Road Trip! Springfield to Chicago

After the disappointing dinner and visit to the closed mosque, Hana and I took our time waking up.

Sunrise over downtown Springfield made for some kinda nice pictures, maybe.

So I took advantage and shot with almost everything I had. Above, the D7000 and 24mm f/2.8 ai, with a circular polarizer  that I didn’t really know what to do with on the front.

Here, the iPhone 5 and Hipstamatic, with Jane lens and GS-0 film.

And here, the FG and 50mm 1.8 E Series and Kenmore 100 film.

Once we got all woken up, we went for a little walk around downtown, first past the old Lincoln/Herndon law office, where we had some fun taking snapshots and posing with Abe and Mary Todd (and whoever the random kid is).

I’m not much of a director…

…but my darling, adorable wife makes a great subject, even if she is jus too far away.

Anybody know who the kid is?

We continued the walk around the old courthouse, which makes a great subject, really, better than the new one, imo.

That Kenmore isn’t bad film, really. I might post up a shootout thing between the Kentmere 100 & 400 and the Ilford FP4+ (125) and HP5 (400).

But not today.

Just around the corner from there, there’s a nice little park outside a groovy office building that we could see from the hotel, and that Hana wanted to visit. It was just about that time that I finished the roll of Kentmere and loaded up what I thought was Fuji 400, but in reality was Agfa Precisa CT 100, a slide film that I picked up sorta accidentally on purpose to try a bit of cross processing.

With many subjects—especially with prominent blue skies—the Precisa goes rather green when x-pro’d.

But with the right subjects—anything predominantly red/yellow—things turn out brilliantly.

(There are better examples below.)

We had a nice time in the park. We took some selfies.

And I took a few pictures of the Hanabibti.

It’s a shame that I did’t have the 75-150 along, but oh well.

Even without a telephoto, I still managed to get a decent shot of Hana and the fountain.

After our walk, we packed up the car and enjoyed the brief-ish 180 mile drive to Chicago.

Cornfield, Cornfield, Cornfield, then some Cornfield, then Chicago.

We arrived in the city about noon, and had plenty of time to walk around for awhile before checking into the hotel.

Hana was particularly excited to see some open water, so after wandering around Millennium Park for awhile, we wound up under a tree, watching the boats bob up and down.

It was nice to rest a bit, and I decided to try my hand at some street photography, as there were plenty of people walking, jogging, biking, and just laying out.

I got some slightly better street shots later on, on film.

We continued our walk around, back through Millennium Park and across the bridge. In good photographer style, I was rolling around with the D7000 on a homemade sling and the LC-A in my pocket. I mostly forgot about the LC-A, but managed to remember to pull it out from time to time.

That was actually shot from one of those double-decker busses… We’d had enough of walking and decided to pick up a ticket and ride around for awhile.

If memory serves, these next few are roughly in order, all shot from the second floor of that bus.

The building here is where residents go to get their drivers licenses… it’s supposed to be very efficient and pleasant to pay taxes in this place, at least according to two bus tour guides and one boat tour guide.

I’m not sure why, but I like pictures like this…

It’s not really of anything, but the hand makes it, somehow.

And the B/W really shined.

It’s always great to have a little LC-A in your pocket. The film just does so much better than the sensor in so many ways, not that the D7000 is a slouch or anything.

In the end, it doesn’t matter: a camera is a camera is a camera.

In all the riding around on busses and boats and trying to shoot good angles on buildings as we passed that I did, this first attempt was by far the best I got.

I might’ve over processed it a bit, but still. I like that one.

So we rode the bus all the way around its route, and when it got back around to where we hopped on, we hopped off and made our way towards the hotel.

I think I grabbed this one as we walked, I think.

We stayed downtown at the Blackstone, far and away the swankiest hotel we’ve stayed in. I snapped a few pictures out the window before dinner.

First, toward the train that would’ve looked much better just crushed. I kept looking out the window to see who was running to no avail.

It’s not the 80s anymore.

And then to the river.

After naps and Salat, we wandered around the hotel for a bit.

Great color scheme, very The Shining, sorta.

Did I mention swanky?

And did I mention how great the Precisa looks X-Pro’d when there’s a load of red in the scene?

After checking out the hotel some, we wandered around the corner to Epic Burger for dinner: burgers so good that we forgot to take a picture. Thankfully, I grabbed this one before the burgers came.

And after dinner, we wandered around a bit trying to find the fountain from Married with Children, but it was dark and we were tired, so we headed back to the hotel.

On the way back, we ended up passing a skate park, of all things. Again, I sorta wondered what happened to the graffiti?

And just before bed, as if this post can’t get any longer, I grabbed one last frame before turning in for the night.

So that was our first half day in Chicago. We have two more days here before we start moving back home.

Hopefully, I’ll do a bit better job of curating the other days…

And let me just leave you with one last one, the very last shot from the roll of FP4+ in the LC-A.

I’m a sucker for the edges of film, those traces of materiality that you only really get in physical, analog processes.