Boston, Massachusetts

Boston Sunset

'Yeah, down by the river
Down by the banks of the river Charles (aw, that's what's happenin' baby)
That's where you'll find me
Along with lovers, fuggers, and thieves (aw, but they're cool people)
Well I love that dirty water
Oh, Boston, you're my home (oh, you're the Number One place)
Frustrated women (I mean they're frustrated)
Have to be in by twelve o'clock (oh, that's a shame)
But I'm wishin' and a-hopin, oh
That just once those doors weren't locked (I like to save time for
my baby to walk around)
Well I love that dirty water
Oh, Boston, you're my home (oh, yeah)'.........THE STANDELLS 

Night Baseball - Boston

 I was browsing the archives this morning and realized there were a few images of Boston made over the past 4-5 years. I was big into HDR back then - a bit over the top about it - but have re-processed and toned them down a bit.....I am not a big fan of HDR these days but do like the way it renders these difficult images.  

Boston - The Charles River

Notre Dame, Indiana Style

Basilica, Notre Dame

In 2009 I was on tour with Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson. This particular day we were playing in South Bend, Indiana at the minor league baseball park. I had driven in from Chicago and had some time to spare so I grabbed a local and asked hm to take me to Notre Dame so I could look for images. Long story short it turned out he was a graduate student and had access to some interesting locations on the campus - the Basilica of the Sacred Heart being one of them. He actually got me in with a tripod - sometimes you need to be in the right place.....

I thought this image was lost but it miraculously appeared last night in a different hard drive...

Image Management:

Canon 5DMKII

16-35MM Lens

5 image HDR in Photomatix 

Photoshop CS5

Lightroom 3

Death Valley

Death Valley Junction, California

'The creative process is a process of surrender, not control'......Julia Cameron

There is an ongoing conversation amongst photographic artists about why they choose an image to capture - mostly having to do with pre-visualization. Personally, I find this a difficult thought pattern. Yes, I can go back and look for images that fit into a particular project I am working on, but, for the most part I capture images that appeal to me for one reason or another, sometime personal, sometimes pure beauty, sometimes it is simply a gut reaction.

There are times when I look at a particular capture and feel absolutely nothing, and possibly can not even remember why I thought to make the capture. And then months or even years later I wonder at my complete understanding of the image and how could I have missed that originally. Not sure I fully understand this internal process but will pay more attention in the future.

Long story shortened certain forces came together this morning and I took another look at this image today and thought to make the center color and keep everything else black and white. Without being overly wordy it really struck a chord today.....

One other point is that I usually have trouble writing about my images but today it simply flowed...

New Work

Iceland, July 2010

Well today is Sunday andmy first chance to look back and process a few older images in some new and improved versions of third party software - all while watching the Jets-Green Bay game....

The image on top was from my first day in Iceland last summer. I re-processed using the new NIK HDR Pro software and a bit of Photoshop CS5. The location was an industrial site near Reykjavik - the water is actually a fairly close match to the actual color.


The one below is from Zion last March. This was processed to as an HDR in the new Photomatix 4 upgrade. Photomatix has a new interface which allows the user to see several different processed versions of the image in order to pick and choose a starting off point.

Zion National Park

Although a bit confusing at first I am starting to enjoy both of these versions for HDR processing -