Musings

Part 2 of the series of posts on panorama compositions I did during the Boston trip, and this time from the Skywalk Observatory. These were taken in the late afternoon from level 50 of the Prudential Tower.

Admission to this level was through my Citypass ticket. The view up top was magnificent, though I didn’t enjoy unlimited visibility and colors were somewhat washed out. I haven’t cleaned up the images from window streaks and blemishes either, so they’re somewhat visible.

I had a lot of fun doing between extreme zooms too just to test the upper limits of the Sigma 18-250mm lens. The first set of three are of Trinity Church, all the way from 18mm to 250mm.

And these three are of Newbury Street:

There’s a whole bunch more of these 18mm to 250mm zoom-ins here in the Flickr set.:)

I had a bit of free time today just before I leave for home, so took up another whale-watching trip – this time out of Boston . There are about three whale-watching trip companies operating out of Boston city itself. As I didn’t have a reference point to whether one was better than the other, I simply took the one that ‘looked’ like the most established and comfy one with the New England Aquarium.

Unlike the Yankee Freedom Matt and I took off Gloucester, the Voyager III was a much more luxurious boat. There were much fewer whale watchers taking the trip this time too, as it was a weekday morning (when the boat returned, there was a long queue for the afternoon session).

Everything looked really promising, compared to the choppy madness at sea and hours of fruitless searching for whales from the earlier trip. The weather this time was just perfect, the sky was a glorious blue, and waters were reasonably calm. We ran into the first pair of whales just an hour out of the harbor (compared to the more than three hours it took before we had our first sighting off Gloucester). In fact, I think we saw about eight whales in five different sightings altogether in the Stellwagen Bank.

However, all the whales did this time was to blow and do lazy dives. No breaching, no flipper slaps, no fancy tricks – though on one occasion one of the humpbacks came pretty close to our boat at about 10 meters close.

It brings to mind what some of the experienced watchers shared in the earlier Gloucester trip. That while we were tremendously unlucky to have scouted around for so long before the first sighting, that we saw a mother humpback and her calf as a pair, and that she was teaching her baby breaching was very special. So much so that it was worth the agony of the outbound trip itself, even if we didn’t realize then how lucky we were to have seen whales breaching and doing flipper slaps.

So, here’s one series of pictures taken of one of the sighted whales doing a lazy and slow dive during the Boston outing. I was a lot better prepared this time too. Ditched the polarizer, dialed a minimum shuttle exposure time of 1/800s, braced myself better against the boat railings and shot in JPG instead of RAW. So, the shots this time were pristine in quality – just no breaching.:(

The Boston Common is a central public park right in the heart of the city, and is one of America’s oldest parks at 376 years of age. This park is prominently mentioned in many visitor materials as a must-see. The park is very convenient to get to too from my work place: just two stops and less than 5 minutes train ride away.

I’d been waiting for the right weather conditions to do a proper photo shoot of the place, and after nearly two weeks of gloomy and badly overcast weather, the cloud layer finally to reveal a stunningly clear blue sky on the last week of my stay. Here’s a selection of pictures taken of the Boston Common; most from yesterday Wednesday morning before I headed to work, and a couple of others from earlier when I passed through the area on my way to elsewhere.

Below: The Brewer Fountain that’s just beside the entrance of Park Street subway station. The 22-foot tall 15,000 pound bronze fountain was cast in Paris, and a gift to the city by a Gardner Brewer. The fountain’s a popular spot for many park visitors to hang out, enjoy the scenery, while having a cuppa. That’s the Massachusetts State House in the background too; you can see more pictures of it in our blog here and here.

Below: Lots of pigeons about:

Below: The 652 large trees in the park provide welcome shade from the summer sun, though the weather was very cooling already (about 21°C):

Below: Lots of people just hanging out in the park.

Below: The Parkman Bandstand, built in 1912. One of the park’s most recognizable structures. It’s commonly used for musical and theatrical performances held in the garden.

Below left: The Soldiers and Sailors Monument, erected in 1877. Right: Lots of flower beds line the foot paths throughout the garden.

Below: The Lagoon Bridge just ahead.

Below: The Lagoon Bridge, with the famous swan boats just on the left hand side (hidden in this picture) of the bridge:

Below: The Lagoon.

Below: The garden also offers a great view of swanky apartment blocks in Boston city.

Below: A Statue of George Washington, cast from bronze and on top of a solid granite base. This statue was dedicated in 1869, and is a popular photographic spot for visitors.

