Elmhurst Ghost Tour

Halloween is here and there are a ton of ghost walks around the area. We managed to get a discounted rate for a ghost walk in Elmhurst Illinois. We found this ghost walk entitled "Elmhurst's Voices from Beyond". It was organized by Voices from beyond tours. Basically what it is is the speakers guide you to a walk of the town, to some buildings that are haunted and they tell you the history behind every building. The tour guides consisted of a guy who was an ex detective at a police force and a lady who is from voices from beyond who goes around haunted places taking EVP's or Electronic Voice Phenomenon. 

Elmhurst college. This is where the tour starts. Mill theater which is here, is supposed to be haunted.

The tour covers these areas in Elmhurst:

Elmhurst College's Mill Theater (reportedly haunted by a former technical director)

St. Peter and St. Mary's Cemeteries (students report a "lady in white" wandering the cemeteries at night)

Wilder Mansion (Seth Wadham's "White Birch")

Elizabeth's Rose Garden

Chicago Fire Relic at Wilder Park

Site of the Crane Sanitarium

Glos Mausoleum

Glos Mansion (History Museum)

I started out the tour making sure I had the right equipment with me to take shots. Of course for this event, I chose my Canon 17-40mm f/4 lens so I can take wide angle photos of the places that we were going to. Unfortunately, we didn't go inside any of the buildings they were talking about in the tour. Still bringing an ultra wide angle lens with me at that time was well worth it.

It was freezing cold out and I had a sweater on. Basically I was freezing to death on the first minutes of the tour. It got better as we walked though. On tours like this, make sure you dress up warmly.

The Glos Mausoleum...probably the best location that I shot that night. The lighting was perfect.

The tour was good. The speakers hand out photos of how the structures looked like in the past. Sometimes the structure is completely gone now like the Crane Sanitarium. It's nice to see how the location looked like before. 

The best part of the tour was Wilder Mansion. The speakers talked about some haunting in this place in certain rooms and parts of the mansion. It was nice to know how the mansion was built as a residence and is now used for weddings. It is one of Elmhurst's historical buildings. Why is it the best part of our tour? My wife and I got married there last June! Actually where we had the ceremony, one of the speakers told us that there was a very negative energy presence in that particular area. That's nice to know!

The Glos Mansion (History Museum). It was crazy dark and this shot was handheld. 

At the end of the tour, we watched a short video about the places we visited. Also, we listened to some EVP recordings taken by one of the speakers. They were kinda freaky to tell you the truth. 

Long grove Illinois Strawberry festival

Long Grove is a suburb of Chicago located northwest of Chicago. It's famous for its preservation of old style shops and its fun festivals such as the chocolate festival and the strawberry festival. Last June we visited the place to checkout their strawberry festival. 

 The Village Tavern...a famous American Bar/Pub in Long Grove.

It was around 90-95 degrees outside...pretty hot for the festival. Though it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The festival had plenty of stalls selling a ton of food from brats to chocolate flavored bananas. Of course there was a lot of beer. Hahahaha.

 Near the center of the town. This had a couple of shops in one spot.

There was a ton of people walking around, although it wasn't as crowded as I thought it would be. Some roads had to be closed for the festival which was nice as you can just walk in the streets without having to worry if a car will just drive and run you over. There were plenty of police officers to keep the pedestrians in order.

 The village fountain where a lot of people were just hanging out resting from the heat.

It was just fun taking shots of the event. From the vendors, to the band, there was just enough photo opportunities to keep any photographer busy. I used my 17-40mm F/4L to capture some beautiful shops around the area. It was pretty bright out so I didn't have to worry about lighting. I just set my camera to aperture priority and just left it there most of the time. 

I just had to pause and shoot this scene. It was too good to just let it pass.

Long Grove has a lot of shops to go to and a lot of fun events during the summer and fall. I highly recommend going here during festivals or to just check out the neat shops. Make sure you have your wide angle lens ready! Next event that we might go to is the Long Grove apple fest in September.

