The Best of Beantown (in March)

Last month, I traveled to Boston with my trusty Nikon d60 for a weekend of being a tourist. When I first started planning the trip, I immediately began listing the things I wanted to do: whale watching, ghost tours, Freedom Trail, the aquarium, and anything else I could find. Unfortunately, whale watching and ghost tours didn’t start until April, and the weekend was sunny but absolutely freezing. This did not stymie my need to take my camera out and about, and although I didn’t do everything I wanted, it was definitely an awesome weekend (if not freezing cold).

My boyfriend and I stayed at the Berkley Hostel which we had found through hostels.com. It was perfect for what we needed, a home base to store our things safely and sleep at night with the best inclusive breakfast ever. They also sold many tickets to events around Boston for much cheaper than the price you would pay at the door. One thing to keep in mind is it’s a YWCA, so if dorm style bathrooms aren’t what you crave, it may not be the right place for you.

Despite how chilly the weekend turned out, we made a point of walking from place to place. One of those places was the New England Aquarium. The one thing I like visiting more than zoos is aquariums. There were penguins and turtles and fish and sharks and jellyfish and sea stars…. You get the picture 🙂 Photographing indoors is always a little tricky, but photographing moving animals indoors takes the cake. Unlike people, you don’t always know where they’re going to go. Fish flit back and forth, and quickly. I have a lot more blurry pictures than clear despite the f/1.4 and ISO 400 I used to keep the shutter speed up.

The Aquarium wasn’t the only thing I pulled out my camera for. More than once, we found ourselves inadvertently following the Freedom Trail. We didn’t follow the entire thing, but we made stops at:

• Boston Common
• Massachusetts State House
• Old South Meeting House
• Granary Burying Ground
• Old City Hall
• Old State House
• Faneuil Hall
• Old North Church

On our walks through Boston Commons, we passed people walking their dogs, kids on skateboards, and the most unusual sight of all: college students on broomsticks. Quidditch has leapt off the pages of Harry Potter and onto fields around the world. I took the opportunity to photograph a few moments here, but have just learned, thanks to the International Quidditch Association, that the Empire Classic will be taking place at Hofstra University on May 1st, and I may just have to photograph some more…

Enjoy! 🙂

Pocketful of Moomba

As you may or may not know, I spent this summer working at an academic enrichment program known as Exploration Summer Schools. Explo has three branches, the Junior program (grades 4-7), the Intermediate program (grades 8-9), and the Senior program (grades 10-12). I was the Web Photojournalist for the Intermediate program, located at Wellesley College. My responsibilities included:

• Photographing students during classes, activities, main events, and trips.
• Uploading and editing those pictures on iPhoto.
• Downloading the photos to a program known as SlideShow Pro, where captions were created to give viewers a better understanding of what was happening.
• Posting “Tweets” about what I saw in during the day, along with announcing the daily posting of the Explorer.
• Using Coda, an HTML program, to update the website on a daily basis.

During the first week of training as Web Photojournalist, I was forewarned: “The classrooms are really dark.” In all reality, some of the classrooms had worse lighting than a cave. Using a flash was dodgy since I would have spent the entire summer removing red eye, so I opted for playing with my shutter speed and f/stop. The nice thing about this was I could make it seem like a place that was poorly lit (even with the lights on) seem a bit brighter. However, it was frustrating to try and find a balance between blur and the depth of focus in a shot. By raising the ISO on my camera to 1600 and higher, I didn’t have to worry about sacrificing either of those aspects in my pictures. I did, however, have to deal with “noise”.

Wellesley Campus is beautiful, and the Explo classes were sometimes a fifteen minute walk apart. I would photograph classes based on proximity so to cut down on my commuting time. What also helped were the campus bicycles I found. Covered in pink duct tape, these bikes would make my day much easier. I could zip in and out of a class up to three times a period which meant I could catch more than one lesson to photograph. This definitely came in handy when walking in at the wrong point of a lesson (a lecture versus an activity).

Some of the spaces where I was asked to photograph weren’t exactly “typical” either. Take a look through the gallery for some insider moments!

Moomba Under Construction

So I sat down last night and rethought what I wanted from this super-post. I realized that I was so excited about sharing my summer with everyone that I forgot what my blog was all about, which was teaching what I was learning. I am in the process of revamping the 14 part mini-series (which let’s face it, fourteen parts makes it its own season) into a four part mini-series. All of the same photos will be present, just divided into different categories. Thank you for bearing with me. Be back soon!

America’s Favorite Pastime

Working in Massachusetts had quite a few perks. One of them was being 20 minutes from one of the greatest and oldest baseball stadiums in America. Home of the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park opened on April 20, 1912 (6 days after the sinking of the Titanic for all you history nuts). Ironically, they played the New York Yankees (then the New York Highlanders) and won the game, 7-6.

As a Mets fan, rather than a Yankee fan, I figured it was safe to wear my Mets jersey, and I was right. Aside from being heckled by a jersey-less intoxicated Boston fan (“Boo, Mets!” She clearly didn’t know the standings), questioned by the man who scanned my ticket (“The Mets?”), and hailed by the only Yankee fan in the place (“Go Mets!”), I was left alone to take some great photos of the place and the game!

At f/2.8, I could get my shutter speed as high as 1/1600s despite the fact that it was a night game because my ISO was through the roof. My number one difficulty was avoiding the poles. Though not directly in front of our seats, I had no view of the pitcher’s mound the entire game unless I leaned from side to side. The seats were also underneath the roof, so we missed anything in the air. I still had a great time, but in future, I will research the seats I’m looking to purchase better.

Welcome to Explo-topia!

The reason I haven’t been posting much at all is because I have a job for the summer as a web photojournalist! Explo is an academic enrichment program for middle school students located at Wellesley College. The link connects to the website that I am photographer of. Please feel free to look through the Daily Photos and Slideshows! On the days I have off I will be photographing and posting my own travels through Boston (which I’m not too far from). Otherwise, please stay tuned here! As this is where I’ll be all summer long!