My first instameet…hard to believe! Seems I’m always late to the party with these things, and I would have missed out on this opportunity had a friend not had a +1 for this outing. So glad he invited me along despite the 3:30am wake-up call!
We were allowed up to the Wills (Sears) Tower Skydeck just after 5am. We were in the second group up the elevators so we got pretty decent spots to watch the sunrise over the city. We setup and caught a couple nighttime and blue hour shots before the sun broke.


For the most part the sunrise was relatively underwhelming given the haze and cloud cover. But there were moments of fog streaming over the city creating some interesting mood.




A little detail shot…

There was a brief moment shortly after sunrise where the sun was streaming through the clouds over the lake creating more great mood.

Then, my favorite shot of the morning…no architecture, just this lone boat sailing through the stream of light into the unknown.

We were some of the last to leave, lingering as long as we could to see if anything interesting might happen. As luck would have it, the clouds started to come in thick and fast rushing through the canyons of the city leaving just the tops of the buildings to peak through the clouds.

A quick iPhone hyperlapse of the clouds passing through…

If you would like to see a more professional timelapse be sure to check out Peter Tsai’s from the same morning here.
And for more photos from Sunday’s sunrise head over here.