sometime august last year, one of my chicago photos made it to the cover of an e-zine. the editor of the online magazine found this photo from my flickr account and sent me an e-mail asking for permission if they can publish it in a feature entitled, "great american beaches".
without even knowing which photo was being requested to be published, all i could answer was "yes!", obviously very excited with the idea. in my mind, i tried to recall which photo could possibly make it to an e-zine and that picture definitely did not cross my mind. i took several photos of the beach, but i have forgetten about this one. however, when the editor replied back and singled this photo out, i smiled and as if it were yesterday, suddenly remembered taking this photo.
it was a sunny summer chicago afternoon. the kind you wouldn't want to spend inside malls or the apartment. so, eventhough i was alone, i took the bus and headed north towards the beach. there's also an interesting story about riding the chicago bus that day, hehe, but i will skip that one for now and move along. so on the beach, i was mostly taking photos of kids playing by the shore or watch grown people play volleyball and almost got into a fight over it. they were already drunk and the sun hasn't even set.
when i would take pictures of people, i would whisper "litrato, por favor", give them a friendly im-not-a-psycho smile and lift my camera a little bit with my right hand. of course nobody hears me speaking, but the people knew what i meant. these phrases were what i used to say to people when i went traveling to colombia last 2005. i thought it's okay to use because no one would hear anyway and really, the equivalent in english doesn't sound quite the same.
at some point, i decided to walk over the breakwater. from where i was standing, i could see the the tall buildings in chicago (one of which is the famous and very memorable John Hancock building) with the beach and the people on the shore as the foreground. there were strong waves that day and that meant strong winds which made me very uncomfortable. i took one shot, and fearing that i might slip or be thrown over the water, headed quickly back to the shore.
that's it. one shot, and that shot made it to the e-zine. there were 30 photos that made it and mine was the first that would show. i would like to think that in this e-zine, mine made to the cover :)
it was truly a lovely day. glad i went out to take pictures.
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