Project 365 excerpt from Chicago

I have started a photography project that I heard about called "Project 365." It is basically that you take a picture every day. I is a photo journal of your life as well as a way to work on improving your photography. I started this while I was in Chicago and I have included here the pictures that I put into my "Project 365" album along with the commentary. I will put a bit more from Chicago up as soon as I get the rest of the photos organized.

8-11-08 Chicago has a personality unique from other large cities I have visited. It is hard to articulate the essence of what it is but in some unutterable way this photo is to me a visual "articulation" of this wonderful city.
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8-12-08 me at camp with some of the pictures that the girls drew. I am going to try the same project with my kids at school if I have a group with sufficient perceptual skills.
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8-13-08 This was a fun picture to capture! It is the underpass of Hyde Park Ave and Lake Park Blvd. It is a regular, old, grungy underpass with the exception that the supports are arched and white washed. I was excited to find serendipity in the form of a great visual perspective and cool lighting. This is one of the things that I love most about photography; making an ordinary, uninteresting object into something enchanting.
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8-14-08 Architectural tour of Chicago on the Chicago River
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8-15-08 This is one of my favorite spots in Chicago. It is formally named "Cloud Gate" but it is commonly called "The Bean." It is a sculpture designed to reflect the skyline of Chicago. People are drawn to it en mass. It is fun to see and photograph the varied distorted reflections of the city but it is also fun to see the varied distorted reflections of yourself. I, and two fellow travelers spent a long time lying on the ground laughing and thinking of ways of posing to create interesting images in The Bean.

These two people in the photograph were are are strangers to me but their colorful clothing and their apparent mesmerized state to me is very reflective of the experience of The Bean.

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My friend, Robyn, took me to her favorite building in Chicago on my last day in the city and I loved it so much that I needed a picture of her and I in front of it. It is not an unattractive building from the outside but it is much shorter and less "shiny" than others in the area and therefore perhaps easy to miss in a section of the city with so much demanding your attention.

I expect that if I attempted a description of what I and we loved in the building it would be both inadequate and too lengthy. But what I loved beyond the beauty of the building was the wonderful reminder of how friends enrich our lives and expand our horizons. The people around us have so much to offer, both in joys and intellect, in growing our perceptions and understanding of the world around us.