Posted on by And I'm an Elf

The Cloud Gate in Chicago early in the Morning

The 'bean' in Chicago, officially called the 'Cloudgate'

The Cloudgate in Chicago early in the morning

The Cloud Gate. By the British sculptor Anish Kapoor (see Wikipedia page) in Chicago is a really impressive sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park. Nicknamed the Bean due to its shape it destorts anything relfected by the perfectly polished stainless steel it is made of.

Of course this sculpture is a major tourist attraction and it is almost impossible to get a picture without a crowd of people in it. But one of the main attraction is to run around and see the distorted reflections of the crowd that are with you and the surouding cityscape.

But with the help of a decent amount of jetlag I was able to get up early and take a number of pictures with almost anybody in the shot. But even at 6 o’clock in the morning, there were already plenty of tourists (probably also jetlagged) and two girls trying to do a fashion shoot in front of the bean. They posed in the front part of the sculpture and tried various poses, trying to incorporate the reflections into the shoot.  So I was relegated to the back side of the bean and tried to take a picture of the cityscape in the reflection. It is a spectacular sight and worth a visit of Chicago alone.

Hosted on Flickr.

Posted on by And I'm an Elf

Pink Chairs in the Autumn Sun

Pink chairs rotting in the autumn weather

Pink chairs in the autumn sun.

This is one of my first pictures I uploaded to Instagram1. It was taken in 2015 outside of CERN close to the tram station where I was waiting for the tram to go to work. The chairs were apparently abandoned and put outside for someone to collect, or to be thrown in the trash.

It was early in the morning, and the sun was shining nice and warm, highlighting the colours of the foliage as well as the pink paint that was coming off slowly from the chairs after having withstood the rain, the wind, and the sun for several years.

How the chairs got there, I have no idea. They certainly are not the usual furniture found at a particle accelerator laboratory. Whatever made them end up in this place, what caught my eye was the combination of colours from the decaying leaves and from the crumbling paint of the chairs in the still warm autumn sun.

Hosted on Flickr

  1. I am leaving Instagram and have removed the links to Instagram. The photos are now all hosted on Flickr ↩