Scale

My attempt to get something different out of the endless Bean shots. How did I get no one else in a shot when the thing is normally extremely crowded, even up to closing time? Not telling on that one... but there wasn't a ton of brushing people out or anything (I hate that), the exposure wasn't long enough to erase people into blurs, and we didn't get special dispensation from the city (which would've been nice).

Things I like: the ghostly hand prints on the left side of the Bean are vaguely creepy with absolutely no one except Vladimir in the frame. The super straight lines (had a fun time correcting for barrel distortion issues) that are bent only within the the Bean, the way the Aon building's reflection stretches a huge amount over the top of the Bean's curvature, and the way the Bean's almost completely flattened at this angle into a two dimensional object. Also without Vladimir, the photo loses a lot of the scale as well as the tiny touch of humanity needed badly in the shot.

I used the absolute worst lens in my arsenal for this one (an 18-135 EF-S), but it's the only one that goes wide enough to get the proper framing on this one. Fortunately if I stop it down to f/8 and keep it 35mm or under, I can get very respectable corner-to-corner resolution (if I had to go over 35, I would've switched to my Sigma 50mm 1.4 or the 70-200L, which are both ridiculously awesome). I do NOT recommend anyone buy this lens unless you need something relatively cheap to cover the whole range (I got it for free), as above 35mm it varies wildly in its performance, the distortion at the wide and tele ends is terrible, and unless you stop it down to f/8 - f/11, the resolution is absolutely horrendous at the borders.

And now I'm done with Cloud Gate. Can I move on now?

Done