Chicago Skyline at Night Photography | Lake Michigan Waterfront
City Lights Reflecting Across Chicago's Lakefront
Chicago changes character completely after dark. The buildings stop competing with the streets and suddenly become a field of illuminated windows, hard vertical lines and small points of light against an almost completely black sky.
I photographed this view across the Chicago waterfront with Lake Michigan stretching through the foreground. What caught me was the separation between the dense architecture and the open darkness around it. The skyline is packed with towers, yet the water gives the photograph room to breathe. Reflections from the city lights break across the surface in narrow streaks of gold, white and blue, connecting the buildings to the lake without overwhelming the scene.
I also like how little detail there is in the sky. That large expanse of darkness makes the illuminated architecture feel even more concentrated. Individual windows become part of the pattern, while the different heights and shapes of the towers create an irregular rhythm across the frame.
Chicago is one of those cities where the architecture itself becomes part of its identity, and at night that becomes especially apparent. From across the water, the city feels both massive and surprisingly distant. The photograph is less about one particular building than the skyline as a whole — the density, the light, the vertical scale and the unmistakable relationship between Chicago and Lake Michigan.
© Dan Kosmayer, 2011
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About My Fine Art Photography
Every photograph in my collection comes from my own travels, explorations, and years behind the camera.
I create my work as photographic art rather than mass-produced decoration. From street portraits and abandoned places to landscapes, architecture, and the unusual subjects I discover along the way, each image begins with something that made me stop and look.
My photographs are available in multiple sizes so the same image can work in anything from an intimate wall space to a large statement installation.
