Sheri and I went to LaSalle, IL yesterday to ride the replica passenger
packet boat on a section of restored Illinois & Michigan Canal. (Those
photos to come later).
On the way home, we stopped in Seneca, IL just before sunset so I could get
a photo of the M. J. Hogan grain elevator, one of the oldest original
structures along the I&M. It was opened in 1862, and is still standing.
Back in its heyday, it could move 750,000 bushels of grain in a season.
I know there are canals everywhere, but the I&M is part of my heritage as a
native Chicagoan. Prior to the I&M, Chicago was a small trading post on the
lake. Any goods that needed to get to or from Chicago had to be carried
over land through some pretty rough terrain, so it wasn't that popular of
an option. The Canal allowed the movement of commodities from the East
coast, throught the Great Lakes, along the I&M to the Illinois River, then
to the Mississippi and down to the Gulf. Suddenly, Chicago became a center
of commerce.
Unlike the Erie, which has been modified, enlarged, and rebuilt over the
years, the I&M was officially abandoned in 1933 when the newer Illinois
Waterway system was opened. Parts have been restored as a park, parts were
filled in, parts are just dry and/or overgrown with weeds. For me, it's
like finding an abandoned old highway overgrown with trees and weeds. Most
people don't even know it's there - for example, here in Seneca, it just
looks like a drainage ditch. The majority of people who drive over it have
no clue that it was once a superhighway through Illinois. I like to try and
keep the history alive in tribute to the thousands of men, mostly Irish,
who worked to dig all 96 miles of it by hand, many of whom died in the
process (although nobody kept any records to indicate who died).
I shot a bunch on the tripod, then packed it up and walked across the
street to shoot a view of the overgrown prism (official terminology for the
canal bed, since a cross-section was prism-shaped) looking the other way.
As I crossed back, I looked up and suddenly a bit of sun had broken through
the heavy clouds and there were pink highlights... damn! I ran back to
where I was before, extending tripod legs as I ran, plugged the cable
release back in, and shot a 7-shot bracketed burst about 10 seconds before
the pink disappeared. I had less than one minute to grab that shot.
I've posted two versions - one that's a single frame, tweaked a bit in LR
to saturate the pink a bit more and to de-saturate the green a touch. The
other one was processed in HDR Efex 2 at a lighter setting. I'm not 100%
sure which one I like. There seems to be some slight haloing in the HDR one
- maybe if I tried again and left the brightest frame out of the mix...
Lemmeno whatchu think.
Non-HDR: http://zone-10.com/tope2/main.php?g2_itemId=14626
HDR: http://zone-10.com/tope2/main.php?g2_itemId=14629
Thanks!
--
Paul Braun
Certified Music Junkie
"Music washes from the soul the dust of everyday life." -- Berthold Auerbach
--
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