The Whole Bean AKA Cloud Gate

October 22, 2012 by 3 Comments
The Whole Bean

The Whole Bean ©2012 Bo Mackison

Cloud Gate

Cloud Gate, a public sculpture by artist Anish Kapoor, is the centerpiece of the AT&T Plaza in Millennium Park. The sculpture is constructed using hundreds of sheets of stainless steel, but the exterior has no visible seams. As seen in the photo, it is a wildly popular attraction for visitors – Chicagoan and tourist – all with some form of camera for this super-fun photo-op.

I saw DSLRs, point and shoots, even a couple of iPads as camera, but most plentiful were the phone cameras held aloft by almost everyone.

I walked around the sculpture, and I had to take the requisite number of photos, including ones with the city backdrop of skyscrapers as the sun was setting, ones with the skyscrapers reflected on The Bean’s surface, a few more when the city streetlights popped on, and a couple with a tiny crescent moon in the background.

But I forgot to bring my evening dress including date in white evening coat, or my sixteen member bridal party, or my teeny-tiny Halloween costume. I’ll have to be satisfied with my photo in faded jeans and a Packers tee-shirt.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.

She recently returned from a week at the Filter Photo Festival in Chicago. A week filled with workshops, lectures, gallery walks, portfolio reviews, and a photo-walk to Millennium Park to say hello to The Bean.

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Skating below “The Bean”

January 10, 2010 by 8 Comments
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.

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