Today is Earth Day. The fortieth anniversary of Earth Day, in fact. Today I had the opportunity to accompany Whirl, Matt and Mary on some field research as part of the Chicago Peregrine Program. I got to tag along and climb up high on of the urban cliff sides where these raptors have adapted to living. It was thrilling!

Over the last several years I have assisted my child bride with her research regarding the peregrine falcons in Chicago. This assistance has always been in an impromptu volunteer support capacity. And always from the ground. She would come back from stories of walking around the abandoned Uptown Theatre, or scaling a building setback 40 stories above Wacker Drive and I would feel a mild pang of jealousy. I want to do that! What made today’s trip special was that I was part of the official Field Museum crew visiting a new nest site on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago. And I got to go where eagles soar! (Okay, maybe not eagles — sorry, Misfits — but falcons!)

The museum had received a report of a pair of falcons nesting on a building where they have never nested before. Last week Whirl and Mary visited the building briefly and confirmed the nest. Today we returned with two goals: identifying the birds from their legbands and judge the status of the scrape. The first goal is more difficult than you might imagine. The second goal required letting go of any debilitating fear of heights.

Whirl spends hundreds of hours every year confirming and reconfirming the identities of the various falcon pairs in the area. The legbands are small and it is ideal to get photographic evidence of the bands. That’s some tough photography. Action wildlife photography. Action wildlife photography in a battlezone. Okay, maybe I exaggerate a bit with that last description. But only a bit. Falcons aggressively defend their nest sites. And these birds are well-equipped to do some serious harm to the unprepared.

When building owners learn of their new tenants there is often a period of adjustment. Sometimes buildings wholeheartedly embrace them, like the Evanston Public Library or 1130 S. Michigan. They set up nestcams and enthusiastically provide activity reports. Other buildings are more reticent. And for good reason. The birds are loud. They are messy. They leave prey remains littered about the ground level. Their presence often restricts access to parts of the building. A couple years back, a pair nested on the construction scaffolding of a high rise development, effectively shutting down construction on that section of the building for the nesting season. And some people are just scared of birds. Hitchcock knew this; he made a powerful film about that psychological fear. — There is that aggressive behavior I mentioned earlier. The reactions of the building management and tenants at today’s site are a mix of all of the above. As a result the building has asked the Field Museum personnel to keep the exact location confidential for a while. So the best I can tell you is that the nest is up high on one of the buildings on North Michigan Avenue. If you’re shopping for your prom dress on the Magnificent Mile today, look up. You just might see them.

The Peregrine Falcon Program has been a rewarding project and I’ve been happy to be able to assist in small ways over the past several years: a photograph, or a sighting or an idea here and there. Today was particularly special for me as I got a chance to be part of the day-to-day aspect of the research in a way I hadn’t experienced before. And I thought it was an appropriate activity, given the date.

So that’s my Earth Day 2010. I was somewhere above the Mag Mile looking out over the city trying to take photographs of aggressive, uncooperative models in skimpy outfits and thinking to myself: so this is what it’s like to do a photo shoot with Tyra Banks.

My friend, Scorey Feldman, has been on me for several years to come out and see the Windy City Rollers compete. I’ve meant to do so on several occasions, but the opportunity always seemed to have passed by the time I remembered that I wanted to go. A few days ago, I learned that the last home game of the 2009 season was scheduled for Saturday. Again, I meant to tell Whirl about it and ask if she’d like to go. And I got sidetracked. (This is becoming something of a theme in my life. I should do something about that.) So yesterday afternoon, a few hours before the bout, I asked her and some of my friends if they’d like to go. Whirl agreed; my friends had other plans. But Smokes suggested I should call up Scorey and see if I couldn’t get a media pass to shoot the bout from the floor. So I did. And Scorey hooked me up with a photography pass and a media access pass.

The little part of my brain that operates as a photography assignment desk sent over the instructions to the other little part of my brain that is a wannabe sports shooter: go to UIC Pavilion and make photographs that will cause Strazz to weep. (My assignment desk mind has some incredibly high standards.)

The night was a double header. Two bouts. The first bout pitted the Windy City Rollers development team Second Wind against the Brewcity Bruisers from Milwaukee. The second bout — the main event — was between the Rose City Rollers Wheels of Justice and the Windy City Rollers All-Stars. The WCR All-Stars are the top-ranked team in the region and headed to the National Tournament in Philadelphia in November. The Wheels of Justice are one of the hardest hitting, physical teams in the nation.

So I had about an hour to try and get my act together on how to shoot this sport. Everyone I met was friendly and helpful. Gil Leora, the team photographer, suggested shooting positions and provided some very helpful advice on how to capture the action without becoming an accident of the action. Flash Hottie spent a lot of time with me explaining the rules, the strategy and highlighting some key players to watch. As I said, I’ve never been to a roller derby bout before. And now that I have been, I can state that I really had a great time. It’s a fun sport, with lots of action and strategy. Flash Hottie described it as a martial art mixed with athleticism. And while the redundancy of that statement amused me at the time, I think her irony was intentional. It doesn’t take itself terribly seriously.

