Chicago is quite a city. Between all the architecture and the abundance of folks out and about in the streets, it had me pretty well into visual overwhelm territory. Wanted to take photos of everything and everyone, all at once. That never turns out particularly well. Still tried to anyway.
For the first day at least. Took well over a thousand photos that first day, but the quantity didn't really compensate for the quality. Was a good reminder to slow down and be more deliberate about what and how I was shooting.
When shooting somewhere, particularly someplace new, I'm usually going for trying to capture a sense of place. In a town the size of Chicago, with all it's variety, it can be a bit difficult to encapsulate in a single shot or two. Slowing down let me focus on capturing more of the texture of the city.
One of the main focuses of the visit to Chicago was to see Haymarket Square. Had to pay our respects at the Haymarket Memorial there at the site of the speaker's wagon on that fateful day. The memorial was something to see but it was the plaques affixed to its base that really caught my attention. From labor unions all around the globe, it gave you a sense of the texture of movements and struggles that'd come before and also how they continued to reverberate today.
With all the glass, stone, and concrete, it'd be kind of hard for stuff to not reverberate here. Chicago has so much history to go along with the skyscrapers and people, we weren't there long enough to do more than begin to scratch the surface.
