Eastern wedding

No really, the real east coast this time. It was my son who got married, and literally right on the coast.

We went several days early to hang out and do some tourism with Gene and Laura (his godparents). We stayed in an AirBnB apartment just down the street from Andy and Kristin's apartment. It was a really great experience and I highly recommend it.  We got there first, so took the opportunity for a pinhole photograph.

The first day we spent in central Boston.  We started at the Boston Public Library.  This is the central courtyard.

We went there to look at the Sargent Gallery.  I love the little streak in the far end where somebody looked at their phone for a few minutes.

This is tourism after all, so after picking up Andy at work, we went to lunch at the bar that inspired the television program Cheers, the Bull and Finch.  There wasn't any room in the original bar, so we were seated in the replica of the set they've built up stairs. (n.b. in case this doesn't look familiar, the only thing that's a replica is the bar itself.)

Andy went off to help Kristin with final preparations for the ceremony, and we set off on the Freedom trail. Our first stop was the Granary Burying Ground, nestled among the skyscrapers at the edge of the financial district.. There are three signers of the declaration of independence buried there,  John Hancock, Sam Adams, and Robert Treat Paine.  For such a rich guy, I was surprised Hancock's tomb was pretty non-descript. This particular tombstone was from the 1670's

Laura is an extreme Larry Bird fan (her vanity license plate is CELT33), so we had to stop at the Quincy Market behind Faneuil Hall to see his bronzed shoes next to the sculpture of Red Auerbach. Since we were right there, we stopped at the other replica of the Cheers set, and again, the bar itself was the only thing recognizable.

We stopped at Paul Revere's House, surrounded by the mostly early 20th century North End.

I didn't take many other pictures.  Laura and Gene's daughter, four months older than Andy, was also with us and I took her portrait as we waited for an Uber to take us to Cohasset.

Cohasset is about as iconic a New England town as you can imagine.  We had lunch at the Red Lion Inn, built in 1704. The weather was terrible and we spent a bit of time in this little coffee shop and bakery across the street as we waited for the rain to subside.

Cohasset harbor is about as archtypically New England as the rest of the town. That's the location of the wedding right across the harbor.

The official wedding photographers were a real professional team.  While the owner of the studio was documenting Kristin's preparations, her assistant worked with Andy.  I've been sticking a camera right in his face since literally seconds after his birth, so he's really an experienced and cooperative model.

I was careful not to get in the way, but I got this shot of Sarah and Andy while they posed for the pros.  I was holding the tripod against a railing on a floating dock and I was initially a little dissapointed when I first saw it, but now I think it captures some of the surreal nature of the experience.

The dock had been liberally decorated by seagulls, so they decided to move us all down the shore a bit to the Yacht Club.  I'm not sure, but I think this limo was there just for that purpose.  I love how the reflection of the buildings across the street show how shiny it was.

And then I ran out of film.  I reloaded, but somehow didn't get the clicker engaged, and didn't get a chance to fix it in the hustle and bustle of the rest of the night.  I was allowed to get one exposure of the couple with the Evil Cube, but it's still in the camera, and I'll probably post it to Facebook as an individual photo when I get that roll developed.

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

Boston & environs: JFK and Wollaston

From Quincy, the first stop on the T you encounter after going across the Neponset River is the JFK Library, but we'd never stopped there.

Space-age architecture by I.M.Pei. I was surprised about how much space they devoted to space. They've got the Freedom 7 Mercury capsule and a pretty big moon rock.

This is about the best I could do for an interior in the exhibits - a replica of the desk end of the Oval Office with a giant video screen in place of the president. The visit was more emotional than I expected. Artifacts included notes from meetings and teleprompter reels from notable events and a neat seating chart for a dinner with the French ambassador that included many of the major American artists and writers of the day. It was strange hearing everybody else around us also explaining to their children or grandchildren about memories associated with the exhibits. I definitely remember the imminent possibility of nuclear war and of course, the assassination.

The exhibits dump you out into this giant glass lobby overlooking Boston Harbor.

Kind of fun fooling around with pinholey angles with the little tripod on the floor (and bright enough to get exposures without being in anyone's way).

Then we drove down to Cohasset to see the cute little New England harbor where Andy and Kristin are getting married in October.

It was still extraordinarily hot, so in addition to giving Jeremy a little company, we returned to Quincy to recover from the heat.

Went out for drinks before dinner at the Wollaston Yacht Club. (Andy and Kristin have a social membership).

Well actually it was for beer...some of the yachts.

Dusk at Wollaston Beach.

All with the Populist. .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x36 frame.

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.

Adams and the MFA

One of the unusual things about the Boston area is that occasionally, in the middle of an urban commercial area, you find a little graveyard tucked between the high-rises.  This is the Hancock Cemetery, named after the famous signatory's father who was the minister at the First United Parish Church across the street. None of the famous founding fathers are buried here, but most of their ancestors are. This is a fairly severe crop of the negative in order to get a level horizon.  I was holding the camera on a tabletop tripod against a stone pillar.  I thought the light was nice though.

Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams are buried in a crypt in the basement of the church, carved out of the rock beneath the building.  You don't have to go down very far to hit bedrock in eastern Massachusetts. There's not much in there except the sarcophagi of the two presidents and their wives Abigail and Louisa Catherine. We were encouraged by the guide to take photographs. There was no place else to set the tripod down so it's actually sitting right on John Adams grave.

John Adams was a member of the parish (as well as most of his ancestors back to 1639), but he was dead before this particular church was built.  When John Quincy attended here it was typical to buy your own pew.  Here I am sitting in the presidential pew. Don't I look saintly.  Actually it was really windy, and I'm backlit – the halo is just the frizzy hair that's come out of my ponytail.

The birthplace of John Adams, occupied by his family for several generations, is on a not too big corner lot on a side street in Quincy, although it was the main road from Braintree to Boston in the 18th century. When he married Abigail his father bought them the house next door, right behind me, which became the birthplace of John Quincy Adams, and was where Abigail spent the Revolutionary War while John and the teenaged John Quincy were off in Europe representing the brand new U.S.

After being the first ambassador to Great Britain, when John and Abigail returned they bought this much bigger house a mile north and called it Peacefield. He lived there until he died and John Quincy after him. The house has stayed in the family until it became a museum in 1927 (The birthplaces as well- they rented those).  It's located on a site that seems more befitting a national monument.

The tour guides are costumed in 18th century garb and spend the time knitting and chatting with guests between tours.  The one on the right had built and used a pinhole camera in junior high school. By the way, John Quincy Adams was the first president to be photographed, in 1843, 14 years after he left office.

The next day, we went to the MFA to see the big 17th century Dutch painting exhibition.  Pretty cool getting to inspect two Vermeers from inches away, as well as several Rembrandts and Van Dykes. My great ambition is to take pinhole portraits in that style, but I never get the guts to ask people to sit for me. So instead here's a candid of Kristin and Sarah selecting lunch in the posh cafe in the Museum courtyard.

In the past, it's been no photography allowed in the MFA galleries, and I've been caught trying. but that's apparently changed as we saw a number people using iPhones and the occasional SLR right in front of the guards. Still no tripods though, precious few places to set a table top tripod, and it would be rude to make everyone stop for five minute exposures and wait for me in any event, so I had to make do with this skylit galleria.

One place where sitting still for a while is part of the experience is in the video installation gallery, where there is this door leading out into a hallway. Sarah's blond hair is always good for a highlight in a dark space.

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