, this was a huge exercise in shoot the signs. I had no idea how many kinds of tulips there were. Or even that some of the things I was looking at were tulips. (And while I don’t know a LOT of plants, I thought I had tulips surrounded. Not so much.) To the good, they do have a current list of all the plants in a given garden online. (http://www.chicagobotanic.org/inbloom/) so if you at least know where you saw it, you can start narrowing it down. (of course, I’m trying to use it in reverse to tell you all where I found my favorite new flower, and I can’t find it. Gr.)

Also, check the website for their once monthly photo walks. They actually have a professional photographer take you around the garden and teach you the best ways to shoot the plants and landscapes. You bring your camera and learn as you shoot.

If you have one, bring your macro lens. There’s some amazing stuff up close. I found a butterfly in the Circle Garden right at the beginning and a bee the size of my thumb was checking out the Bleeding Hearts the same time I was. Not to mention being able to get photographs of grains of pollen.

Don’t be afraid to go off the paths and onto the grass (unless there’s a sign saying, you know, not to, like by the Japanese Gardens) to get up close and personal to things. When I was there the apple trees were in bloom and there were staff people encouraging you to go walk through the orchard.

To hit:
I’m definitely planning to go back in like September when the trees and vegetables and berry bushes will all be bearing fruit. But even now, late April, the flowers on the trees were awesome (OMG, did the apple orchard SMELL good).

The bulb garden was amazing, but already some of the stems were starting to wither. So check the website to see how tulips, daffodils and such are doing.

But I have to say, my favorite part was the English Walled Garden and the Mr. Fokker’s Poppies. Not just because I’m 12 years old some days and the name amused me (they’re also called Anemone coronaria Mr. Fokker), but because they are gorgeous flowers that photographed quite well.

I thought I covered at least 2/3 of the Garden when I was out there last week, but looking at the map I’m finding a lot of areas I didn’t see. Again, you may want to check out the interactive map on the website and make a plan. Big place, lots of flowers. You’ll probably need lots of time.

BTW, please don’t ask me why the one section is called “The Enabling Garden”. I have no idea who or what they’re enabling. :p 

The waterfall garden. There are three bridges that cross the waterfall, which let you set up your tripod and play with that ‘make water move in your picture’ long-shutter thing everyone (that I’ve talked to) has to try at least once.

You know the ones, the ones that go from this...                                   

To this...

To Miss:
They said there’s a greenhouse of tropical plants in the Regenstein Center, but I couldn’t find it. I suspect it’s there, but personally, since I got such great weather I wanted to spend my time outside.


This is very much a YMMV thing, but I didn’t find the Japanese Garden all the fascinating when I went. Not much color or anything wildly unusal.


And like I said, bring food, the café is pretty pricey, even for a place like this.

Chicago Done Naturally (Post 1 of 10) - General Tips

A while back I compiled a list of places to shoot living things in Chicago. (wow, do I wish photography and guns didn't share a vocabulary A LOT!).

Today I hiked the Magic Hedge, since the weather *finally* broke, and as I was thinking about the post/s I'd be making I realized that 99.9% of the world, heck, probably 99% of CHICAGO has never heard of the Magic Hedge which made me realize I should repost my Chicago Shooting articles here.

So, here's the tips post...

A couple of general things about walking around Chicago with a camera.

I find it really funny to walk through Chicago with my DSLR. So many people assume you’re a professional photographer or a Serious Art Student. Even when you’re my age – and let’s just call that ‘way past your typical college age’.

The good news is, that means they really don’t bat an eye when you sit on the floor in the middle of the sidewalk on Michigan Avenue to get that perfect angle on the tulip in the landscaping plot.


TIP 1: Use their card in your camera.
The quasi-bad news (I usually don’t mind, but I know people who do) is that they’re unafraid to say, “Hey can you to get a picture of me with my baby/boyfriend/bestfriend/American Girl Doll?” I don’t mind taking shots for people, but I hate fumbling around with their camera as I try to find the zoom, the right setting for the light, etc… So, I’ve come up with a nifty trick when this happens. Ask them if their camera uses the same memory card as your camera. For example, my DSLR uses the little SD memory cards that most point-and-shoots use. So when someone asks me to get a shot for them, and we use the same card, I ask for their card and put it in my camera. I can then shoot with a system I’m familiar with, I can use my tripod and they get the advantage of my DSLR’s resolution on their shot. Win-win, right?

Obviously, if you’re on different memory systems, you’re just hosed. :p

TIP 2: Shoot the signs.
One of the great things about digital photography is that even if only one percent of your pictures come out looking stellar, you really aren’t out anything. You didn’t pay for film or developing or anything like that for that shot that’s absolute crap.

Which means, many of us will take 16 shots of something that’s sitting still and being awesome so that we get that one brilliant picture.

The problem becomes that when you get home and you have this brilliant picture of a purple flower… but you have no idea what kind of flower it is. Now if it’s what I call ‘free range wildlife’, you’re just kind of screwed. It’s time to take your best guess and Google a lot. But when you’re at a park where things are put in specific places, they’re often labeled. So shoot the sign. Then you’re not stuck trying to remember if that was a skink or a chameleon or which yellow fish that one is. I have a little file folder on my desktop where I've put all the signs for any location I tend to shoot more than once, so that if I do forget to shoot the signs on a given day, I have a 'master file'.

When I hit places like the Brookfield Zoo Butterflies exhibit, I shoot all the signage first then get to business with the bugs. That way even if I have a hard time trying to tell which orange butterfly I’ve got (some signs are less than stellarly produced, some particular specimens don't look exactly like the sign), I’m only Googling the 6 orange butterflies of the 20 total on the sign.

Besides, sometimes they have amusement factor. Any Torchwood fans in the house?

TIP 3: Pack a lunch.
Most of the places I cover here have enough to do that you'll spend at least most of a day there. And most of them have cafes, but IMHO, they're expensive and the food isn't that good. Remember your junior high lunch room? It's that same kind of industrial food for the most part. I do like to support the places I shoot, especially if they're free admission, but I'd rather by a t-shirt or a travel mug or something than spend my money on their food. Most places have up signs that basically say, "If you didn't buy it here, you can't eat it in our cafe", but if it's a nice enough day to go shooting, it's nice enough to sit on a bench long enough to eat a sandwich or an apple.

Next Post: The Magic Hedge