boston, and other news

can i just say, i love my new camera. it's so compact and user-friendly. that might sound weird considering it's size, but compared to my old camera, this one is a real champ.

anyhow, last may (sorry i'm a little behind on my posts) we went to boston to see my brother-in-law - and the city - before they moved away. just before we got boston we stopped in at the vine lake cemetery in medfield, massachusetts. my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great (that's 9 greats) grandfather, james allen, is buried there. he was the first of my allen ancestors to come to america - somewhere around 1637. he was also one of the original 13 founders of medfield. it was a pretty cool experience to learn a bit about him and then see his gravesite.

i brought my large format camera and took some shots of james allen's headstone.

here i am, about to photograph acorn street in boston. i'm not quite sure how the picture will turn out because of the crazy light - an overcast day would have been better but hey, you can't really schedule that when you're just visiting.

we also stopped by the sacred grove in palmyra, new york on the way home.

and now for the first bit of news, i got a new (used) lens!

this piece of work is the calumet caltar 90mm f/8 lens (woohoo!). i sold my other camera and was able to get this wide angle lens with the proceeds.

it's not the top of the line lens, and f/8 is a little slow for this type of lens, but it is a good lens and also an enormous improvement on what i was using before.

and as for my website... it's coming. i hate to promise but hopefully it will be up by this weekend. cross your fingers.

heads up!

if you head over to my website and find this, don't be alarmed. i'm just in the middle of transitioning to a new site. hopefully it will be up by the end of the week. thanks!

grand central terminal

sometimes luck has a lot to do with the success of a picture - especially when that picture is taken with a holga.

i was up on the balcony with the camera sitting on the railing, the lens propped up by my keyless entry remote on my keyring, and i held the shutter open for about a second. after that i crossed my fingers and waited.



i keep finding myself drawn to symmetry and order in my pictures. i feel in a lot of ways like i'm taking portraits of places. showing the simple truth of what something is.

sometimes it's purely informational i.e. - "this building is here, i found it interesting, let me show you what i see" - and that's all. nothing groundbreaking in the way i take the picture, nothing to knock you off your seat, the subject just speaks for itself. and that's all it needs.

the photograph above is extremely symmetrical and orderly (despite the usual rush of the travelers and tourists), even down to the formation of the people in it - an inverted triangle with a single man at the bottom (looking at his phone or something) holding it all together and drawing your eyes up and into the gorgeous space of the grand central terminal.

i'm grateful that he held still for that one second.

greetings from the lavatory

it has become a habit of mine to carry my camera with me at family gatherings or other similar outings. i enjoy snapping candid shots of what's happening around me - conversations, kids playing, friends laughing, etc. those pictures also make for great little surprise gifts for the people in them.

the picture above (the obligatory self portrait of photographers everywhere) was taken on one such outing. my family had gone to buca di beppo - which i think is becoming a family tradition at christmas time - and i had my camera right there with me... even in the bathroom.

after this trip i have to admit that i kind of burnt myself out photographically. i developed 8 or 9 rolls of film and then scanned something around 200 pictures and cleaned up most of them in photoshop - all within a week's time. it was awesome, i got so much done... but i haven't so much as loaded a roll of film into my old canon since. no need to fear though - the fire has been lit again.

i've got plans to explore the farmlands of northwest indiana now that it's warming up. i also might get a second chance to photograph in boston next month (if i can fit it into the schedule).

other than that, my next item of business is selling my old view camera. with the proceeds from that camera i should be able to buy a decent used lens.

it's good to be back.

cambridge, mass.

two and a half years ago, my family and i moved into a subleased two bedroom apartment just off of western ave. on memorial drive in cambridge, massachusetts. it was our first time venturing out and away from our families.

we immediately fell in love with boston and its surrounding areas. what we found when we arrived was a warmth and richness of life that was almost tangible. we only had 3 months to enjoy it so we made sure that we took advantage of all the time that we had there.

about a week before moving i finally found and purchased a large format camera in my price range. i was ready to take the dive and cambridge was a great place to dive into.

i would pass by this building every day as i walked to the “t”, boston’s subway, to go to work. this poor building looked like it was just plain tired of standing up straight – like it needed something more sturdy to lean on (like the building next to it). i also discovered what happens when you don’t check the corners of the ground glass carefully after raising the lens. the passing car was an unexpected bonus.




not too far away was this building on the corner of river street and pleasant street. i love this building - it's made of that dark red brick that you see so often in boston and the windows are framed by copper that has been streaked by years of green patina.




i only wish that i had more time to explore boston and cambridge with my view camera. i guess that's all the more reason for me to go back some day. i'll put it on the list...