Crown Fountain is an art piece at Millennium Park in Chicago. It’s a towering structure with water pouring from all over it. It contains scenes which display faces. It’s so interesting, and also a really enjoyable location on a very hot day.
Photographing at Crown Fountain, you’re faced with choices.
You can photograph the people there, but there are many children playing in the fountain. So you have to question if photographing children is the right decision or not. When it comes to street photography, or even just being a tourist in a new place, photographing children can be awkward. That’s for extroverted photographers and introverted photographers.
Instead of simply photographing the people at Crown Fountain, I decided to take it a step higher.
I went for shapes, contrast, shadows, and textures.
As you see in the photo just above, one of the fountains is spraying water as if it’s an animal shaking it off its fur. The sun was so harsh that day that it made for an easy high contrast image.
The other thing I tried to do was instead of photographing the children playing, was to photograph reflections in the water on the ground.
I also captured the children playing with their backs to me. It makes the situation a little more comfortable. Although photographing children you do not know is never truly comfortable.
Fortunately, in a situation like this, where the fountain is keeping the attention of the children and their parents, and it’s a big tourist location, it’s less likely to be questioned why you’re photographing there.
As a street photographer in a public place in the USA, it’s 100% legal to be photographing people. So that part doesn’t worry me.
And as a person with a camera, in a tourist location, you also blend in with all the other tourists with cameras.
So there is that.
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