Morning Becomes Chicago

From the fifteenth floor of the Renaissance Hotel, the Chicago River bends through its architectural corridor in a thirty-second exposure that turns the predawn waterway into a ribbon of light — Marina City's twin corncob towers to the right, Trump Tower and the Wrigley Building beyond, Mies van der Rohe's IBM Building as a cool dark rectangle amid the warmth. Greg titled this image "Sicut Ante Lucem" — as before light — a name that describes the exact quality of a sky that has not yet decided between night and dawn. This panorama required a fifteen-floor vantage point that few photographers can access, and the thirty-second exposure demanded a sky that would hold still long enough to resolve. Chicago at this hour feels earned.