Going around a dock in Kennebunkport Maine

One of my favorite first shots in Maine

So we arrived in Kennebunkport Maine and I have packed more camera equipment than clothes...very typical for photographers. We arrived in our cottage late in the afternoon and then walked around the downtown looking for a place to eat. I then found one of the docks near the restaurant where we had our first Maine dinner.

So I take out my camera, with the 17-40mm attached. and started to take shots. we just went on walking around the dock area looking for some interesting subjects to photograph. The 17-40mm f/4 L when attached to a full frame body gives you excellent point of views if you know how to compose properly. It's also an excellent lens to walk around with in any weather as it is weather sealed. It was raining a bit when I did these shots so the weather sealing was an excellent feature. 

It is the same boat as the one above, although I tried to capture the water reflection too at the bottom.

 I love taking pictures of docks and bridges because they are actually excellent in giving you nice perspectives.

Maine is an excellent place to capture marine photos. They have docks, boats, wildlife, and everything you can think of when it comes to the sea. I took advantage of that by taking with me wide angle lens, a telephoto and a super telephoto, and boy did I use all of them.

 Taken before we headed out for dinner that day.

A rusty piece of machinery. Gives the photo a bit of interest.

These are just the first batch of photos that I took. There are many more to come in my upcoming posts!

What has happened in June 2012

A ton of stuff has happened to me at the beginning of the month.

I got married to my fiancee of almost 4 years. I have pictures from that.
We went to Maine. I have pictures from that.
We went out for a whale watching tour. I have pictures from that.
We saw surfers by the beach. I have pictures from that.
I acquired a ton of new equipment. I'll review those, no pictures as of now.

Anyway, it has been a busy June for me. I had taken around 2800 photos from our last trip. When you go to Maine make sure you pack a ton of disk space like we did, and also a raincoat and a camera rain cover.

I'm in the process of processing all the photos that we took from the wedding and the trip. For now I'll leave you a lovely picture of one pretty scene we saw by the coast when we were on our trip.

Taken with my 5D MK2 with my 17-40L

St. Charles Japanese garden

Before anything else I just wanted to say...THIS IS MY 100th POST!!! It's awesome that I managed to keep this blog goin!

We visited the Japanese garden at St. Charles Il. one afternoon when we were around the area. The weather wasn't so nice as it was raining like crazy that day. It's surprising how it's like a week after the winter season officially started that we barely had any snow yet. I can't complain though, I don't like snow a lot. So we parked by their parking lot and walked around. The place by the way had a lot of trees.

So out I went with my camera in hand. I had my 17-40mm attached to my 5d. It was kind of a mild to a moderate drizzle and it was a good thing I had my weather resistant lens attached to my camera. In this kinda weather, having a sealed lens attached to your camera is a plus, although be very careful still...it's weather resistant not weather proof! It can only handle a small amount of moisture and then the water gets in.

I set my camera to aperture priority. Set my aperture to around f5, and then set my ISO to auto. It was overcast and the scenery had barely enough color to it. In cases like this, I'd rather set my ISO to auto than deal with adjusting it later, when the lighting situation changes. This is actually a perfect time to use this feature. It was pretty dark so my camera still shot pictures at less than 80th of a second at f5 with an ISO of 320. I set my file type to RAW rather than JPG so I'll have more flexibility in post processing my photos.

Basically the sky looked grey, the surrounding was dark and everything else felt gloomy. I'll deal with that later during post processing. All I wanted is to just go around and shoot some good scenery.

The garden was awesome. It had a bridge, a mini creek, a little house, everything that you'll find inside a Japanese garden. Although, the best time to view the garden is during times when there's snow on the ground. It still looked pretty without the snow so I continued shooting. When I was done, I had every view of the bridge and creek...that was the highlight of the garden I guess.

I'll probably be back here when there's snow...or better yet when the flowers start blooming in the spring!


I think this is a museum by the garden. Didn't have the chance to go there as it was raining.


A lake near the garden. It was foggy when we went.


The 17-40mm provided me with an awesome angle of view of the trees.


I bet this looks awesome in spring and summer


The garden during winter. Would've been more awesome with snow.

