A couple weeks ago I taught another 1on1 workshop to a talented lady originally from the Netherlands. She’s been in Chicago for a little over a year now and creates these great abstracts of her own (check out her Instagram account!), but wanted some guidance on shooting architecture in a more detailed/abstract way, so we spent 4 hours exploring some favorite locations around Chicago.
Our first stop was Millennium Park and The Bean. If you’ve ever visited this sculpture, it’s crazy crowded all the time. To me, that amount of people is highly distracting so I tend to focus on the upper portion of the bean and the city reflections. In this instance, I included a portion of the buildings in the background, while showing the warpy reflections in the bean.

Just next to The Bean is Pritzker Pavilion. The intense blue sky that day, along with the red seats casting this pinkish hue on the structure, created this pretty gradient.

Lately, I’ve really been drawn to finding ways to capture that pink hue that reflects on the pavilion. This next one is very simple in its composition, I wanted the focus on that beautiful, soft light and overlapping of the metal segments.

Just a bit further into Millennium Park is the BP Bridge. My favorite part of the bridge to photograph is actually its underside, it has this reptilian feel.

Just across the street from the park is the Aon Building. There’s something so strong and direct about this building. And if you’re there at the right time you can catch some great shadows, which disrupts the symmetry of the shot.

Across the street is a favorite, Aqua. I’ve photographed this so much lately…this time I wanted to focus on the waves and edge of the building. The clear blue skies contrasting with the white of the building feels so summery, so I wanted to emphasize that and keep it in color.

One of Chicago’s newer buildings, The Michigan Avenue Apple Store. I was recently over here with some friends to check out the store and noticed these great warpy reflections in the curved corner of the building, so I wanted to get back here with my “real” camera. And here you have it 😉

Just a short walk north on Michigan Avenue is the Burberry store. Another favorite. This time I focused on a part of the building I haven’t really explored photographically, the crystal-like sculpture on the south side of the building. I went even more abstract than usual.


Something a little more typical of Burberry’s facade. The reflections on here are so fun to play with!

Back south over to Trump Tower. My favorite part of this building to photograph is the curvy walkway along the river. More great reflections and repetitive patterns to play with.

This is just a small sample from the day, head over here for all the shots 🙂