Editor’s Note: Photos in the Things galleries are always located in particular places, and often have people in and around them, but the main show is always the many-of-a-kind items found in the gallery title. Thus, the Things galleries are a catchall for photos that focus less on people and places and more on generic items of interest. Think bridges, churches, ruins, temples, forts and the like.

As with the People and Places galleries, my goal in taking these pictures was more to capture a kaleidoscope of interesting singularities than to produce perfectly composed, colored and cropped photographs. Also, as with the People and Places galleries, you’re in for lots of visual variations of a favorite photographic target. Prominent among these is the Millennium Park gallery found in the Parks folder.

The construction of the high rise office building at 300 North LaSalle Street was another favorite subject I followed closely from all angles. Its oeuvre was sufficiently copious and distinct that I separated it from its natural fit in the Places gallery of EB Near 310 S Michigan and 325 N LaSalle. Pictures of the 300 North LaSalle Street building in the Construction gallery follow the site’s development from demolition of the City of Chicago’s garage once there to the final erection of a stunning 57-story office tower. The building was a proximate photographic target as it conveniently rose across the street from Britannica after its move from 310 South Michigan to its new global headquarters at 325 North LaSalle Street. The nearby images of ironworkers doing their daily, death-defying, tightrope walking work drew my camera’s attention like a magnet.

My workplace at Britannica also gave me a birds eye view of disaster and mayhem on the LaSalle Street Bridge over the Chicago River when one of the Transformers movies was shot there. You’ll see these images in the Wrecks gallery.