Chicago's Cloud Gate sculpture commonly known as the Bean. I got up early and headed downtown (for my third attempt at getting this one just right). Took a few shots before the sun came up and then waited around for sunrise. I blended three night shots and three day shots using Photomatix -- my first use of HDR software. Then, using my limited processing skills, I cut out the bean from the night HDR and put it into the day HDR image.
[Oct. 20th, 2011 09:58:43 PM]
Two hours until rollover. The score has been sliding a bit all day, but it looks like I'll have my first score above 7!
Here is the inverse of the entry (the day bean at night):
Post challenge:
I am thrilled about the score, and thanks for all the nice comments.
A couple people commented about the lack of people. At this hour of the morning there are very few people about. The only people out there were an occasional photographer, and most of them would take a few shots and move on. On each of my three attempts at this shot I was there for about an hour and a half waiting around between the "night" and "day" shots. Plenty of time it was just me and the bean.
Statistics
Place: 5 out of 38 Avg (all users): 7.2824 Avg (commenters): 8.5455 Avg (participants): 6.0909 Avg (non-participants): 7.4595 Views since voting: 4760 Views during voting: 569 Votes: 170 Comments: 22 Favorites: 1 (view)
great Job Mark congrats on the H.M. and the great score. It's not often you get a score like that without a ribbon. I'm happy with a 7 no matter if it ribbons or not.
Wow - congrats on the astronomical score and the 5th place! VERY nice work with the HDR, since I didn't know it was HDR until I read the comments. What did strike me was the complete lack of people - how did you arrange that?? Well done!
Wow! I don't actually know where that is, but if it is what I think it is, then that's pretty cool
Update: I noticed what kind of looked like the Sears (oops, Willis) Tower in the background. So, at first, I was thinking maybe I would just take a look at the street view in Google Maps, and see if I could find this thing. However, it then occured to me that I might be able to find it by just doing a simple Google search.
So, I entered the following words with no quotes...
big silver reflective blob
To my surprise (but not really, cause I' already entirely sold on Google as a search engine), the first hit was a page on Yelp about this thing called the Cloud Gate in Mellenium Park in Chicago with a photo of the same object as in your photo above.
I am so jealous of you. I went here at sunrise this summer and got some photos that I THOUGHT were pretty great.... this is amazing and no people day or night??? did you photoshop them out or was it early enough that you actually had none??
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