Inside Pheasant Run resort

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.

Walking around Geneva Illinois

On our way to a resort before new year, we stopped by Geneva Illinois to check out what's going on in that beautiful city. What's so nice about Geneva is the small shops all lined up...ranging from clothes to specialty cupcakes. We actually bought this cupcake from one of the shops and it was possibly the best peanut butter cupcake I've ever had. The weather was kinda crappy but I'd prefer rain than snow. I have my trusty 17-40mm so I took shots around the city. It's nice to have weather resistant equipment when walking around and it's raining.


One of the shops in Geneva. This place has a ton of them


Walking around the compound.


One of the life sized toy guards in fron of the shops.


I guess this is one of their government buildings.


I took this one while were were on our way home.

Geneva is a very nice place to go to to shop whatever. The best ones we went to was a wine shop, a cupcake shop, and a popcorn shop. There's also an awesome spice shop in there that we are going to to get tandoori seasoning. We'll be back here during the swedish days in summer!

The Canon 17-40 f4 L USM

I have always been a fan of prime lenses. They have given me joy through my years in my studio taking still shots and portraits. In my opinion, they are a very good alternative to getting those really expensive premium zooms in like the thousand dollar range, as they beat any zoom if you compare them in their own ranges. Like lets say if you compare a fixed 35mm to a zooms 35mm range, the prime lens will always prevail in image quality. Sharpness is never a question with primes...though a good photographer knows that sharpness isn't everything in photography.

I've always loved my 70mm macro, 50mm, 35mm, and my newly acquired 17mm, which was a replacement for my 10-20mm for non full frame. I brought my 17mm to a trip in Indiana and it brought me astounding results. In the studio, my 70mm is the king. If I needed more room because my studio is pretty small, I switch to the 35mm. Swapping lenses in my studio is a breeze...this becomes annoying outdoors.

I have swapped 3 lenses 3 times in like 10 minutes when I was outdoors the last time. It could've been my fault because I brought the wrong lens the first time but I never did know that something different would come up other than what I planned. A lot of times when taking shots, you get caught in a moment where you needed a shot but you had the wrong lens on. A lot of situations would allow you to swap...but not all the time. It can only take about a second till you miss that shot that you have been waiting for for years.

So I went home and thought about an ultra wide zoom lens. I went online and looked for the best deals they have for them. I realized that if I sold 2 of my lenses, I can purchase a really good one that will cover at least 2 focal ranges of my primes. So I thought about it all night. The next day, I swallowed my prime lens' pride and purchased my very first ultra wide angle zoom for full frame...and so I am now a proud owner of a Canon 17-40 f4L USM lens!



My 17-40L. Got it used online so the hood isn't in perfect condition. Still works great though.

After waiting for 3 days it finally arrived. Complete with box, hood, covers, bag, and manual. Took it from the box and surprised that it was pretty light. So I grabbed a body and slapped it on.



The 17-40L attached to my 5d Mk2. The lens seemed wider in appearance with the hood on.

I tried really quick shots in our living room. The 17mm looked awesome. Focusing was fast due to the USM motor, and it seemed that it's a pretty nice lens to handle. Here are the things I love about it:

Focusing is quick and quiet due to the USM focus.
Full time manual focus is also supported. You can manually focus instantly after the lens locks on to a focus spot. No need to switch to manual focus.
The zoom ring is really smooth. It feels like it slides.
Light, really easy to handle. This can be attached to a body around my neck and it wouldn't bother me at all for hours.
It has slots in the rear of the lens for drop in filters. You can cut these from sheets of gel you get from your photo store.
77mm filter threads which is compatible to most pro lenses.
Build is pretty good. Not as good as the 70-200mm L, but that cuts down on the weight of it.

The f4 maximum aperture doesn't really bother me at all. This lens will be used mainly for landscape photography so f8 and above will be the ideal aperture that I will be using on this. The f2.8 maximum aperture for the 16-35 L is good to have but for double the price the f4 would do good for me.

I will post my first outdoor shots with it in the next post!