So what are all these pictures and all this information about Chicago and some of its major attractions doing on this site?

Due to my job, I get to spend a lot of time in down town Chicago. I’ve always been impressed by skyscrapers. Chicago has plenty of them. As a result, one day, I started taking pictures in the city. At first it was just tall buildings. Before I knew it I was photographing all kind of stuff in the down town area. And one day, out of the blue, it hit me: why not share them all with my visitors? And this is how this whole section began.

Just like any great city, there’s plenty of interesting history and facts about Chicago and its major landmarks. Besides sky scrapers, the history of certain places (especially those I’ve seen) and events has been another thing I find myself fond of. And since this whole website is about the stuff I waste my time with (mostly useless, as even the interesting information you will find here it’s not going to benefit anyone in any way), I decided to publish the things I learn about Chicago.

So here it is. Pictures of and information about Chicago and its landmarks. As you can probably see there’s not even by far as many of them as on other, already established, sites dedicated to this great city. This is mostly because my time doesn’t allow me to add it all at one time. It would probably bee a few good years before I would have this whole section complete. As a result, I decided to go with a different approach: adding a couple of photos and pieces of information at a time and publish them. When time allows, I will come back and add some more. And so on and so forth (which is actually the strategy for this entire web site). I do, however, strive to bring you new pieces at least once a week. So make sure to come back.

Oh! One more thing. You have probably very easily realized that the pictures I’ve taken are not even close to professional ones. That’s because I’m not a professional photographer. I use a Sony Cybershot S500 (which, by the way, is my first digital camera ever, and which I probably wouldn’t have had to this day if it weren’t a present). Besides this, I don’t know anything about angles, light and other photo-related stuff.

Can I use any of your pictures?

First of all, considering they’re amateur pictures, I must say I’m flattered you would be interested in using them. Secondly, as I said, taking pictures of Chicago is pretty much like a hobby for me and I do not intend to use them directly to make money (like selling them as posters or anything like that). The only monetization I use on this site is third party ads. Therefore, you CAN use any of the pictures you find here. The one thing I would like to ask from you is to mention one of the pages of this site (either my homepage http://www.wasting-your-time.com or one of the pages from which you took the picture). And if you’re going to use them on a web page or in an email, a link back would be even more appreciated.

Where do you get all the info from?

As far as I know, all of the info published here is in the public domain. Just do a search on Google and you’ll find plenty of pages with information on Chicago.

If it’s so easy for anyone to find all this stuff, why did you have to crowd the web space with even more pages with essentially the same content as others?

I have a really bad memory. I forget things very easily. It has happened to me many times, that I heard something interesting and I forgot it within a couple of weeks. Taking the time to build all these pages with all these (interesting) pieces of information about Chicago and its landmarks, makes it easier for me to remember them. And much easier to find them again when I need them. Although I’m not a tour guide, stuff like this can prove quite useful in my job. So, if you think I’m just wasting your time by making you read all this stuff all over again, without bringing anything new to the table, consider it’s here for my own use and benefit. Besides that, remember that the name of this web site is “Wasting Your Time”. So, as far as I’m concerned, I’m doing just that.