Category: Abstract

We visited the Morton Arboretum, in Lisle, Illinois, a couple days after Thanksgiving 2023. It turned out to be a beautiful day with a gently falling snow.

In this picture we loved the contrast between the red fruit on this Winterberry bush, (apropos name for the occasion?) and the white of the fresh snow, each complementing yet highlighting the other.

The berries and their branches seemed to provide a welcomed support to the snow as if to offer a platform for its delicate beauty.

We included four other pictures from this wintery Thanksgiving weekend in our Etsy Shop. In there you will find this, Abstract – Untitled #118, as well as Landscape – Untitled #119, Landscape – Untitled #120, Landscape – Untitled #121 and Landscape – Untitled #122

In September 2023 we were, once again, at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois. We had parked the car in a parking lot near the woods and just strolled about the area patiently anticipating what might capture our attention.

At the edges of the parking area, just past where the asphalt ends, is a row of wooden posts set to keep cars from driving into the plants. The top of one of the posts is visible in the center of the picture. Projected on the top of the post is the silhouette of a nearby plant. We love black and white photography and put this rendition of the image in that format in our Etsy Shop. We felt a bit of abstract mystique portrayed in this picture and offer it as such.

It’s February 2009. I am walking on the south side of the East Riverwalk in Chicago, making my way to the Chicago Lakefront Trail to a destination north and east, along Lake Michigan, from my present location. Did you get all that? I suppose you have to have been there.

Looking to my immediate left, at the Chicago River, I see this colorful, imaginative reflection in the water of the river. This is an image that has evoked so much interesting speculation as to what it actually is. What do you think? I’ve already given away the fact that it is a reflection. In fact, it is the reflection of the Riverview Condominiums that stand on the north side of the river.

As a note, something that is so interesting to me about these colors is that the vast majority of the buildings, at that time in 2009, along the Riverwalk, cast greys or blacks or silvers from the types of building materials used for their constructions. But the Riverview Condominiums, with their unique color and trim schemes, give a rather unique southwestern theme with their oranges and greens.

Another, personal note, is how easily one can get lost in the patterns of the reflection.

In September 2022, I was sitting at my workstation . . . working. I face a sliding glass door that leads to the deck and upon looking up and out at the deck I noticed this very distinct spectrum. The deck, on the third floor, opens into space beyond the railing. Just beyond is a tree whose branches are just beyond reach. There is nothing that could have cast this image, or so it seemed.

My curiosity definitely got the best of me and I had to find the cause of these beautiful colors. As it happens, my bicycle was just outside, lying on the deck, and the reflector on the rear wheel, acting as a prism, catching the sunlight at just the right moment, just the right angle, broke the rays into this beautiful solar spectrum image. In less than a couple minutes, had I not noticed, with the movement of the sun, it would be gone. No picture; no story, but for that moment in time when I looked up.

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.