DDOD Photos

06/15/2026

There are moments behind the lens that stop you cold.This was one of them.

Standing on the London Eye with my two grandsons, watching the Thames catch fire at sunset — I nearly forgot to press the shutter. Nearly.

London has a way of doing that. One moment you're a photographer working the light. The next, you're just a grandfather standing between two young men who are seeing the world open up in front of them for the first time.

The Parliament buildings glowing amber. The river bending like hammered gold. Boats cutting slow wakes through the reflection. And the city — ancient and modern at the same time — stretching all the way to the horizon.

I've photographed Chicago my entire career. Wrigley Field. The Rookery. The lakefront at dawn. But London reminded me why I picked up a camera in the first place.

Not to capture cities. To capture moments you never want to forget.

This one is now on canvas in our living room. And every time I walk past it, I hear those two boys laughing on the gondola.

That's what fine art prints do. They hold time still.

What's the travel photo you wish you'd taken? Tell me in the comments.

06/12/2026

I took Leah down to the Chicago Riverwalk on a Wednesday morning to watch the bridge lifts. It is one of those things that sounds simple but is genuinely spectacular when a massive bascule bridge rises straight up over the river to let a sailboat through.
No lifts that morning. No tall boats in the queue.

So we just walked. And somewhere under the Dearborn Street Bridge, I stopped and looked up and out and realized this was the shot. The riveted steel of the understructure overhead. The river catches the light. A tour boat is moving west without any hurry. The Merchandise Mart and the clock tower of the Reid Murdoch Building sitting right where they have always been.
Most people experience this stretch of the Chicago River from above, on the bridges, looking down. From the Riverwalk at water level, tucked under a bridge that has been here since 1963, the city reads completely differently. Bigger and quieter at the same time.
The Wednesday bridge lifts happen at 9 am when boats are moving in and out of the river system. Worth a morning if you have never seen one.

06/11/2026

Someone locked this padlock to the bridge railing over Lake Shore Drive and walked away. I don't know the story behind it — but I know the frame it made.

The X of the rails, the lock as an anchor, and the whole city stretching out toward the horizon. Chicago has a way of hiding these small mysteries in plain sight.

06/08/2026

There's a moment when the frame just works. I was on the pedestrian bridge over Lake Shore Drive, shooting the skyline, when this figure walked into my shot. Wide-brim hat, phone in hand, completely in his own world. I had maybe two seconds. My camera did the rest.
That's what street photography teaches you — the city is always composing itself. You just have to be ready.

06/03/2026

06/03/2026

Off-season. Winter. Nobody around.

I set up across from Wrigley and waited for the traffic to clear. Took a while. Cold the whole time.

Worth every minute.

Wrigley Field at night, in black and white. Clark and Addison since 1914.

06/01/2026

Chicago has a way of hiding its most beautiful things in plain sight.

The Nature Boardwalk Pavilion in Lincoln Park. The city framed inside it.

05/21/2026

It was the off-season. A cold winter night on the North Side.

No games. No crowds. Just the marquee glowing and the street empty for once in its life.

I set up my camera across from the park and waited. Traffic kept cutting through the frame. A car here, a bus there. So I waited some more.

When the street finally cleared, I had about thirty seconds. I made the shot.

Wrigley Field has stood at the corner of Clark and Addison since 1914. It has seen everything this city has to offer. On a quiet winter night with nobody around, it looks like it knows it.

05/20/2026

In 1905, Frank Lloyd Wright was hired to redesign the interior of a building he did not design.

The Rookery on LaSalle Street was already seventeen years old when Wright walked in. What he was asked to do was update the Light Court, a soaring interior atrium at the center of the building, and make it feel modern.

What he actually did was turn a Victorian ironwork and glass space into something that still looks ahead of its time more than a century later.

The light fixtures he specified are still there. Clustered globes of white glass suspended from ornate ironwork in perfect symmetry. They were designed to illuminate a working office atrium. They ended up becoming something closer to sculpture.

Most people who visit the Rookery look up once, take a photo on their phone, and move on.

I have been back more times than I can count.