Boston at Night

I have gone into Boston twice to shoot at sundown/night with very acceptable results.  The first time was back in July of 2009 in and around the Boston Public Garden and Boston Common.  The second time in the summer of 2010 was along the Kennedy Greenway from the Aquarium down to Rowe's Wharf.  I enjoy being able to not only get the more typical landscape dusk shots but also the full on night shots.  The city lights allow you to still get an interesting image by taking advantage of the lights and the scatter up into the sky.

In July, 2009 a group spent some hours shooting the Boston Public Garden and later on in the Boston Common.  The first picture is a HDR shot looking back at the Swan Boat docks and the bridge over the duck pond.  We were fortunate in that it had been raining earlier but the front was beginning to rapidly move out leaving an interesting sky.

One of my favorite pictures that evening was an HDR rendition of the Hancock buildings at sunset.  I was very pleased with the level of detail that came out.  It may not be as evident in the smaller picture, but when you zoom in there is an amazing amount of details in the trees that doesn't show up at all in the single normal exposure.  I try to generate as natural a HDR conversion as possible using Photomatix Pro.  This means keeping the Smoothing high and insure that there is a well defined black point.  This will keep the details while not getting into unnatural colors.  The main problem with HDR that can crop up is halos that appear at high contrast areas and unnatural light sources.  By this I mean that when you look closely it appears that the scene is lit from more than one location giving an unnatural look.

On the Kennedy Greenway where the Central Artery used to be, there are a growing list of attractions to bring people out.  One of these is the jump fountains just past the Aquarium.  The summer night we were there there were dozens of kids and their parents running in an out of the water.  To the right is a shot I love showing the pure joy of those kids as the fountains shot off randomly, completely surprising them each time.  This was processed to bring out the kids and also to brighten the water so that it sparkled.


Finally, there are those urban landscape images you can get well after sunset.  The beautiful lights from the city play well with the dark sky and you can use the sky shine to your advantage.  The 30 second exposures blur the clouds giving an interesting streaked effect.  The final image comes from Rowes Wharf looking back towards the hotels and docks on the Greenway.  You have the classic foreground objects from the wharf and then the illuminated city in the background.  One important thing I have found is that it's important to correct for keystoning in the buildings.  Correcting the tilted buildings is important to give a more interesting picture.

These images and others can be found in my Boston After Dark gallery found on my SmugMug website.  I hope you come and visit.  The images are all for sale,