Continuing on with the highlights of this past year, May turned out to be a very light month. I am not entirely sure why as I look back. The big highlights were two trips to the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, where I was finally able to photograph some cactus flowers just after they had bloomed. My timing every year previous was pretty awful, most of the time I was usually too late.

June made up for May. I attended the June meet up of the Drink & Click, the theme that month was “car details.” We went to a classic car show in Schiller Park, and spent the day falling in love with many of the cars, including an incredible 1959 Pontiac Bonneville that you could have fit an Olympic-sized swimming pool in the trunk.

The weekend after, I attended two events that could not have been more different from each other. The morning was spent with a friend of mine at the Illinois Fire Buffs’ exhibition at the Chicago Fire Academy (of the Chicago Fire Dept.). They had a collection of old fire engines which they drove around the block, and tents where vendors were selling anything from old fire equipment to CD recordings of emergency calls from fire departments across the nation. In the afternoon, I went to Millennium Park for the Zombie March. It’s an event that has been running for several years, but, apparently the zombie crowd has been steadily dissipating. There were only a handful of people participating this year.

At the end of the month, I worked at the Out Of Chicago Photography Conference. This was the third year of the conference, and it has grown exponentially each year. More attendees, more presenters, more activities. It is a blast, and it has been a privilege to have a small part in it the past two years.

We’ve reached the midpoint, next part will be up tomorrow!