Summer in Chicago

Sometimes, I love simply grabbing my camera and going outside with no real plan.

Sometimes more so than others, I do well at making a point to do that. Chicago is an endlessly interesting city to photograph, and it's easy to forget that when you're busy. So I look forward to when I get to carve out some time, pick a direction, and just start walking.

There's something that happens when you shoot for yourself that doesn't always happen otherwise. You slow down. You stop worrying about whether the frame is what someone else needs and start paying attention to what's actually in front of you. The light on a building. The way a street looks at a certain hour. The small details that make a city feel like a city.

What I was going for with this set was cohesion. Not everything matches, but everything feels like it came from the same day and the same eye. Color, light, mood. I wanted it to hold together as a body of work rather than just a collection of nice individual frames.

I also put together a short video from the day, which you can watch below.