Something different

There’s something about a kidney bean shaped blob of polished steel that attracts attention in a landscape of straight lines and rectangles like Chicago.

It’s not like nobody’s ever taken a picture of the Cloud Gate (also known as “The Bean”) in Chicago’s Millennium Park. People were snapping all around me as I visited there one evening last weekend. So my photos became just a few of the millions that are taken in Millennium Park each year.

But if there is one difference, it’s this. My photos were taken by me and no one will look at the Cloud Gate sculpture in quite the same way I do. And that will make its way into how I approach photographing the structure, whether it’s the angle I shoot from, the exposure setting I use, what I choose to include or leave out, or the combination of real and virtual filters I use.

Some of these shots were taken with a two-stop graduated neutral density filter to even out the tones between the sky and objects on the ground. The twilight photo used a deep blue filter applied in Photoshop to correct the cast of the vapor lights in the scene. Yeah, I know I could have adjusted my white balance at the time, but I didn’t think of it.

A million people at a bean in a park in Chicago. And no two the same.

Click on pictures to enlarge. Photographs © 2007 James Jordan.