CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and for one Chicagoan, photography is his language.
WBBM Newsradio went behind-the-scenes with internationally published landscape and cityscape photographer, Barry Butler - the man behind the camera that takes some of Chicago's most stunning photos.
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"What happened was, I was playing hockey, shattered my collar bone in a thousand pieces, someone took me out in a game and I was told I couldn't do anything for eight months," he said. "So I had one arm to work with and bought myself a tripod and a camera and taught myself photography. And the rest kind of went from there.
"It really was to avoid boredom that I ended up taking up photography," he laughs.
What motivates him?
"Every day it's a puzzle. My puzzle starts the night before, because I am trying to figure out what would be the best shot in Chicago to take a photograph, and then it's the challenge of actually capturing it and walking up to a spot and seeing what all my options are. It's a daily challenge that I have and I enjoy it," Butler said.
Each day, Butler reviews weather data. Usually 24 hours ahead of time, he knows where he is going to shoot. Nothing is random for him, each shoot is planned.
"There's a lot of planning. There's not a shot that I take that I just show up and say 'give me beauty.' It is all planned ahead of time," he said.
Butler relates photography to fishing. Sometimes you get a great catch, sometimes you go home with nothing.
He wakes up every morning before sunrise and heads to the spot best suited for photography that day. WBBM Newsradio joined him and his canine companion, Ajax, on a morning shoot on Tuesday, March 19 at Museum Campus, near the Shedd Aquarium.
He set up about an hour before sunrise, adjusted his camera, so that when the time came for the perfect shot, he was ready.
"What I like about is, as usually I had this big plan, it was during fall, the colors on the trees at Fullerton Avenue were absolutely gorgeous, they were golden. I knew I had about a 10 minute window for the sun to come through to light them really nicely. I had it all set up...I am all set up and then this guy decides to walk in front of my scene and under my breath I am swearing and saying everything god-awful you could ever think of because this guy is going to ruin my scene and all he's doing is walking back and forth...and I waited, waited, waited, because typically people leave and he did the greatest thing, which was sit on a bench that was there. And he made the photograph.
"This is the prettiest city in America, c'mon," Butler said with a smile. "This is easy. This is the best canvas for a photographer in American when it comes to a city. We have everything. We have the lake, we have the river, we have these incredible structures that are rising up to the sky. It's such a pretty spot and it has anything and everything you could wish for as far as a city in America."
And as to why he shoots city and landscape photography...
"I find it more of a challenge because of the fact that it's never the same. Every day I can be in the same spot and the look could be different. Whereas, if you are doing portraiture photography, you have your lighting and you can make the same shot every time. Whereas with landscape photography, it constantly changes and it's not a controlled light so you really have to manage your camera to capture the light."
But the key to a perfect picture he said is composition.
"Does it look interesting? Does the sky have some clouds in it so that is creates some texture? Then obviously lighting is important, how is it illuminating the scene? But it starts with composition. You can have the greatest light, but if the photograph itself is not interesting, or the imaging is not interesting it's not worth taking," he said.
And with his favorite picture being shot in the fall, it was assumed that fall would be his favorite season to shoot in...
"What means the world to me is when, especially on social media, either someone will post something or they will send me an email saying, 'hey, that photograph meant so much to me at the right time, I was not having the best day. It was a beautiful scene and just reminded me how pretty our city is' or 'reminded me how pretty the world is' those are the things that mean more to me than anyone saying 'hey that was the best photograph in a competition.' When I feel like I can have that type of impact on someone, it's the best reward that I can ever get."
When asked if he ever thought picking up a camera would lead him to where he is today, Butler laughed and responded, "No. I thought photography was a way of not being bored. And it's afforded me a lot of things, but probably the thing that it has given me is appreciation of every day. Every day is different. There is beauty every day, fine beauty, be optimistic that something good is going to happen today. So it has kind of changed my mindset more than anything of just how to tackle life."