Photo of the Week #25 – Chicago – Lake Shore Drive and Lake Michigan

I just spent nine days in the Windy City, October 11-19, 2011. These two photos are from the same vantage point. I was in Chicago to do some itinerant audio (in this case – audio and visual) work for two different clients. The first project was at the McCormick Place Convention Center, a huge, several building complex on both sides of Lake Shore Drive along the shoreline of Lake Michigan. My client’s Summit Meeting was in the Lakeside Building – the oldest and, I believe, the original convention center building.

These two photos were taken from my room on the 23rd floor of the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place Hotel that is attached to the convention center by an enclosed hallway. The nice thing about projects like these is that I get to stay in some really nice hotels, but at no expense to me. The night photo (a long, slow exposure) shows a somewhat wide angle view extending from southeast over part of Lake Michigan, south over the convention center to southwest Chicago. Like most large cities at night, you can see lights nearly forever. The daylight photo was shot in the early morning (you can see the flare from the easterly sun on the left of the photo) with a nearly identical perspective.

This is obviously, South Chicago, a more working class and industrialized area. The other side of the hotel had views of the lake and northward toward the Navy Pier and downtown Chicago where the Magnificent Mile (N. Michigan Ave.), the John Hancock Building and the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) are well-known landmarks. I’ll feature more photos of Chicago in future Photo of the Week posts.