Hey NYC

I made a reasonably spontaneous trip to *the* city visiting a good friend of mine. Last time I was here it was more than 6 years ago when I came here to train as a graduate fresh out of the university. Since I had already done pretty much all of the obvious touristy stuff last time, this time we didn’t really spend much time in the city. But one thing I remembered to do, was to go onto the top of Rockefeller Centre (the Top of the Rock) to capture the image below. 6 years ago I strolled here after dinner with a friend (we were put in a hotel in mid-town, how great was that?) without knowing what to expect, just to find the view completely take my breathe away (with a golden summer sunset). Since that was before my SLR era, I told myself that next time I visit the city, I WILL have to come back again with my proper camera.

So 6 years have passed, and much has changed for both the city and myself. Still, I came back here to fulfil the sort of promise I made myself. Not going to lie it was a *tiny* bit disappointing since the weather wasn’t at its best, also the astonishingly large amount of tourists holding highly hazardous selfie sticks proved more annoying than ever (side note: see how much technology advanced in just 6 years? Not many people were using touch screen smartphones last time I was here!).

But yes, rant aside, I did manage to capture some nice panos of the NYC skyline, using myself as a tripod and objects to lean on (and of course a photographer’s steadiness 😉 ). The full-sized photo has much more details in it and you can even see some of the buildings I did my trainings in!

A 6-year old promise I made myself: “Come up to this place with an SLR in the future”

Chicago!

A quick update from Chicago –

I arrived in Chicago from SF on Friday, and what a drastic contrast in the weather! *collar up*.

This is my first time in Chicago, but knowing it’s a big metropolitan area I was expecting it to be somewhat similar to NYC – opportunities for beautiful skylines! Prior to my trip I did some research on viewpoints of the city, and stumbled across Virginia’s awesome blog on where to take the best skyline pictures of Chicago and it can’t be more helpful (check out her San Francisco post too!). Following her recommendation, I went to The Signature Lounge today after briefly seeing the butt-like giant bean Cloud Gate (it was actually quite fun to photograph, but it was too touristy to be fun – I’ll leave the rant to another post) in hope of taking some nice sunset photos/night shots.

I was extremely lucky given this is said to be the warmest day in Chicago for weeks (18 Celsius!) and the wind was mild to minimal. I got to the John Hancock Building a little bit later than I hoped, it was 4.30 which was when exactly the sun was setting. Having read Virginia’s blog I decided to go straight up to the bar/lounge on 96th instead of the observatory to avoid queues and waits. And guess what, I was just in time to catch one of the most amazing sunset views of Chicago, in the ladies lavatory! Apparently there’s no secret that this was a great viewpoint of the lounge, by the time I got there the toilet was quite crammed with people taking photos (and very few actually using the toilets). But I’ve managed to find a spot to snap a few photos quickly – the sun went down in just a few minutes, so I was quite satisfied with the decision to come up right here! The post-sunset view was also stunning, many people just ended up standing there and watching the sunset – one of the ladies even pointed out that they really should set up a bar in the toilet instead. :p

Can you imagine this is a view from the loo?

After I was done with the signature lounge, I decided to to take a look at the observatory deck anyway – the bar got a bit too busy and this sunset was too good to miss. So I went back up to the 360 Chicago and got utterly stunned by the view from there. It was not very busy up there and I even managed to find a suitable box to rest my camera on for 10 second exposure shots 🙂 The only annoying bit is that sometimes you can still see the glare of the glass panel – I’ll have to find a way to photoshop them out. But generally, it was a very nice and relaxing time spent looking at the city of Chicago slowly lit up under the dramatic skies.

Post-sunset glow of Chicago city