Reflective Flood © 2004 Kevin W. Hammond All Rights Reserved

The Des Plaines river here in Chicago is in the process of flooding.  We've had some substantial rain over the past few days and many who live within the flood plain are simply waiting for the inevitable at this point.  The last time the river flooded was back in '87.  Given this, I headed out to take a look first hand and spend a little time documenting the event.

My first stop was along River Road, just north of Higgins, at a little forest preserve pull-in.  The water level was within 20' of the parking lot.  Bathed in shadow and green foliage, it was pretty cool to see.  Fortunately, the water was pretty still allowing me to get this reflective picture.  Reflective Flood was taken with my

Astute Statement of the Obvious © 2004 Kevin W. Hammond All Rights Reserved

28-135mm lens at 135mm.  I used an aperture of f/8 as the trees were on the same focal plane and adjusted my shutter speed until 1/15s indicated a correct exposure.  f/16 or f/22 would have afforded a greater depth of field and possibly a sharper image, but I would have had to trade ISO (resulting in more noise) or shutter speed (resulting in more shake, even with image stabilization.)  Unfortunately my tripod wasn't with me and 1/15s was the best I could do handholding and with image stabilization.

I carried on up River Road to the railroad tracks where the clearance is known to be 9' to see how high the water level truly had risen.  In this picture, Astute Statement of the Obvious, it is clear once again that the government is trying to protect us from ourselves.  For this picture, I zoomed my 28-135mm lens out to 70mm.  I was using an aperture of f/22 to maximum depth of field as I shot under the bridge.  I adjusted my shutter speed until 1/60s at ISO 400 indicated a correct exposure and fired away.