Skating below “The Bean”

Millenium Park

Millennium Park

We went on a quick trip to Chicago to take care of some family business, and squeezed in a trip to the Loop and Millennium Park. This was my first opportunity to photograph “The Bean” as Anish Kapoor’s stainless steel sculpture is fondly nicknamed. The official name of the abstract distortion sculpture is Cloud Gate.

As is typical for January, it was cloudy and cold – perfect weather for ice skating, but not such perfect for prowling the lakefront, scouting for the best angle to photograph this enticing work of art. I loved how part of the sculpture was snow covered, and how the cloudy skies reflected a gray and threatening feeling, and I was able to capture that in a short photo shoot. But truly, this sculpture is the kind of thing that would be fun to spend half a day admiring and photographing, and so I will return. I didn’t get close enough to explore it in depth, but I did read that you can actually walk underneath.  I’ll definitely check it out the next time we’re in Chicago.