Summer travel took my family somewhere familiar this year, Chicago. This is a city that is close to our heart and a place we returned to make new memories. Knowing that we were heading to the city, Up until this trip 80% of my photography had been focused on nature. Everything I’ve shared on social media and on my website in some way shape or form was connected back to the natural world. I had a brief stint trying my hand at street photography but I was really bad and couldn’t get past the idea of taking pictures of people without their consent. I moved on to nature photography and found that the trees didn’t complain when I took their picture and just by going for a hike, whether I took any good pictures or not, and each hike left me feeling better in a number of ways. This would be a significantly different environment. So I had a choice, I could leave my camera at home or I could try to make something new (to me). I chose the latter.

There were a few things I was pretty sure of, I wasn’t going to go back down the road of street photography, I wanted something that leaned a little more abstract, I wanted it to have a similar aesthetic, and I was only going to take one lens…trekking around Chicago with a pack full of gear was out of the question. With Chicago being a city known for its architecture I figured the city itself would become the subject more so than the people on the street. I had to think about what would be the best lens for architecture photography, I settled on my Tamron 28-75 as it would be light and give me enough reach for for most of what I would want.

I settled on a series of black and white architectural photographs. The images that follow are simply a reaction to something that caught my eye. There was no time to recompose or make adjustments. No tripod, in fact nearly every one of these images is a single shot. Walking the streets with a 3 year old doesn’t leave much time for second chances. I wasn’t at all worried about the ones I may have missed, but more so appreciative of the ones that worked. Am I shifting away from nature photography…no, but I am happy I was able to take this trip and still find ways to create something new.