The entire production is done by volunteers. None of the players or the support staff get paid for what they do. One of my co-workers, Tally Savalas, also works for the WCR as a statistician. He was amused to see me in attendance, and then further intrigued that I was there to shoot it.

As to the results of the bouts, the Second Wind lost a close-fought game against the girls from Milwaukee. The All-Stars game was extremely close for the first three quarters of the game until Varla Vendetta and Eva Dead broke it open and routed the Wheels of Justice 113-73. The breakout scoring all happened in the last twelve minutes due to hard-fought, physical play and some very speedy jammers.

And with that, the team is off to the Nationals.

If you get a chance, check it out!

The second annual Chicago Criterium ran today in Grant Park. The first race of the day, the Juniors race, started at 7:00 AM, so I trundled out of bed early and walked over to the park. Despite the smallness of the hour, this had a nice photographic benefit of allowing me to shoot in the warm morning light just after sunrise. Normally a Sunday morning at that hour is deserted downtown. The Starbucks by our house doesn’t get busy until at least a couple hours later. But today the Loop was busy already early in the morning.

Last year, I wrote about my experiences with the race. I reminisced about my experiences as a bicycle racer. What I did not mention was that I came to the Criterium without much of a plan. I just came to check it out and see what it was like. I used the excuse that I was going to take pictures to push me over there. But once I was there, I was somewhat at a loss. So I shot a lot of pictures of people I didn’t know and just soaked it all in. It was enlightening to me to be around bike racing again after so many years away from it.

When I posted the pictures I got a number of messages from people expressing interest in the photos or requesting permission to use them on other websites. So this year, I tucked a few of those names in my back pocket and made it a point to seek them out and say hello. One is the father of two boys ages 10 and 12 who are starting racing. Another is the skilled rider whose win in the Category 4s race last year advanced him to Category 3 where he’s raced successfully this year.

This gave my photography some direction. I sought these people out and tried to make interesting pictures of them in action. In effect I was my own photo desk: I gave myself a photo assignment and carried it out. Not that I have a particularly keen understanding of how that sort of assignment works in the real world, but I pretended. I also tried some other techniques. I tried to do some more panning shots. I tried to get a good shot of a start, and of a finish. I’m quite pleased with the results.

My only regret is that I decided to only bring one lens to the race. And it was the same telephoto lens I had brought last year. So I retread some ground, shooting similar shots from similar positions on the course. I wished I had brought my wide angle lens to try and get a different look of the race. I took notes as to what some of the other photographers were trying in hopes that next time I’ll come up with something new.

I had heard that last year’s Criterium was well-received by the cycling community. The announcers reiterated that fact more than once, that USA Cycling (formerly USCF) rated the Chicago Criterium the top criterium race in the nation last year. The rating was based on organization, the course, the schedule, the availability to transportation and a host of factors that might easily be used to demonstrate that Chicago is capable of hosting an Olympic-level cycling event. Several people I talked to expressed that they thought if Chicago were to win the Olympic bid we would see more interest in racing. And if Chicago lost the Olympic bid, they feared this may be the last year for the Criterium. I guess we’ll find out in October.

This morning Whirl and I took the El down to Chinatown to watch the Dragon Boat Races off Ping Tom Park. This was the ninth year for the Race. It’s presented by the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce in cooperation with the City of Chicago and the Chicago Park District. We’ve never attended them before. It’s quite an event, and I had a fun time trying to capture some of the excitement with photographs.

I had a number of questions about the sport, how the tournament is structured. What the rules are. And several of the spectators were more than happy to explain what was happening. While most of the teams competing today were company teams put together to raise money for Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Culture and Diversity, I was intrigued to learn that there are professional Dragon Boat teams. And when we saw a couple of these teams take to the river, the difference in skill and technique was easy to discern. They knew what they were doing and were serious about doing it.

Teams were comprised of twenty one crewmen: eighteen paddlers, a drummer, a steersman and a flag puller. The tournament began with a series of matched time trials that fed into a seeded elimination bracket. The course was a 1000 yard strait stretch of the south branch of the Chicago River. A typical race lasted about a minute and a half. I was most intrigued by the flag puller. The flag puller is a special crew position aboard the dragon boat. The flag puller rides aboard near the decorated dragon head, out of the way of the drummer. The race is concluded when the flag puller successfully grabs the float flag at the finish line. The flag puller must not miss pulling the flag, otherwise the boat is disqualified. Fellow spectators told me that the flag puller position is called “the monkey.”