Boston. A great town, I'm sure. I hadn't really had much of a chance to see it. That changed one day in July of 2007 when my phone rang and I suddenly had a sales appointment there.
Well, in Cambridge to be accurate. An engineer at MIT who prototyped for the aerospace industry heard of my company's product and wanted a demo. Glad to oblige, I headed east. An easy flight into Manchester, a short drive down, and I was in his office doing my day-job thing. He was impressed. Two hours later, with no other prospects in the area, my sales day was done for the day.
Camera in hand, I set off silently to see what I could see of the city through my lens. Starting on the MIT camus, where I took this shot at 1:29 pm:
Over to the Cambridge bank of the Charles River to get my look at the Boston skyline and the ubiquitous boats lining the various docks. The light was good, so I focused on various compositions of sailboats and skylines, like these:
You'll recognize this last one as an untinted version of the picture that opens this post. Photoshop? Yes.
The clouds caught my eye. When I first spotted them, I thought "the city is on fire!" The clouds were very dramatic in person, let me assure you. When I looked at the picture later, I didn't get that same feeling. I liked the composition of the sailboats against the skyline and clouds, sure. Not quite the rule of thirds, but close enough to be interesting.
I showed this to a friend later - a professional shooter and a Photoshop whiz. He spent five minutes on it and Viola!, the sky was on fire. Wow. It's an eye catcher now.
Uncharacteristically, I broke my silent reverie and accosted a passerby who seemed local. Pointing over at Boston, I asked him "if you had an hour to take pictures there, where would you go?" Picking out a church spire for me, he said "Find that church and you'll be in Copley Square. You should enjoy yourself there."
Right he was. Not only did I love the church, historically and photgraphically:
But, I also loved the fountain in Copley Square and spent quite a bit of time covering it (bracketing, so to speak) from all angles. In the end, I liked this picture both because of the composition and the because I like the playfullness of people playing in the fountain.
On my way back to my car, I walked through the Back Bay area - enjoying the architecture of a lifestyle that I could never afford...
My final shot of my 3 hours of adventure photography in Bean Town was spontaneity at it's best. As I entered the tunnel for I-90 West out of town at 4:09 pm, I had the sunroof in my rental car open. Grabbing my camera off the seat next to me, I stuck it up through the sunroof and snapped my version of a tunnel pic - blindly. I kind of like this one.
Five hours in Boston. I haven't been back since. But, I captured memories - through my lens.
These are beautiful photographs. I am an occasional photographer and I have an L16 which I exercise on my frequent tours in North India.
ReplyDeleteI like your tunnel photograph. We have a 3km tunnel somewhere around but I never took a picture inside it.
I enjoy bringing back and preserving these memories but it's an effort not to think "this would make a nice picture" when you ought to be thinking business.
The first photo might be Photoshopped, but what beauty! I have some pictures of Seattle over on my blog (which is much more writing intensive), but I don't think I capture the city as exquisitely as you do Boston.
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