Milwaukee lakefront: Fog, beauty and seagulls

These days, we often start our days early. Super early. Like 4:30 a.m. early.Painful, yes. But necessary these days, as we have a standing appointment with our youngest for dialysis at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa. Some day, I’ll write more about this medial journey, but for now, I’d like to concentrate on how we’re making use of the four hours of treatment when we really don’t need to be present. Initially, it was just getting our patient there and hanging out, doing work and trying to stay awake. Now, we’ve settled into a comfortable routine — as comfortable and normal as we can — and feel that we can use some of this early morning time to work on our craft.So this morning, we decided to capture some footage we needed for a project, and then explore the Milwaukee lakefront,  which is always stunning and ripe with opportunities for filming.This morning was no exception.Our first stop was Old Saint Mary Parish, where we filmed two weddings. Recently, one of those couples decided to add a cinematic film for their anniversary to supplement their documentary films, and I wanted to add extra value to the establishing shots of their church. So off we went.St. Mary’s is a gorgeous, Cream City brick building built in 1847 by German Catholic immigrants and designed by Victor Schulte, a Prussian immigrant. It has a beautiful spire with a gold cross at its peak, which looks pretty smashing on film, although you won’t see it in the accompanying footage, because we were going for a more subdued look with the facade and carved nameplate of the church.One thing we had forgotten about flying our aerial camera at the lakefront was how disturbing the drone is to the seagulls. Seriously, just one climb past the cross on the church and suddenly a flock of seagulls started circling, belting out their harsh “eeeeek” repeatedly, which we took to mean “Get the heck out of our airspace.” While none of them got super close, it’s always a risk to have birds flying near out little bird, so we quickly got our shots and landed our Phantom.Next we moved on to the Milwaukee Art Museum, thinking the fog rolling in would look mysterious and cool surrounding the Quadracci Pavilion, designed by Santiago Calatrava. And while the clip is lovely, I really prefer seeing that lakefront gem gleaming in an early morning sunrise as opposed to fog.Our last shot was kind of a lark, as we were planning to have breakfast at the Mad Rooster (go there if you haven’t), but they didn’t open until 7 a.m. So, I had seen an interesting angle of a statue of Milwaukee’s first mayor, Solomon Juneau, which commands a bluff spot in Juneau Park. This statue faces the city instead of the lake, which I think is unusual, but I guess appropriate for the first elected official to watch over the city.I had seen the statue from below as we drove along Lincoln Memorial Drive, and thought a shot of Solomon from below, then climbing up along the bluff to the tall buildings and fog would sum up our outing. And I think it worked.So that was our adventurous Friday morning on the lakefront. What’s your favorite place along the shore?Of course, stay tuned for more wedding highlights in the coming weeks, and more early morning filming!Happy Friday,Cindy