Chicago Fireworks

Chicago, IL (Jul 3, 2008)

I have been away. Since the last post, long gone by, I have been in California, New Mexico, Manchester UK, a couple of time in Chicago, New Zealand. I was offered a tenure track position in New Mexico, which unfortunately I could not take (pity, because I really liked the place and the people there). I didn’t take photos in any of these places except in New Zealand, where we rented a car and drove 3,000 km around the south island. I took 1,500 photos and I am half way through processing them. I was missing my blog (no excuse for not posting, just too busy), and since the New Zealand images are not ready I start posting again with this Chicago shot, taken two days ago from the Adler Planetarium shorefront.

Chicago has this thing that they do the fireworks on the 3rd of July, instead of the 4th, apparently so that the suburbs can do their own fireworks on independence day. The best way to watch the fireworks is from the lake shore in front of the Planetarium, to see them projected onto the city skyline. I went there with some friends of Mayli, as she was stuck at Fermilab for a MINOS shift. The fireworks were nice, and we even had a free “after-show gig”. As the 1 million crowd was leaving the “Loop”, a gang shooting left a kid dead in the middle of a downtown intersection. We didn’t hear the shooting (good thing, as a couple of people were hit by stray bullets) but it happened quite close to where we were walking, as we run into a charge of 30-something cops running into a train station. Many more officers were blocking intersections, horse riding, gun-yielding, all over the city streets, trying to control the situation as urban ganbangers were walking in groups with their caps turned backward, amid the crowd that just wanted to go home.

The photo is a hand-held, 1/25 sec exposure.