My First Taste

Photo of the Day

In late June of 2011 I attended a workshop at Navy Pier in Chicago called Capturing True Emotion. It was the start of this push to become a better photographer for sure. After the workshop I decided to walk Chicago a bit to practice some of the little things that I had just learned. This may speak more about me than anything else, but I heard some music while walking and followed the sound. What it brought me to was the Taste of Chicago. Millions of people flock to the festival every year, and I didn’t even know it was going on. Looking back I should have shot more that day, but I was in heaven eating my heart out. That is the story of how I ended up at my one and only taste of Chicago I did like this scene of my favorite Chicago pizza place with the city behind it.

Technical Data

This shot I thought was lost. The skyline was well exposed, but the pizza stand and the people were very dark. I had not started shooting in RAW yet so I only had a jpeg to work with. I found this shot yesterday, and decided to bring it into Lightroom to work on it. I should not have been, but i was very surprised how the shot came out. By bringing back the shadow highlights I somehow managed to save the shot. Suddenly I was able to see the golden light on the people much like I saw in real life. I was so happy with the job that Lightroom did that I sqeezed this post in this morning. I had no idea how to handle this dynamic range of light at that time. Of course I may not be able to handle this now. I have all the tools, but the moving people would have provided a good challenge for me to overcome. I would like another shot at this though.