Photo of the Day, Boston Style: Part XIX (2025)

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Didn't see a thread for 2025, so kicking this off! Mods, please merge if I missed it!

1.11.25. The Public Garden was absolutely packed with people on the snow day today! People love to be outside in winter!

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Photo of the Day 2005 style.... so it's been exactly 20 years since I started college at Berklee and concurrently got a digital camera. It also represents my move from NY to Massachusetts and my first experience living in an apartment and a true urban environment. On top of all that, I had gotten Sim City 4 shortly before and distinctly remember saying to a friend who also played that game "I feel like I'm living in a real life Sim City!" Massive step forward in life and it was all incredibly exciting.

Now to the photos: on their face they're nothing special, but what's interesting here is that almost every single one of these shots represents the very first time I was seeing that location -- these were my very first times going out for a walk in the city. They all come from February 2005 and I hadn't discovered AB yet so I'm pretty sure most/all of these have never made it up here before.

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The view from my apartment on Boylston. I LOVED this view

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I quickly became obsessed with the Sepia filter in good old iPhoto lol

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At this point they were just starting site preparations for the Mandarin Oriental

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DUTCH ANGLES!

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Intercontinental under construction

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Those photos exude a weird form of impatient nostalgia to me - the Big Dig had just wrapped up and the new projects that would define Boston going forward were just getting started, but to that point everything still felt "the same". They're from a couple of years after I graduated BLS ('03) but things were largely unchanged since then and the photos have that same energy. Maybe it's "in-transition me" that comes to light when I see them. Photos from Big Dig era Boston have that cozy feeling, but ones after 2000 or so feel kind of tense, with change so imminent. That shot down Boylston, especially - the Shawmut banner totally changes the vibe of the scene.

Incredible stuff!
 
Arenacale said:
Those photos exude a weird form of impatient nostalgia to me - the Big Dig had just wrapped up and the new projects that would define Boston going forward were just getting started, but to that point everything still felt "the same". They're from a couple of years after I graduated BLS ('03) but things were largely unchanged since then and the photos have that same energy. Maybe it's "in-transition me" that comes to light when I see them. Photos from Big Dig era Boston have that cozy feeling, but ones after 2000 or so feel kind of tense, with change so imminent. That shot down Boylston, especially - the Shawmut banner totally changes the vibe of the scene.

Incredible stuff!
Click to expand...

You get it! My being so new to Boston meant I didn't know it was in transition, but within a year or two I was fully aware of that (thanks to finding AB) and realized pretty quickly that these photos captured a moment in time that was already long gone. And then today they give me a very mixed vibe because 1) they do feel very pre-2006 development boom but 2) everything was so damn novel to me personally. Add in the fact that the camera was a 2002 model (Fuji Finepix!!) that definitely looks early-2000s grungy digital and they really have a vibe all their own.

Finally, now knowing just how stuck in the 1990s the Boston of 2005 was, I can't help but let that age these pictures even more.
 
kz1000ps said:
You get it! My being so new to Boston meant I didn't know it was in transition, but within a year or two I was fully aware of that (thanks to finding AB) and realized pretty quickly that these photos captured a moment in time that was already long gone. And then today they give me a very mixed vibe because 1) they do feel very pre-2006 development boom but 2) everything was so damn novel to me personally. Add in the fact that the camera was a 2002 model (Fuji Finepix!!) that definitely looks early-2000s grungy digital and they really have a vibe all their own.

Finally, now knowing just how stuck in the 1990s the Boston of 2005 was, I can't help but let that age these pictures even more.
Click to expand...

How far you've come :) That was a fun time capsule!
 
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