Author: Gary Wilson

This is, so far, the only picture we have given a title. You have the freedom to use your imagination to see if you feel if it’s apropos or give it your own title. But, in any case, here is the story behind the picture.

I retired from a passenger railroad that took people from Northwest Indiana into Chicago for work or pleasure. For years I had a lengthy layover in Chicago to explore and take pictures; hundreds over the years. I this particular picture I had been exploring an area, while very, very near our terminal station in Chicago, I simply had never taken the time to venture into.

This image is from an area called the New Eastside, specifically, Lakeshore East Park, bordered roughly by the Chicago River to the north, Lake Michigan to the east and Randolph Street to the South. It lies just north of Millennium Park. The picture is part of a concrete, circular staircase that rises from the corner of East South Water Street and North Park Drive up to a street that connects North Columbus Drive and East Wacker Drive. This staircase is tucked away in the northwest corner of the park. Unless you are definitely looking for it or stumble upon it, as I did, it’s fairly nondescript, certainly out of the way, and easy to miss.

But on that day, I found it. It is round and big enough that a tree was growing in the middle of it (or was, anyway, in 2013, ten years ago as of this writing). It was a sunny day, that August 29, 2012 when I took the picture and, because of the angle of the sun, the parabola that you see was the sun shining through the round top at the upper street level projected on the side wall of the concrete staircase.

I’m sitting at my workstation, at home, on August 25, 2022. It was immediately following a summer rain, that had completely dampened the deck outside the sliding glass door in front of me. In the midst of my work at the computer, I looked up and saw this reflection. Since my camera is never far away, I took this picture.

The reflection of the silhouettes of the leaves is clearly visible. The sun, while out of focus, is the source behind the leaves. The very thin, perhaps three-eighths of an inch wide, metal railing supports appear quite exaggerated as thick, brownish frames in the picture. And, the various reflected and refracted drops of rain dropping from the tree appear as the bright orbs, in random array throughout the picture. A dreamy in-focus, out-of-focus composite.