I recorded several videos, and did a large number of panoramic compositions in my visits here. Will post them up at some point.:)

These pictures of Harvard were taken more than a week ago in the late afternoon at about 6 PM after work. They were sort of just sitting in the desktop folder, so posting them up. The sun at this time wasn’t still setting – it only really gets totally dark past 9 PM – but there was still a relatively pleasing blue sky layer. The color tones of greenery and bricks came through a little better than the earlier pictures.

Above two pictures: Harvard Hall, near the Johnston Gate towards Massachusetts Avenue.

Above: Weld Hall, just across Tercentary Theatre and beside the University Hall.

Above: Widener Library. It was just after closing time again when I got here. Have to try to at least see the inside of the library once before I leave.

Above two pictures: Memorial Church, with its distinctive white spire.

Above: Memorial Hall, surprisingly devoid of visitors on group tours this time.

There were lots of people abouts, many making use of Harvard Yard as a thoroughfare to get from one point to the other. Real feat to take images without human persons in the fore or background!

The Thousand Islands isn’t even an appropriate descriptor for the region: there are about 1,800 islands compacted into a relatively small area along St. Lawrence River and right smack in the Canada/US border. Ownership of the islands is split between Canada and the United States, with many privately owned as summer and holiday homes for the rich, famous and powerful.

The region is supposed to be really scenic – except again that the Saturday mid afternoon we arrived was all mood and gloom, and even rainy. Sigh.

Anyway: pictures. Some islands are barely just 12 meters across, like the below that sits a single cottage and a couple of chairs:

Some are slightly larger, like the below:

Below: Though not by that much: same island. Maybe about 100 meters across only.

Below: This has got to the be smallest lighthouse I’ve ever seen. It’s practically a baby.:)

Below: Some of the larger islands have beautifully built-up residences that also make for tourist places of attraction. Yep, that’s Boldt castle on the left, in addition to the smaller Power House in the foreground.

Below: Other islands are little more than rock croppings:

The boat ride lasted for about 45 minutes, and we – momentarily – crossed into Canada. So, while we didn’t go through customs, we can claim to have visited Canada for a couple of minutes, if as illegal entrants!

The detour to Thousand Islands on our way to Niagara Falls added about 5 hours of travel time though. Was it worth it? Well, if you have time to spare, it’s worth a look-see. But if you’re in a hurry, this region can be safely skipped in sight-seeing.

The second day of the trip – Sunday – saw us getting up bright and early, and heading from our hotel in Buffalo City to the Falls again. The first item on the itinerary was a 45 minute IMAX movie at the Niagara Adventure Theatre situated at the Visitors Center. The movie explains the history of the falls, starting with how the old Indians native to the continent worshipped it, to early explorations, and finally to crazed thrill seekers wanting to challenge the power of the Waterfalls.

For those persons who’re going to visit this place at some point, you can skip the film if you’re in a rush or on a tight budget. It’s watchable and informative, but you’re not missing too much if you give it a miss.

The massive structure on the right is the Observation Tower, situated on the American side. The ticketing and admission booths for the famed Maid of the Mist boat trip is situated at the Niagara Falls State Park – which is ground level – but to actually get to the boat’s berth area on the river, you take a fast elevator within the Tower all the way down to the river bed. The tower is massive and I judge it to be about 14 floors high. Most of the pictures later below are all taken from the tower’s observation deck.

From the Wikipedia entry of the trip, a number of the Maid/Mist’s boats work the area – as many as seven. I didn’t see all of them out on the Sunday morning; just perhaps four boats. So, while the area was pretty crowded on the weekend, crowds going for the boat trip were moving along briskly.

The above picture is of the Canadian side of the Boat ride as seen from the Observation Tower.

The boat trip itself lasts for a brisk 15-20 minutes. Yep, it’s really short. But if you’re going to the Falls, this is the only way to actually experience the sheer power, noise and din of one of nature’s most spectacular sights. Victoria Falls is of course even better than this, but also in a far less accessible location in Africa. But Ling now wants to go there – maybe we’ll end up skipping Japan this December and going to Zimbabwe instead.:)

The above four pictures were all taken on the Observation Tower’s deck at various perspectives and zoom levels, and of the American and Bridal Veil falls (the smaller one). You can’t really quite see the Horseshoe Falls from the American side because of the huge mist that’s thrown up. And yeah, the weather was no good. Very little sun, all cloudy. Both the E-Pl1 and D300 had difficulties dealing with the poor color tones, and I tried to recover whatever I could from Photoshop.

OK, two more perspectives of the falls. The picture below is taken of the Crows Nest, a small stoned paved walk away that brings you to take a really close look at the American and Bridal Veil falls. Lots of tourists walk this route, but because the path way is so narrow, a lot of human traffic jams result, thanks to persons who stop and pose to get their pictures taken.

