©Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
I’m always on the lookout for interesting locations in Chicago, so a friend told me to check out a tunnel connecting underground train lines that go through the Loop. The vanishing point and the lights made for an interesting background, so like many situations, I waited for I-don’t-know-what to happen in order to make an interesting picture. Without a person of interest, the image is only valuable to a location scout. So I waited, and waited. I get self-conscious when being stared at within crowds of people, so waiting is not a lot of fun. When you’re standing in the middle of a crowd you get a ton of stares and often a few comments. But you also don’t want to give up early, or rationalize an early departure just to relieve discomfort. At some point, this masked figure came through. I looked at the screen at the back of my camera and thought, well, the totality of the image is surreal enough – there’s something storm-trooper-science-fictionish to it. And it piqued my visual interest more than anything else that morning. So I went back to my day. It could have been just my rationalization talking, but judgment calls given limited time are a part of the business…