REFLECTIONS AT THE MILWAUKEE CENTER

The Milwaukee Center is a 27-year-old complex in downtown Milwaukee that houses a hotel, an office tower, and a theater complex.  It features a central rotunda with corridors leading off in three directions.  It includes some interesting architectural details for a building of its recent vintage and I have been interested in doing a little photography there.  However, the other time I took my camera there, I got kicked out.  The guard told me I could not take photographs without a permit and that it would cost $150 to obtain such a permit.  But on that occasion I had my tripod and perhaps looked a bit serious for the guard.  In any event, I decided to return, perhaps posing as a guest of the hotel, without my tripod.  No guard this time.

To begin, here is a shot of one of the corridors, this one leading east toward the Milwaukee City Hall.

I thought that the corridor ceiling supports would make an interesting abstract, but here decided that I wanted to include the larger scene for context.

Following are a couple of photos of corridor archwork.

Visually, the first shot has more power because of the sharp shadows.  However, the black & white, taken from the side, has more of a "historical" feel to it that I also liked.

It was then that I noticed that the highly polished corridor floors were creating some interesting reflections of the bright sunlight streaming through the entrances and skylights.  Here is one of the shots I took of those reflections.

I liked this as an abstract.  However, I realized that the different colored tiles were too close to the bottom edge of the image and took another shot that was more centered.

And following are a couple more shots that don't have the interest that the above shot has.  Perhaps they lack the needed diversity of color that the proper shot has.

The best of these was one involving a small child who was enjoying the afternoon in the rotunda.

John