Chicago, 2004
Originally posted on my old blog on December 5th, 2004:
Yesterday we went to Chicago for Christmas shopping, and spent most of the day being guided by Christina's friend Joan whom she met on Bookcrossing. It was extremely tiring, but we got a lot of shopping done and I got a lot of good pictures. We went by Amtrak, which was the first time I had ridden on a commuter train.
The first thing we did was go to the Cultural Center, a historic building which has been converted to a museum, and which that day had a craft fair. I was mostly interested in the building, which was very beautiful.
The photo on the left is of the skylight in Gar Memorial Hall. The center photo is the entrance to that hall, and the photo on the right is the same room, angled to show the sections of the floor which are lit from beneath.
This is a sculpture in an open area in the middle of the building. The sculpture is titled "Mother Earth."
Santa was also at the cultural center. He's a little blurry, unfortunately, or else you might be able to see how detailed his costume is.
We next went to a German market bazaar. At least, that was what it was supposed to be, but there were kiosks there from Ecuador, for example, which had little in common with the Bratwurst shack that was next to it. As one of the best examples of cultural fusion I've ever seen, there was one booth selling "Currywurst." I didn't ask. I didn't want to know.
This relief is found on a utility building near the park where the bazaar was being held. (2007 Note: This photo was used for the cover of the New Mensican newsletter last year.)
Some of the decorations in the square for the bazaar. The photo on left is obviously of a Christmas tree with strangers in front for scale. Just to the right of the tree was a small forest of "icicle" trees, shown in the center photo. Two small electric trains made circuits through the forest.
We went shopping at Marshal Fields, among other places.
This is a view from the floor of Marshal fields, showing the different levels of the department store. Christina looked up and called it 'The Tower of Capitalism."
We went to the Chicago Art Institute, and unfortunately did not have time to go through and look at the exhibits. We went there for the museum gift shop.
The photo on the left is the Chicago Art Institute itself. The photo on the right is one of the copper lions in front of the museum, with Christina on the left and Joan on the right. Joan got about ten compliments on that coat from total strangers. Christina occasionally proudly calls herself a "bitch," particularly when she is about to write a letter to the health insurance carrier. Thus, I have titled this photo, "The Lion, the Bitch, and the Woman with the Wardrobe."
We spent most of the latter part of the afternoon at Millenium park. It was designed by an artist or artists with no fear of doing the different. There are two huge light-blocks that change colors occasionally, lit from within through the glass bricks that make them up, but the sides facing each other show faces from random people that were filmed for the purposes of the project. There is also a highly reflective kidney bean-shaped structure called Cloudgate that turned out to be a great tool for some experimental photography.
Two photos of the faces.
Images of the backs of the blocks. They changed colors from time to time. These two mages are actually the same block, taken first from a distance of about thirty feet, then from right at its base. It changed from white to blue in that time, about 30 seconds.
This is the Cloudgate, the world's most reflective kidney bean.
To the left is a direct view of two impressive skyscrapers visible from Millenium park. To the right are the same buildings shown in reflection in the Cloudgate.
Part of the difficulty in photographing the Cloudgate was the fact that it was dark, but I couldn't use a flash because of the reflection from the sculpture itself. My digital camera tries to adapt to low-light levels by increasing the exposure time, which is why all three of these photos are more reddish than the ictual image was when we were looking at it. They are self-portraits, showing me and Christina. I'm surprised now looking at them at how much they look like pictures taken with a lomographic camera.
I finally got the idea of using the flash, but holding my hand in front of it to keep it from reflecting back too much. This is the result.
Standing directly under the Cloudgate and looking up, one finds that they are staring directly into a concave mirror. The picture on the left was taken without a flash, and the resulting increased exposure time caused the streaking. The picture on the right was taken with a flash.
Here are more random photos taken throughout the day.
As you can imagine, we were very tired throughout the day.
