After the Geneva Illinois trip we decided to stay at a resort called Pheasant run in St. Charles. Pheasant run basically has everything. It has an indoor/outdoor pool which is awesome during winter. I basically was in the pool outside for about an hour in like a 35-40 degree morning weather. The place was fun...the main attraction is the Bourbon street replica inside the resort, complete with balconies with musicians. The food was great too, we had a fish fry all you can eat dinner and some wine. One piece of advice I can give you when you go tho this place is have a camera ready when you are in the pool early in the morning to capture a beautiful sunrise complete with steam rising from the pool. I thought that was a pretty cool shot though I'm not taking any chances bringing my dlsr into the water...this is where a compact waterproof camera is perfect, but unfortunately I don't have one.
I pretty much have the same setup as when we were walking in Geneva. My 5d mk2 together with my 17-40mm, attached to a tripod. You can never leave your tripod on trips like this as you have limited lighting indoors. I had to bump my ISO to get a fast shutter speed indoors as I didn't want to use a flash. Basically I had to set my aperture to the maximum my lens can handle which is f4. The lighting inside the resort is what you'd expect...a lot of tungsten lighting. I had to correct the white balance a bit in post processing although I didn't wanna overdo it, so I did leave the white balance on the warm side, it did however cut the overly yellow light a bit.
It was a very pleasant trip. I am pretty sure we'll be back there anytime soon!
Taken outside the resort. It was raining pretty bad. I set my camera on a tripod and used a 1.3 second shutter speed.
Taken near the indoor/outdoor pool.
I guess this is the highlight of the resort. A replica of the famous Bourbon street complete with musicians in the balcony.
The other side of the street.
Still inside the resort. The lighting was mostly tungsten. I shot in raw so I readjusted the white balance a bit.
The Piano and the tree. Basically lighting was kinda not enough inside the resort so I had to use my maximum lens aperture of f4 with my camera on a tripod. The results weren't really that bad.
