I wanted to accentuate Chicago's gritty and industrial side, thus the image underwent a rather heavy manipulation in post processing. I went for a certain "look & feel", rather than reality, and I pushed certain Lightroom sliders way beyond their "comfort zone" until I got that look. "Cold blue steel" was the phrase that came to my mind when I was playing with sliders. Given the presence of a large orange (sunlit) area in the image, I needed its complementary color (blue) to balance it. On a psychological level (or psychobabble level, if you insist), presence of color, especially strong contrasting ones, indicates presence of life. And as much as I wanted that "gritty" and dark look, I did not want to go all the way to the "doom & gloom" one... after all, there is life in Chicago :-) I rather wanted to accentuate the spirit-uplifting battle between life and death (decay), light and shadow, cold and warm (you know... the yin and yang stuff).