Visiting Andy in Quincy

My son recently moved to a surprisingly large apartment in Quincy. Although we stayed overnight with Andy in Iowa City a few times, this was the first time in Boston he had room for us in his apartment.

One truism is that people always gather in the kitchen, and we were no exception.




The first day we went down for a look at Beacon Hill and the Massachusetts State House (which would be called the Capitol in any other state). This is the Governor's office used only for public events. I set my little tripod on the ledge of a bookcase, but nobody noticed, although I had to reach around another visitor to close the shutter.

The Senate Chamber, directly beneath the golden dome.

We returned to Quincy on the T.  They have very convenient displays letting you know how long the wait is for the next train, so I knew I had time to make an exposure. The only place I had to put the tripod where it wouldn't be in the way on a very busy platform was between my feet. Thousands of people passed by on both sides of the platform, but one or two stayed put long enough to be recorded.

It was rush hour and the train was really packed, but luckily I got a seat so my wonky knees wouldn't give out. This is the entire trip from Park Street to Wollaston.  Most of the time there were several people directly in front of me, mostly wearing dark clothing, but occasionally there was a gap so I could see Sarah sitting across from me. One of those rare occurences where a really long exposure works out exactly as I had hoped.

Back in Quincy, Andy prepared us a fantastic dinner of Pork Tenderloin en Croute. Very tasty.

The next day we dedicated to the south shore.   First stop was the USS Salem Museum, a heavy cruiser in service mostly in the Mediterranean from 1947 to 1960.  People always note the difficulty of long exposures with pinhole cameras, but with a simple sliding shutter very short exposures in sunlight are equally problematical. It's tricky to open the shutter without slightly moving the camera. Here you can see a ghost of that left hand gun where the highlight on top it it got recorded in the small part of a second before the camera stopped moving.

One way to avoid this problem is to cover the shutter with something when you open it,  in this case my finger, and then make the exposure by removing it without shaking the camera.  However in this case, I didn't move my hand out the frame fast enough.

We then went to give Jeremy, their little dog who usually moves much too quickly for pinhole a break in some of the seashore parks.  Here is the view of Boston from Nut Island. Although it's kind of obvious looking at a map, I was surpised that nowhere in Boston do you get a view directly out to sea.  I guess that's how it got to be such popular harbor.

As a midwesterner, tides are always something I find myself surprised about.  When we visited, it was almost exactly at low tide. The rocks the camera is sitting on are just about at the level of high tide.

More to come from Quincy and Boston.

All these photographs with the Populist. .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x36mm frame.