Today we return to the good old Meatpacking District back in its great earlier incarnation, because I loved not so much the fire escape but the counterweight that would let the last flight of the fire escape swing down so people could safely reach the ground. I converted the photo to black and white because it’s a great batch of textures that come out nicely in this format: the grated door, the glass blocks, the bricks, the shadows, and especially the counterweight.

There isn’t a whole lot of information about Hanke Iron & Wire Works on the web now, and it felt like there was actually more when I took this photo back in ’09. It seemed to be most active in Chicago in the first couple of decades of the 20th century, but I remember seeing mention of a relocation toward the end of the company’s existence. A cider house a few blocks from my apartment mentions that there was a similar counterweight on its building in 2015, when it took over that building. There isn’t much more info than that now.

September 5, 2009. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), Nikon DX 18–105mm lens at 52mm (35mm equivalent: 78mm), f/13, 1/1,000, ISO 1,250.

Strong vertical and diagonal lines from the balconies of a condo tower and the roofline of U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis bring this composition together. This was another of those moments where the photo jumped out at me as I walked along the street; I took a few shots framing the two buildings slightly differently each time, and this was the keeper.

October 18, 2025. OnePlus 12 cell phone, 13.3mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 140mm), f/2.6, 1/510, ISO 50.

On October 3, I posted a photo of the entirety of Midway Airport and mentioned that it was pretty hard to get a photo of the entirety of O’Hare Airport. It isn’t impossible, though, and here we are. We were approaching from the west with a strong tailwind, and pilots fly into the wind on the approach so they can slow the plane down faster. That meant we had to fly past O’Hare and keep going for about three miles over Lake Michigan, then turn around and come back. That was a real pleasant surprise. I admit that as we got to this point, I was a bit startled to realize our path put us in a position where my phone’s telephoto camera could capture it all. It was a bit humid and we were at a higher altitude than I was when I took the Midway photo, so the colors here are adjusted some to get rid of the haze, but otherwise, it’s a pretty good shot of the entirety of O’Hare.

October 20, 2025. OnePlus 12 cell phone, 13.3mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 70mm), f/2.6, 1/850, ISO 50.

And on this summer day, lunchtime for a swallowtail butterfly came when it found a good, full buttonbush plant. I’ve published buttonbush photos here before, not just because I like their flowers that look like cake pops but because pollinators love them even more than I do.

I love everything about this — the swallowtail balancing on the styles of the flowers, the color and texture of its wings, the sharpness of the butterfly and the flower and the depth of field behind, and the shadows of the styles on that leaf. The white flower with the yellow bits of pollen atop the styles, the black butterfly with its pops of colors, and that leaf all add up to a really nice keeper.

July 7, 2018. Nikon D7100 (DX sensor), Nikon 70–300mm lens at 300mm (35mm equivalent: 450mm), f/6.7, 1/1,500, ISO ???.

This one is also a mystery to me. I really think that left eye’s weird condition is not a reflection or a refraction, because I’ve been photographing dragonflies for a couple of decades and this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this. When I posted it on various social media sites and asked, I didn’t get any particular information beyond “Yeah, that’s weird.” Maybe someday, someone will see this and let me know what the hell is going on.

July 29, 2023. Cropped from a larger image. Nikon D850 (FX sensor), Tamron 100–400mm at 400mm, f/11, 1/250, ISO 400.

And there’s the answer to yesterday’s puzzler. I think the “100” is more likely to be maybe a marker for other purposes, because they could easily have written “150.” And, as much activity as was still happening along the river back then, the idea of 150 tugboat operators is believable, but that says “50.”

So now we know: 50 Chicago Tugmen Vote Union. Or, if we want to quote it precisely, ☆Union☆.

You know that joke or cartoon that comes up every so often, “Advance Planning,” with the first letters taking up lots of space and the last ones missing or squeezed into a tiny space? This leans in that direction a bit, because it really didn’t make much sense to start on the left side of the ladder. There are plenty of those panels to the right. If the “T” in “Tugmen” was where the “G” is now, it would fit just fine.

July 15, 2012. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), 70–300mm Nikon zoom lens at 125mm (35mm equivalent: 187mm), f/16, 1/90, ISO 200.

We’re back on the tour of the industrial Calumet River, returning slowly to the harbor as we pass many more sites to record. With every glance, another one was approaching, so I grabbed this photo and moved on to the next. It was popular enough on social media, as Chicago’s home to many unions and union members. But as I thought about it while reviewing the pictures, it felt a little unusual. It leaves out women union members, and I have known women union members for many decades. The two characters peeking out from the yellow ladder didn’t make any sense: 0? G-Men? I couldn’t find any other photos of the scene, so I shrugged and let it be. A couple of years later, Forgotten Chicago repeated the tour, so I bought a ticket and was ready to get the entire scene as we passed — we’ll see that tomorrow and solve this.

