Tag Archives: landscape

Google & Chicago

Google Top Contributor

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untitled-September 23, 2014-43I have been a Google Top Contributor for a little over a year now for the product Google+. It has been a great experience so far and I am looking forward to the future of the program as well. The Google Top Contributor Program is a collection of faithful people that are the most active and knowledgeable people you’ll find in Google’s Help Forums.IMG_20140924_115506-MOTION Globally, they help millions of people get their questions answered and keep the forums humming with interesting discussions.

Google Chicago Meetup

Google recently invited me to their headquarters in Chicago and I had a blast there. I learned a great deal that will aid in me helping others with other Google products as well as help myself with how I write things to make it easier to organize written content. I currently help in the Google+ Help Community and I got to catch up with some of my fellow Google+ TC’s Like Kim Beasley and Zachary Fair. untitled-September 23, 2014-72The thing that definitely makes it magical and worth the trip are the awesome individuals that you spend it with.

 

I have lived in North Chicago for a few years a while ago and enjoyed my time in the snow, but I never appreciated and even noticed how beautiful downtown Chicago really is. I do see now why Chicago is the Architectural City of the World. There are skyscrapers from many different eras and countries which was just amazing. If you ever go to Chicago make sure you do the Chicago River Boat Tour. I had a field day taking photos.

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My Experience Breaking into Night Photography

The Road Less Traveled…
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I was told along time ago to try night photography, and I finally got up EXTRA early BEFORE training and shot a few shot in the cold. I didn’t know how I felt about night photography. When I shot this one it was freaking cold, so that’s was a CON to me. The pictures turned pretty good. It was shot with a 35mm f/1.8 which was the best lens I could shoot with in low light since it was so dark. It was at 1/4 of a second at f/8 with an ISO of 640. It wasn’t by any means my last night shoot, but I don’t plan to do it as often as others.

This was my second attempt at Night Photography: “The Imperial Theatre”

Picture Taken by Michael Banks

This was a shot that I wanted to attempt to get for about a week (weather). We don’t have many high rise movie theaters like I see from many other notable Photographers, but this will have to do.

From my first attempt it was recommended that I use shutter-priority and keep the ISO down to 100 and I made sure to keep alot of the other suggestions in mind. I am overall satisfied with the shot that I got. I did some post-processing in Lightroom, but no “Radical” changes.

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