Photo of the Day, Boston Style: Part XX (2026)

Time for another round of flashbacks to 20 years ago.... first a walk down to the ICA as it existed on January 9th, 2006

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A very slushy mess after snowfall the day before in Cambridge, January 23rd

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Trilogy under construction on February 8th

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And finally, on this day 20 years ago Boston got walloped by a pretty sizable blizzard. I was living right at Boylston and Mass and went out for a little walk in the Back Bay right as things were peaking

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Time for another round of flashbacks to 20 years ago.... first a walk down to the ICA as it existed on January 9th, 2006

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Ah, those first gen Explorers were understatedly handsome.

The Back Bay snow photos are so timeless.
 
^^ Welp to pick up on DZH's last photo, I just got a puppy for the first time ever (amazing but wow is it work!) so I had dogs on the mind Wednesday...

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We comiserated just a wee bit :p

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I hate graffiti. To me it's a sign of a civilization in collapse, as when the Visigoths and Vandals sacked the declining ancient Rome.
It’s just an expression of youthful rebellion. Obviously some is better/more artfully done than others, and at its best it becomes a real asset in the form of street art. If you still can’t get on board just remember even Zurich has graffiti.
 
It’s just an expression of youthful rebellion. Obviously some is better/more artfully done than others, and at its best it becomes a real asset in the form of street art. If you still can’t get on board just remember even Zurich has graffiti.
Its just me. I like things to be neat and tidy. I'm a minimalist.
 
After the latest blizzard. Broad Canal Way in Kendall must be an official snow dump for the area because a ton of it gets pushed and/or dropped off back there. The street is only half its normal width right now!

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Its just me. I like things to be neat and tidy. I'm a minimalist.
Not just you. I dont mind street art. What I dont like is when people go around crappily scribbling their name all over the place like a middle schooler. If youre going to take the time then do something decent. Its extra disrespectful when it sucks.
 
Not just you. I dont mind street art. What I dont like is when people go around crappily scribbling their name all over the place like a middle schooler. If youre going to take the time then do something decent. Its extra disrespectful when it sucks.
Murals I love. It's the random scribbling that is crappy.
 
Not just you. I dont mind street art. What I dont like is when people go around crappily scribbling their name all over the place like a middle schooler. If youre going to take the time then do something decent. Its extra disrespectful when it sucks.
I'm just riffing here, but I also don't think I care much about graffiti when it's on something that was given no aesthetic consideration to begin with. If it's on a building where the original designer added even a tiny bit of artistic effort, then it seems worse to cover that with graffiti. But a lot of the places graffiti sticks around are places no one cared about in the first place: backs of highway signs; featureless, concrete retaining walls; cheap, afterthought pedestrian bridges. Even if someone puts up bad graffiti, at least it's a sign that someone gave some thought to aesthetics.
 
Hey @kz1000ps , great pictures, as always!

Do you mind me asking what camera/kit you're using? Or what processing you're doing? I feel like I could pick your photos out of a lineup pretty easily, but I'm trying to pin down why that is. There's some things about composition and focus, but also the colors and tones almost look like some film emulation?

I'm just a curious hobby photographer.
 
Hey @kz1000ps , great pictures, as always!

Do you mind me asking what camera/kit you're using? Or what processing you're doing? I feel like I could pick your photos out of a lineup pretty easily, but I'm trying to pin down why that is. There's some things about composition and focus, but also the colors and tones almost look like some film emulation?

I'm just a curious hobby photographer.

Well I'll start with the easy part: my camera is a Canon 6D Mark II and I'm mainly using a wide angle 11-24mm, a 50mm f1.8 for the shallow focus stuff, or 70-200mm zoom, although I have a few other lenses I might drag out occasionally.

As for the processing, it's just Lightroom and fumbling around with different filters and looks until I find ones I like. I found a preset filter that I've then gone and tweaked a bunch to make a new preset out of that's what I've been using for all these winter shots... it's got a bit of a fade, a bit of a blue tinge in the shadows, and then otherwise I've just tried to go for a look that, for lack of a better term, is cinematic but without trying to go too far down that rabbit hole with fake film grain or whatever. But the older I get the more I get into cinematography and watch a lot of film analysis where they break down individual shots and scenes by composition, focus, lighting, etc. etc. and so I've kinda taken to trying to frame my photos as if they were screengrabs from a movie, and then really consider the order I post the pics in so there's a good flow to them.

I have no idea if any of this translates out into the real world, or even if this all sounds like a bunch of self-absorbed artsy fartsy babble, but mentally that's what's living rent free in my head 🙃
 
I have no idea if any of this translates out into the real world, or even if this all sounds like a bunch of self-absorbed artsy fartsy babble,
Oh, I mean any discussion like this always sounds a little artsy fartsy. 😂
But that all makes sense. And that artsy fartsy thinking is what it usually takes to get good results. Thanks for sharing!
 

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