My Single Reflex

Maybe the most photographed place in Chicago is the Studio Gang Pavilion in the nature preserve on the south end of Lincoln Park Zoo. The design is startling as one approaches it, but it really shines best in its detail. Fiberglass pods cover the bulk of the openings created by warping, bending, and bolting the wood frame. Every angle gives a unique opportunity to capture something new and fresh. This group of photos look particularly nice as abstract wall art and are among my favorite photos from my portfolio. studio gang photographs for sale

Swing a camera in any direction while walking the Highline and you can find infinitely interesting subject material. Street photography? Check. Macro? Check. Landscape? Check. Portrait? Sure, if you can keep a thousand people from walking between you and your subject. Architecture? Ever so much. Often the design of two or three clustered buildings are so different that it's hard to put them together. These, different, yet the same, yet different. I did photograph the entire building, too, but this closer shot was more interesting. A bit of color. A lot of shade. Some reflection. and just a hint of not rectangular. It's hanging in my living room in black and white, but I've slowly come back to this version.

If you ever want to take the Chicago Architectural Tour all day, for about 10 bucks, buy an all day pass for the Water Taxi. Sure, there's no guide telling you the names of the buildings (which would be helpful for this photo), or sharing stories about the architects and builders (also unknowns on the Water Taxi version), but you can travel from 18th Street near Chinatown all the way up through downtown and back as many times as you like. You'll get to know the pilots and crew, and probably a few folks who wonder why they're seeing you at 5:30 pm when they rode with you at 8:00 am on their way to work. All that time gives you some excellent opportunities to shoot buildings in myriad ways. Go early and stay late enough and you'll get some great color reflecting in the buildings, as well.

These photos give away the total Studio Gang Pavilion. It really seems so simple when viewed as a whole, like a kid with Legos could have come up with it, and yet the layers of wood bent in multiple directions, the resin pods, the open ends with the John Hancock building like a target viewed through a scope...it took a remarkable creative to conceive and complete it.

This reminds me of that old sci-fi horror flick about people being replaced by alien duplicates grown in pods...probably called Pod People or something like that. This photo will be the 4th for the silver frame. I've got several more, but these four seem to have a bit of symmetry.

I have this silver frame at the house that's never had anything place in the four image slots. We like the frame but I've never come up with the right four photos to place in it. This little run of Studio Gang Pavilion pictures finally helped me realize that they need to be in the frame.

This is the first photo of the Studio Gang Pavilion at Lincoln Park Zoo that I ever edited. I was still very new to a camera, and really didn't know what I was doing shooting or editing. I think this image had as much to do with me continuing to learn as any I ever took, and it's still one of my favorites.

One of many shots I've taken of the Studio Gang Pavilion at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The pavilion is extraordinary in its ability to be interesting as a whole, and as a seemingly infinite numbers of steps down to its smallest detail.