I really should know the city better. I know that the glass tower is the John Hancock building, and I also know the stone church has some historic significance but the name escapes me. The building in the reflection I cannot name at all, but there’s a chance I just left from a meeting inside of it. This is an HDR composite from iPhone images. I love the way the tones are all even and nicely exposed in these composites…. I really need to break down and pay for this wonderful software. Maybe if I write some posts specifically on the Photomatix Pro software they’ll give me a comp copy.
When I take the train into Boston I typically land in Boston’s North Station. On this day I was down by Boston’s South Station and was impressed with the old architecture of this grand building. Standing in the crosswalk I took a bracketed exposure of the face of the building and later combined them with an HDR package. I had been challenged in the past to make a good HDR image shots from the DSLR, but I feel now that I’ve got the whole process down pretty well. Now I just need to save up some pennies to get that pesky watermark removed. Anyone care to buy some prints to fund future projects?
I was fortunate enough to catch both ends of a rainbow that appeared over Boston during a recent visit. I didn’t have my DSLR with me that night but I think I did a good job capturing things with the camera from my pocket. To make these images I first took several exposures of each scene by focusing on different brightness levels within the frame. Back at the computer I used an HDR (High Dynamic Range) plug-in to merge the best parts of the exposures into a single image. The results are good and look pretty natural, the way that our human eyes see things as opposed to a single camera exposure.
Standing on the edge of the Charles River in Cambridge I spotted a rainbow landing on the John Hancock tower in Boston. This is an HDR composite from three exposures taken with my iPhone. The differences between this and the “properly” exposed original are subtle, but I liked the additional contrast in the sky and the water that the HDR brought out.
While not as clearly defined as the other end of the rainbow, this end landed on top of one of the Massachusetts General Hospital buildings. That’s the Longfellow Bridge on the right crossing the Charles River of course. This too is an HDR composite made from pictures taken with the iPhone.
On a side note, our son was treated for a serious illness at MGH, and we spend a good number of days “living” in that shiny building. Our boy is healthy again and back to a normal childhood, so we did find our pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.
-Josh
Recently I attended a technology user group in Cambridge Massachusetts. As I looked out the window I noticed the evening sun was just hitting the buildings in Boston on the other side of the Charles River. I took out my best camera (the one I had with me, of course) and fired off a number of shots using different points in the scene to focus on. Later I used the trusty HDR software to combine three shots from the iPhone to create the image we have here. Considering that I took this with a camera phone through the windows of an office building, I’d say the results aren’t half bad.
When I was a kid my parents did their best to avoid going into Boston. Most of my memories of Boston involve driving over this huge elevated highway that disected the city. While I was away in California, Boston undertook the “Big Dig” project to the put that and other roadways underground. The results have been fantastic… the city is now inviting and walkable, with this beautiful greenway where an ugly highway once stood. Every time I cross the greenway I still stop to admire the beautiful views. One thing is for sure… my kids memories of the city will be very different than mine!
Craftsmanship sure has changed, or at least lost value IMHO, in recent years. This is the head of an interior design pillar in an old home outside of Boston. I imagine this is all hand carved and lovingly assembled, and the rest of the home has equally beautiful details throughout. For this shot I splashed it from the side with my speedlite.
One of the things that Boston’s North End neighborhood is famous for is the authentic Italian restaurants. In particularly, the Italian pastry shops are pretty well known. There is one shop that notorious for being the one that tourists go to. There are a few other shops though that are just as good if not better. We frequent “Maria’s Pastries”, a small shop off the main road that my wife has been going to since she was a little girl. While there on a recent trip I took a few minutes to get some shots of the goodies inside. Yes, there are as good as they look!

I took a walk through Boston last week and had fun taking a ton of pictures. There are lots of little nooks in this little city that hide many good photo treasures. At one point I ended up walking through the old Beacon Hill neighborhood where they are lots of tiny and very attractive brick row homes. This old wrought-iron fence bordered one of the properties just before coming to the Boston Public Gardens.
Looking out over the greenway towards Boston’s historic North End. There are a lot of significant landmarks in this scene, from the Boston Garden and the Zakim bridge on the left, through the historic Italian north end, and to the tunnel administration building marking the entrance to the Callahan tunnels on the right. In the middle of the picture is the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, which is one of the results of infamous Big Dig project. Prior to this project there was a giant steel double-decker highway running through the middle of the city. That highway now runs under the city, coming up again just before the bridge in the distance. Removing that (noisy, ugly) obstacle really opened up this part of the city for walking, replacing a harsh divider with an inviting greenway. (http://www.rosekennedygreenway.org) It’s so nice to see people relaxing on the lawn, playing in the fountains, or listening to impromptu music performances. We really love this small city and all its quirky beauty.