August 29, 2010. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), 70–300mm Nikon zoom lens at 125mm (35mm equivalent: 187mm), f/8, 1/1,250, ISO 640.

My friend and I were walking around the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis one Summer day; she saw this pattern of fences and shadows and remarked on it. She didn’t even say in particular that I should take a picture of it, but I thought I should, so I did, and it was a keeper, one of the best of the trip, which was a very good trip.

August 31, 2025. Nikon Coolpix P1000 (1/2.3-inch sensor), focal length 36mm (35mm equivalent: 200mm), f/8, 1/2,500, ISO 800.

We’re back at the nature preserve, three weeks into Fall 2008, with the first notes of the season’s color edging into the scene. As I was walking past the pond, I saw how perfectly the clouds were reflecting on its wonderfully still surface. It’s a shame the real clouds are overexposed, but that helps draw our attention to the surface, and that’s probably a good thing for this photo.

October 15, 2008. Canon PowerShot SD850 IS, focal length 5.8 (35mm equivalent: 35mm), f/8, 1/100, ISO 80.

Back in another time, I was a tournament pinball player. After being away from pinball for some decades, I’ve returned to it, like to play machines, have made some friends in the pinball community. Tournaments are highly organized and regimented via national and international organizations, and I have no interest in paying them money to find out that I’m maybe the 52,827th best player in the country or whatever. So I just play when I see a table and have some time and a few quarters.

This machine is No Fear: Dangerous Sports, a 1995 Bally Williams table. If you like classic machines, you’ll think of 1995 as modern machines, and if you like modern tables, 1995 would be a classic. Anyway, a bar not that far from me has a couple of pinball tables from that era; I like older machines, so I don’t play either of them that much, but they look really nice, and when you turn your photos into black and white shots, the lighting really makes the table look very lively.

August 15, 2025. OnePlus 12 cell phone, 2.62mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 14mm), f/2.2, 1/30, ISO 250.

A flight that takes off from Chicago in the late afternoon, flies over the Northeast during dusk, and then reaches the Boston area at nightfall is highly recommended if you are the sort of person who gets a window seat and takes hundreds of pictures. That’s the junction of Interstates 93 and 95 to Boston’s west there, with all the shopping you could hope for on one side and all the sleepy suburban life you could run from on the other side. I grew up not far from this area — if I had been in seat 3F rather than seat 3A, I suspect I would have seen the town I grew up in — and seeing the area like this made me really happy.

September 18, 2025. OnePlus 12 cell phone, 6.06mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 47mm), f/1.6, 1/20, ISO 1,250.

I mean, how cute can nature get? This was the third of three photos I took of these chipmunks on a railing, and the first two were OK, but mom was not yet stepping on the little one in her rush to get away from the big guy with the camera. But finally, she did do exactly that, and the guy with the camera snapped the shutter one last time.

May 30, 2020. Nikon D7100 (DX sensor), Tamron 100–400mm lens at 400mm (35mm equivalent: 600mm), f/6.3, 1/2,000, ISO 800.

A while back, I published a photo of Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis, at full power after a number of storms, with a quick shutter speed to show just how much water was pouring over that bluff.

This is a fountain near Chicago’s lakeshore, and it’s a good one (I like it a lot), but it’s never going to be powerful. Its spray turned out to look really nice with the kind of long shutter speed that defines these classic water shots, though. There’s just enough transparency to offer a sense of what’s going on behind it.

October 30, 2010. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), Nikon DX 18–105mm lens at 66mm (35mm equivalent: 99mm), f/32, 1/13, ISO 640.

I’ve published a few photos here from the various Forgotten Chicago boat trips down industrial river areas, including a few shots of the lift bridges that connect the sides of the river when they’re lowered but are kept raised most of the time so boats large and small can travel unimpeded. I marveled at how complicated the construction of those bridges was, and how it felt like it took both so much and so little to keep them working. From a distance, these girders form a nice, neat structure, but up close, they look like they’re heading every which way in an effort to support the bridge.

August 29, 2010. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), 70–300mm Nikon zoom lens at 70mm (35mm equivalent: 105mm), f/10, 1/200, ISO 640.

It almost sounds like the name of some third-rate animation studio character. This yellow-rumped warbler, which is in a position to prove that once again ornithologists were naming birds with colors that just weren’t where they claimed, senses there’s reason to be cautious as it scans the nearby sky.

April 18, 2020. Cropped from a larger image. Nikon D7100 (DX sensor), Tamron 100–400mm lens at 400mm (35mm equivalent: 600mm), f/6.7, 1/1,500, ISO 400.