I’m back with another tour around downtown Chicago from my latest private workshop. This time I spent the day with an architect from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She was in town for a week and wanted some guidance on creating architectural abstracts. Always interesting to shoot with an architect and see what they’re drawn to.
Once again, we started at The Bean. Millennium Park has a lot to offer in terms of photography, and being a tourist 🙂 There were some nice clouds that afternoon and I liked how the bean and sky blended into each other.

Looking north from the bean I was drawn to the clouds reflecting in the glassy areas of the Prudential Building. Plus, I liked the tones of the building against the summery blue sky 🙂

Further into Millennium park and we’re at Pritzker Pavilion. Again, drawn to the pink hues, from the red seats, reflecting on the steel + the structure’s angular shapes.

Next, is another version of the underside of the BP Bridge.

A short walk north and we’re at Aqua again. This is the first time I noticed this tadpole-like shape of the windows.

Creating these wavy abstracts of the balcony edges is one of my favorite ways to photograph this building! Kinda looks like cascading hair, or ribbons or waterfall-like. I’ll let you decide 😉

One of our next stops was the Calder Flamingo. I always love how the Calder Red pops against the black grid of the surrounding Mies van der Rohe buildings. The neighboring buildings reflecting in the windows is an added bonus and creates some nice layers and depth.

Looking east from Federal Plaza you get some nice reflections of the Sears Tower in yet another Mies building. The bright blue skies, puffy white clouds and black of the building make for some nice color combos.

Now, a photo of the actual Sears Tower. One of very few I have of this building. It’s so hard to photograph, but for some reason the “cubes” of the building jumped out at me. Again, love the blue/white/black color combo.

Our final stop of the day was 235 Van Buren. Great light on the south side of those cantilevered balconies creating nice depth with the upward angle.

To see a few more images from our downtown tour, head over here 🙂