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the chicago athletic association building reading room is today's focal point

i believe i have around 5,000 images taken thus far of the exterior and interior of the chicago athletic association building and annex. this vast collection of imagery has been subdivided into categories based on mostly subjective parameters i've put in place (e.g., location, materials and so on).

today i decided to step away from the architectural details (i.e., close-ups) i always tend to gravitate towards and instead, capture the space as a whole, where many of its parts are placed in an actual context involving scale, arrangements or configurations and so on.  i spent a great of time in the old reading room, located on the second floor, where a forest of darkly stained gothic style quartered oak wood tracery surrounds me every-which-way.

when i enter the building from madison street (the annex), i tend to walk by the swimming pool and lobby (both areas have not changed much) and set up camp in the reading room. the cameras and tripods are prepared, the hard hat is planted on my head and the headphones inserted to deliver the music necessary to get into my "zone." everything else just falls to the wayside.

no agenda really comes to mind at first. clearly if there have been alterations, i will document that thoroughly and systematically - with ease. the challenge or rather "fun part" is allowing the mind to wander in the space i have visited time and again. how can i document it differently this time? what do i focus in on? what have i not captured, that down the road may be of great importance. do i get lost in the details, or do i step back and capture it all as a whole.

the few images i'm posting today are overviews or rather provide more "scenes" of the reading room. that is what i decided to focus on (no pun intended). as much as i wanted to run up to an intricately carved detail and capture it from all angles and various light settings, i chose to just step back and shoot.

i will admit, it's not incredibly rewarding, but i realized, after pouring over my image database that i have captured so much detail without really providing any context. the images taken today readily address those issues, such as location within a given room, its relationship or contribution to the design scheme as a whole and so on.

because the lighting is very bad - in so many ways - and, because i have a tendency to alter imagery to convey and/or add a mood that may (or may not) compliment, or even enhance the setting, i still cannot or will not present an image in "raw" form. perhaps it's selfish of me, but at the end of the day, when i'm busy editing images, i have an overwhelming urge to inject some creativity into the images.

 



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