For beauty & photography, Magnificent Mile is hit or miss.
A clean, walkable shopping boulevard that's genuinely grand around the holidays when the lights go up. The honest catch is that the retail is the same luxury chains you'd find in any big city — the distinctly Chicago bits are the bookends, not the shops: the historic Water Tower and Pumping Station (the Great-Fire survivors at Pearson) at the north end, and the Tribune Tower and Wrigley Building framing the river bridge at the south. Walk it for those, not the stores.