A love letter to Chicago…
The windy city… My first “real” couples photoshoot was back in the summer of 2019 when my friends Tyler, Claire, Ryan, Dylan and I crammed into my Ford Focus and made the three and a half hour drive to Chicago for the day. We didn’t really know what to expect, other than I would be taking pictures of Claire and Tyler, Ryan would sort of be showing us around the city, and Dylan would be there for comedic relief. In all honesty, it was a pretty effective strategy up until the rain started… It went from ninety degrees and humid to a hurricane level storm in about five minutes. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but that’s all that was going through my head while I was running to get the car. In case you were wondering, we continued to have an awesome day after the rain stopped, and even now I enjoy going back and looking at what I captured that day. I’ve come a long way since then to say the least. If someone would’ve told me back then that the city would be my favorite place to shoot in a few years, I would have said they were crazy. Now, I’m always trying to make time to get back there.
I don’t think that there is one exact thing about Chicago that I would say is my favorite. I’m not from there, have never thought about living there, and maybe visited once or twice a year growing up, but there has always been this strange aura around the city to me. Up until I was out of college, I had never really visited the city for myself. Always a school or family trip, but that first time I had my friends and my camera with me I found a new sense of freedom. We were just kids, not really knowing what we were doing or where we were going, but I believe now that trip was made for a reason. I finally had the chance to jump off the diving board into this photography thing. I was in control of what I was doing, who I was doing it with, and where we were. It felt really good to have that control. To be able to look down at my camera and want to use it, not feel like I need to use it. I really believe that I needed that first time of uneasiness and inexperience to get me to where I am now, wherever that is.
As I’m finishing this, I’m trying to pinpoint what it is exactly that I love the most about Chicago. It’s not the weather, the sports teams, or the fact it’s close to home. I think the thing that I love the most, is that every time I step foot in the city it’s going to be a new experience. Whether its a daytrip with the homies, a weekend trip with my parents, going up with Kam to check out film schools, or visiting my little sister Alexa, its new. Every time. Even if I am just walking around downtown, headphones in and camera on, I know that I will be fulfilled and Chicago will have something new for me to capture.
