Thankfully the other day I was able to get out and walk around down in the loop before this beautiful cold weather set in.  I like winter personally, the crisp air, the blanket of white (before the plows and cars make it brown).  The other good thing about winter is the air is clearer which makes for some amazingly crisp shots.  So looking forward to that.  But back to the other day, on my walk, which really consisted more of scoping out new spots than shooting.  I did take a couple, this first one I was able to get up into a parking garage down in the loop, but shortly after I started setting up, the security guard kindly asked me to leave.  Which I did, but I did get this shot:

I ended up having to crop this shot because my tripod was set up on an angle and the steel cables keeping people from the edge crept into the shot, so I cropped it to look like a two shot pano.  Still the lights from the buildings looked great.  Now the shot I really want to get from there I need to go sneak back in and the guard was kind enough to let me know when guards are not working 😉

On my way back to the train, I realized I had never really taken a shot from underneath the ‘L’ tracks, so I realized I was at Lake and Wells.  What better place to take a shot.  Not wanted to do the normal HDR you see under the tracks, I decided I would do a fused shot (several shots fused into one).  I did this to get light trails in both directions since I could not get a long enough exposure to get it in one (I need to get a Vari-ND filter).

In post processing I brought down the brightness of the scene by dropping a 50% overlay black and white layer to bring out the details and give it that ‘faded’ look.  I have seen shots like this and I like them, so this was my first attempt.

This weekend is the lighting festival downtown on the Mag Mile so I hope to get down and get some fireworks shots over the river.