Everyone loves a sunset or sunrise don't they? It's probably one of the most cliched of genres in photography, it's certainly one of the most uploaded photography themes on the internet. Throughout history humans have been drawn to the sun, moon and stars so it's no surprise really that we take, upload and gravitate towards these images, I personally love taking sunsets, I'm not good pre 6am!

Below are a set of shots from the Hancock Observatory in Chicago (more details in "Chicago: CityPass" post) and right at the end a couple of shots from an early morning -15/17 "stroll" to Lake Michigan for the sun rise which resulted in feeling numb all over despite having what felt like a million layers on!

Hope you enjoy looking as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Hello all! 2014 is upon us and by now I should've been in Chicago starting the new adventures, however due to a rare Polar Vortex in America plunging temperatures to -25 (and the rest) and the combination of trying to get my broken tooth sorted from that British Airways bag of nuts on my 2013 flight to China things have been delayed somewhat, however thankfully I now have a departure date of 31st Jan so this Travel blog will soon be a hive of activity.

In the meantime I found out that I have had an image shortlisted by National Geographic Traveller Magazine under "People" category. It was one of my goals for 2014 to somehow get an image in print in a National Geographic magazine and three weeks into New Year I am glad to announce it will be printed in the April edition along with the other shortlisted entries and the winners. Funny to think this all happened after picking up a random copy of "Traveller" in China last year while passing the time on that cramped train to Tibet.

Hopefully there will be some other good news on its way before we depart the UK but for now, here is the link to all the National Geographic shortlisted entries, I hope you will agree that there are some superb entires there.

Click here: National Geographic Traveller online competition shortlist

Chicago: sunsets and sunrises

(Im)patiently waiting..