When I purchased my new camera, it took a day longer than expected in order to actually use it in any substantial way. As it’s a Canon, like its predecessor, I didn’t need to learn a new set of ins-and-outs, but I did have to charge its battery. Unlike the older über-durable model (it still works, sometimes,) two double-A batteries are not a sufficient power supply. Thankfully, the camera in question came with its own (uncharged) battery and its own (strangely compact) charger. I had to go home, charge the battery, and then hope for sunny weather the following day. Sunny weather did not come. This didn’t deter me, however; poor lighting conditions are a challenge to good photographs, but not a complete threat to them. I managed a number of good photos on the day in question. Because sunny weather hadn’t been shuffled into the cards for that day, I decided to take advantage of the unctuous, overcast skies. There are places in Chicago in which this is possible. When one enters the Loop, it doesn’t matter if it’s sunny or not. The Loop exists within the depths of a cavernous labyrinth of skyscrapers, alleys, and elevated train tracks. Everything is given a shadowy, gray wash, liberally punctuated by splatters of pigeon-output. As night falls and business goes into hibernation mode, the city’s rats begin their incessant scurries. I wasn’t interested in photographing Chicago rats; it’s isn’t good for PR, and it wasn't so good a day for pigeons, either; so in my Loop-bound wanders, I found that I’d ambled relatively far south. I skirted the darker, grayer, more pigeon-enhanced (yet oddly pigeon-less) regions of the region, and found myself within hailing distance of Columbia College, Chicago: my Alma Mater. I approached my old haunts, surprised at how the only changes in the area were little changes. The dinky-little fast food joint run by the Greek guy with the toupee has been replaced by a parking garage, and the dinky-little fast food joint (run by the Greek guy with the toupee) occupies the spot of a former greasy-spoon diner. It’s been gentrified, albeit on a scale friendly to Liberal Arts students. The student body remains largely unchanged. The faces are different, of course, as are the ambient fashions, but the memetic core of the student body is consistent; it is—if anything—a bit more refined, a bit more confident of itself, and less-encumbered by late 1980s fashion. (Blue and pink hair, tattoos and pseudo-tribal piercings are now the norm among mainstream young people in Chicago, and so now I wonder what the more outré youth uses as its means of self-expression: slide rules and pocket computers might be nice, but I somehow doubt that.) There was actually very little to photograph on the day that I visited Columbia, and another photo of that day has already found itself in my gallery. It was a good day for photographs, nonetheless, and I was amazed, in looking back, at the number of times I’d walked by (and even visited) the Columbia College main campus, while never managing to capture it, photographically. On March 18, 2015, I rectified that situation: and the image you’ve seen here is the end result. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re having a great week.