The Chicago Project -- Day 5 of 5

One of this project's main goals was to create a window into the past through photography. Each photo we take -- snapshot or prize winner -- captures a brief moment in time. I read about a project where extreme pinhole cameras captures multi-year exposures, and the creator theorized that 40-year captures could be accomplished. Even those hyper-long exposures are insignificant flashes in human history, the earth's timeline,  or time since the universe was created.

Humans simultaneously seek to halt change while embracing most every aspect of it, heralding the positive elements as progress. We also, conveniently, ignore the negative elements.

Christmas, 1972 or 1973, Chicago, Daley Plaza. The tree is behind the Picasso, but the Picasso, here can become a window.



The original vantage point is now a fountain, and it was cold and I didn't want to get my feet wet and catch pneumonia. So here is as close as I could get. It's close, but not perfect.




I'm not sure what Photoshop was thinking with this blend.


In hindsight, I should have included the modern people in the lower left corner, but I was preoccupied with the tree and unchanged buildings.

This project was about more than just photography, and history, and using technology to create images that would have been impossibilities when I began taking photos. This project became a way for me to give my girlfriend and her father something to discuss, some time for a conversation about who he was when he was our age.

The Chicago Project -- Day 4 of 5

Day 4 of the Chicago Project shows, more than any other day's image, how dramatically Chicago has grown since 1971. In the original picture, only the Standard Oil Building is in the frame. In the 2012 image, many other skyscrapers have joined the skyline.

Regardless of the image itself, this pairing tells a story about great city management, effective and sustained economic growth, and the diverse and attractive architectural scheme in Chicago.

The original image, from 1971, is not my favorite. From a technical standpoint, the bird is soft and the Standard Oil Building sharp, indicating a shallower depth of field. The Fujichrome film was probably 100 ISO, and on a sunny day that could translate into an aperture of 6.3 for a 1/1,000th of a second exposure. My guess is that this was around f6.3. The digital image below was shot at f10, which is about where the Sigma performs the best, and this aperture yields a very nice sharpness across the entire image's depth.


Photoshop blended the image with some serious and pervasive color and ghost-type issues. But I do like how it blended the park areas from each image.



My goal with this image was to have the old image elements on the left with the new on the right. Each side also contains some images from each image. The middle is a blending ground where the two images meet.

The Chicago Project -- Day 3 of 5

Day 3 of the Chicago Project features one of the Chicago River's bridges, though not the DuSable Bridge. The goal here was to make the two bridges blend, like a bridge connecting 1971 and 2012.







This is the one time that I feel Photoshop did a meaningfully better job than I did.


One major difficulty in this blending, the original vantage point was now no longer accessible. So I got as close as I could. The tree did not help matters any, either. In an effort to keep the sky blue, the tree had to become a partial ghost. I don't care for that, but any other attempt would have yielded awful compositing results.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not claiming these are great compositing results.

The Chicago Project -- Day 2 of 5

Day 2 of The Chicago Project happens near day 1 -- the DuSable Bridge. In 1971, though, it was brand new and called the Michigan Street Bridge.

The first images features two 1970s guys talking, or arguing, depending on how one reads body language. The 2012 image has only people crossing on the far side of the bridge. However, I wanted an image with people from both images. And that classic 1970s car.



One difficult detail to capture, the 2012 image had no shadows -- the sky was overcast and the light too even. The 1971 image does have shadows. Some creative erasing, and I put hints of shadows in the merged image (check along the bas relief's right side.)






My idea here was to show past and present blending with aspects of the old structure and new combined as well as showing the specter (exhibited here as a ghostly building) of future progress looking ever-present in the background. Likewise, in the foreground the sign is a ghost, making the only permanent things the bas relief, 70s people, 70s car, and modern people behind the 70s car.

As I said yesterday, buildings are mankind's longest-lasting monuments. But they serve no purpose if they don't serve us. The intent was to combine people from both images to show how --despite change -- the bridge still carries traffic and people and, in that way, fulfills its purpose.

The Chicago Project -- Day 1 of 5

Since February, I've been working on a project called The Chicago Project. Spurred by slides my girlfriend's father took in Chicago between 1971 and 1973, I decided to replicate some of his shots. In April 2012 -- 41 years after the original slides -- I went back to my home town to replicate the images.


This first image is the original 1971 image my girlfriend's father took walking north on the (then named) Michigan Avenue Bridge a few days after it opened. Note the classic old car, people with fabulous plaid pants, brown-glass globe lamps -- these are classic 70's cheese. Even the traffic cones lack modernity. Of course, today's traffic cones are hyper-obnoxious orange(?), which is contemporary cheese.

You'll notice in the re-take that the buildings are mostly the same with a new addition on the left (top left, peaking out from behind the old building I forget the name of.) Also, astute readers will notice that on the right, a sign used to be in front of that onion-top.

But more likely you'll notice the Toyota Prius, flags instead of lamps, and other contemporary cheese. Yes, I just called a Prius cheese. What remains the same, unchanged in 41 years, are the buildings that exist in both images. Stone or concrete, these structures will -- unless demolished for future progress -- likely outlast everyone who ever reads this blog. Buildings are humanity's longest-lasting monument (though pollution will be our longest-lasting legacy.)

In Photoshop, I opened both images in a stack and resized the old film image to match the new image's height. Because of the different aspect ratio in my lens versus the Takumar, I then corrected the geometry in my image to match the original. Being a slightly higher resolution image (14.6 megapixels instead of 12.5 or so), and also being a native digital file, geometry modifications delivered better results with my image.

I then manually blended the two images. With my image on top, I used the eraser tool, set on brush, and between 5% and 80% opacity (depending on the need and my stylistic ideas) and went to town erasing some of the modern content to blend the images. After that, I undid all the erased areas and had Photoshop blend the images. Today, as for the rest of the week, I'll show you the Photoshop-blended image first then my image.






As you can see, Photoshop yielded unsatisfactory results in this case, using automation. The manually blended image allowed me to keep people as ghosts, do the same for cars, and even blend the old and new building images selectively. Note that most of the onion-topped building is new, but it has the old sign. The flags are present, but so, too, are ghostly renditions of the globes. The 70s people are walking along the bridge, but so, too, are ghosts of the modern people.

Tomorrow we'll take a look at an image of one of the bridge's entry columns, a stone brick structure with a bas relief and some people.