Newly Fallen Snow

Nothing is as pure and beautiful as newly fallen snow. I can just sit and watch the gentle flakes fall, turning everything -- lawns, trees, streets, sidewalks, houses, cars, lawns, and even the trash in the gutter. Especially in the city, the transformation can be most dramatic.

After our winter drought, we had a little bit of snow again in the Boston area.

Below: Snow falling in the halo of a street light and covering steets, sidewalks, cars, and the roofs of houses.

Below: close-up of falling snow covering the branches of a tree.

Below: The next morning, snow covered tree limbs contrast with a bright blue sky.

Below: Snow covered lawns in the Public Garden complete the winter sceen of a Back Bay skyline.

Winter Drought

We usually think of droughts as happening in the summer. With no rain for weeks, lawns and flowers and crops dry up and wither. But, droughts can happen even in the freezing cold of winter.

While Washington, DC, and the surrounding areas were pounded by 2 to 3 feet (0.7 to 1.0 meters) of snow, the Boston area missed out on the entire storm. What snow we had graddually disappeared, melting little by little on the colder days and then disappearing when we got a brief thaw.

Now it's freezing cold and again and snowless. These photographs in Boston's Public Garden illustrate what a winter drought looks like: the brown lawns, bare trees, and fozen ponds, but no snow. It's not the kind of sceen you'll seen on any Christmas card where the snow is always beautifully white and freshly fallen!

Below: The snowless lawns are brown and the lagoon is frozen solid in this view looking down Newbury Street.

Below: A little contrast of morning and evening showing the same view. The church spire is that of the Chuch of the Covenant. The evening view was in December while the morning view is February.

Below: A comparison of the lagoon bridge in a snowy winter (left, Jan. 2009) and a winter drought (right, Feb. 2010)

Below: A close-up of the brown lawns and bare trees. One advantage: a young couple taking a shortcut across the fozen lagoon.

Below: During a winter drought, there's no snow for skiing (except at the facilities with snow making equipment). If you can't ski, at least you can skate: a business man did just that on his lunch hour.

Industrial Strength Photography

The bad side of town. The oth-er side of the tracks. The place you don't want to go during the day, much less at night. The place where the tow lot always seems to be, you know, the one where they've towed your car to, and it's late and you take a cab to and you have this feeling "this is where organized crime goes to eliminate their opposition!" Every city has its industrial area.

Where else would you go to sell your scrap metal? Not far away, you can buy used car parts: doors, fenders, hoods (automotive recycling)

My personal favorite is "radiator man" -- no one has a better selection of used units!

The '50s through the early '70s saw highways cut through urban neighborhoods, often through the industrial zone. While this 50-year old elevated highway is showing some rust and exposed reinforcing bars, the properties in its shaddows often show more distress. Built to rush commuters home to the suburbs, these highways cut up urban neighborhoods and condemmed them to decades of economic and social distress.

This view, within 10 blocks of my home, could be somewhere in the 3rd world, perhaps the suburbs of Lima, Peru or Tiajuana, Mexico. How to tell it's not the 3rd world? There would be perhaps dozens of people in the photo.

Urban Wilds: The Wilderness Around A Frozen Fresh Pond

Even within the city, one can find wilderness views that evoke a more rural setting than where you are standing. Fresh Pond is in the western extent of Cambridge and part of the water supply system. A hundred years ago, ice was harvested in winter and shipped around the world. Today, the pond itself is fenced off, but its perimeter contains a fringe of urban winderness, a small wild in the midst of the city.

. Below: A gatehose on the shoreline




Below: The only open water in the otherwise frozed solid pond.



Below: Tracks run through it -- a rail line through the woods next to the pond.



Below: red berries add color to the snow covered landscape.



Below: Reeds mark the snow-covered shoreline.



Below: Sun setting peeking through the pondside woodlands.

One Building or Two

Driving around Boston recently, I saw this interest-ing view. Taken from Travelers Way in the South End, looking from Harrison Avenue towards Washington Street, one sees this slender tower in Back Bay.

On the top, the glass and steel Hancock Tower, at 60 stories, it is New England's tallest building. But, it looks as though the lower floors are of a different design consisting of a masonry facade.

But what is it? Well, it's a new building called "The Clarendon" located one block closer than the Hancock Tower. But from this angle, the width of the two buildings exactly line up, as though they were one building, the product of a somewhat scitsofrenic architect!

Winter Sunlight

I love working with the low angle of the winter sun as it reflects off the urban landscape. When shooting directly into the sun, I can get a deeper contrast between the lit and unlit backgrounds. With reflected sunlight, I find the glare can add a little magical twist, making building faces and columns glow.

This post contains some backlit photos I took today, allowing the glare of the sun to transform the everyday scenes around me into something more interesting.

Below: Sunlight reflected off the walls of the canyon we call Tremont Street in Boston. Note how the backlight makes the ornimental acorn-shaped street lights glow.

Below: The columns of King's Chapel in Boston are aglow in the reflected sunlight shining down Tremont Street. I like the contrast of the red fire alarm light against the neutral background.

Below: In the Granery Burying Ground, the reflected sunlight backlights a small patch of the snow-covered turf.

Below: Sunlight peaks between the branches of a tree...almost mascarading as a lit street lamp.



Below: The old and new Hancock Towers rise above theother Back Bay buildings, eclipsing the sun, only partially shining on the snows in Boston Common.






Below: A band of sun rays illiminate a narrow corridor through the Public Garden, as evening approaches.

Winter Coming

Winter is coming. The leaves are down and the ground is bare. But a beautiful landscape is still beautiful even in its mimimalist unvegetated state. Even in the midst of a cold rain on a December day. Witness these footbridges over the Muddy River in the Back Bay Fens, part of Boston's Emerald Necklace.

Meanwhile the frosty nights of December have caused the lagoon at the Public Garden to start to freeze. I just about shiver thinking about it.



With the evening sky reflected in the frosted waters, this view down Newbury Street contrasts the siloette of the spire of the Church of the Covenant against a sky of purple charcoal clouds and a pale rose sky.