YAY!!!! You posted this FABULOUS capture, that I love soo much. You have street light and motion from a passing bus clear sky and LOTS OF AWESOME POTS :) Soft, Stunning and Superb.

Gorgeous muted color tones with soooo much to look at!! Cool photo.

Cool indeed! Makes city life look really pleasant. Who was it said the camera never lies?...

I'm really glad you decided to take Helle's advice and post this fantastic image. It's great that Helle was able to post first, to allow us to see it through her eyes. You could literally feel the excitement in her words as she described what she liked most about this photo. This was a very nice way to start the day that gave me a huge smile Mark.

Great urban composition of lights & shadows - fine work...

Excellent

This IS really something. I noticed the calming, cool blues right off. So much gentle motion; so soft and pleasing. I think we love circles and the uplifting motion here brings our eyes sweeping around from the bottom left - straight up through the post and around again to those beautiful orbs. It is very meditative. All happening right here on the "patio" while the city looks on in the distance. A+ :-)

I love this dawn palette, and the way the light softens everything; a truly beautiful capture, Mark!

A most interesting combo of sharp and soft. Those little trees inside the pots are like feathers, and the pots are so defined, as are those stark branches. I also like how the composition beckons one toward the lights and new adventures. The coloring gives it a slight surreal, fantasy aura that adds to the beauty. CC

Really beautiful. Love the hurs and flow.

the shade you've chosen makes the photo more interesting

Someone moved the pots. !!! I found this place on Google Street View, and the pots are at an angle to the building, not along the curve. Isn't it amazing, what you can find out on the internet? LOL! What a meaningless, trivial piece of information I've uncovered! :P Never mind. You know, Mark, that Helle is always right, and you should listen to her more often! (Just as she should listen to US more often! Mwaaaahaahaahaahaa! Oh wait ... maybe I should listen to the two of you more, as well. LOL!) This really is a marvellous shot. The softness you've given it, the bit of motion blur, the light, enhances the feeling of a vast city that isn't quite awake. The viewer and the bus driver are the only people who are out and about, and the city belongs to us alone. (Well, to you, but you've drawn us into this place, so now you have to share.) The whole place is holding its breath, waiting for ... something. On a day that begins looking like this, something interesting is bound to happen. The stories of everyone in Chicago begin here. There. Now you see? You don't know. Listen to Helle! :P

Andrea, it isn't that the camera does or does not lie, it's the digifiddlers who determine the outcome of what we see. But I digress. Fine study and postwork of the earthen pots and environment taken in the early morning, Mark. Those barren trees look eerily cool, silhouetted against the dawn light. Not to be nitpicky or anything, but, actually, this sorta looks like a flash shot, with the relatively bright foreground contrasted against a relatively dark background. And, to paraphrase Andrea, this looks like a perfect place for an ATM robbery.

A lovely dawn capture with the night not quite gone and the lights still on. I like these lovely pots too as they soften this entrance and make it look very inviting. They would look good in my garden too but we wont go there. A lovely time of the day to share with all of us bed huggers. Mind you I do get up at dawn to get the paper each day and I should take my camera but never think to.

Splendid image!!!

lovely!!! really like it!!!

EXCELLENT SHOT

This has an almost otherwordly look to it, those soft, almost blurry colors, or rather lack of colors just seem to whisper. I don't know what they're saying, but I'm saying----"WOW!!!"

since colors, especially bright, digress, desaturation often reveals graphics and other inner, first invisible, links among things. very lovely image, Mark! indeed lens lies! so does the matrix! or rather, they have their own truths, if I may say so.

fantastic picture

I have so few photos of the stretch along Lake Shore Drive, or anywhere near that portion of Chicago. I'll rectify that soon, but given my hours, I won't be up thataway at sunrise. I love the feeling this has, especially with the faint desaturation and softening.