Funnily though, I didn’t get drenched when I made the climb myself. The wind was blowing the mist in the other direction.:)

The below was taken at the Niagara Falls State Park, which lets you get a great review of the Rapids leading to the American Falls.

To be honest, I don’t think the pictures have turned out well at all. The weather was less than pleasing, and the viewing perspective of the falls the Americans get is all wrong, though admittedly if you want to experience the physical prowess of the falls and are less interested in taking great pictures, this is the preferred side rather than the Canadians.

The videos fared a little better, if nothing else they give you an idea of how big the area is. The first video was taken on the climb up the Crows Nest:

And the second video below is taken from the Observation Tower’s deck:

I still have a whole bunch of panoramas taken of the area, which I’ll comment on at the end of the trip. If I’m coming to this region ever again, I’ll want to be on the other side – and hope for better weather too.:)

If there’s one recommendation I’ve got for persons who’d like to visit Niagara Falls from Boston, it’s this – unless you’re up to busing 705+ kilometres – and that’s about 9 hours without traffic and if your driver zooms at about 100 km/h on the Interstate – your best bet is to just fly into Buffalo International Airport, then taking a bus or coach from Buffalo City to the falls.

I was considering two options for visiting Niagara Falls; make my own way by flying in using the above mentioned route, or take the convenient route of a tour agency arranged bus trip. The flight would have required more planning and about 1.5 times the cost, the tour package would had let me travel on the famous Interstate I-90, something I’ve always wanted to try out just for the experience.

Truth to tell, the bus journey wasn’t so bad, though the tour group was pretty packed with Asians, Middle-Easterners, Indians, East Europeans, and I suspect a couple of Russians. The group on balance was pretty well-behaved, though towards the end of the return trip when we’d been on the road for 8.5 hours and just about 5 km from Boston, a couple of them started singing “Memories”. I would have gladly got out of the bus and walked the remaining distance back. That said, I’m just happy though that there were no China aunties yakking in Mandarin all the way throughout. Small mercies!

The trip had a major detour: to visit the Thousand Island region from Alexandria Bay (you can see it near the map’s top edge), which added about 5 hours to the outbound journey to the Falls. I’ll blog about this in another post later.

As described in the earlier post, there are two falls in the area: the American and Bridal Veil Falls (marked ‘A’ on the satellite map below) and the Horseshoe Falls (marked ‘B’). There are also two sides to view the Falls, and there are pros and cons to both. The Canadians enjoy a spectacular view, since their side of the river is directly facing both waterfalls. Their side of the river is heavily built up – you can see it from the pictures – with casinos, parks, restaurants, and swanky hotels. However, they’re also – literally – across the river and have to see the falls from across it!

The American side doesn’t quite get the same view perspective (the Observation Tower alleviates it somewhat though), but you get a lot closer to the Falls, in some spots just meters away through walkways, and close enough to get millions of gallons of water crashing on your head.:)

We got to the Falls proper on Saturday night at about 10 PM, after having left Boston 15 hours earlier. The first stop was Terrapin Point to see the Horseshoe Falls, all spectacularly lit up by the Canadian side. These four pictures were taken of the Horseshoe Falls with very slow exposure times, handheld.:)

That’s us on the American side, with the Top of the Falls Restaurant to my rear. The powerful strobe lights change shade and color every once in a while, and it makes for spectacular photography.

Next post is on pictures taken on the following morning (Sunday).:)

Last post in the series. Several more random pictures taken.

Rich guy on a convertible. Think it’s an Audi A5, registered in New York from the car plate registration:

Golden Retrievers are popular about this part. Saw many of them.:)

A shop along Commercial Street selling antiques for your home. Too rich for me though.:(

Loved the poster on the left! This was near the entrance to Whaler’s Wharf, a small partially covered street with colorful shops:

Including a shop with an Asian artist assisted with his wife who was drawing 10 minute caricature portraits for visitors. He was a delightful chap; didn’t speak much English, and I don’t think he was Chinese either. My best guess is that he’s Japanese. Single person caricatures were going for USD9, and two-person USD15. Colored ones were going for a little higher – but those were very good prices for the quality of his work. Frames cost a further USD15.

And yes, I had my caricature done by him too. Will post it up sometime.:)

Wood End Lighthouse in the far, far distance, and the western end of the town. From the map we got at the tourist information center, we thought the lighthouse from the end of Commercial Street would still be within walking distance (we’d been walking for more about an hour at this point to get there).

We were so wrong.

This was at maximum zoom, 250mm X 1.5 crop factor. And this is as close as we got to the Wood End lighthouse. It was VERY far. The damn map was deceiving and not drawn to scale – gah.

A little depressing. We shuttle-bused ourselves up a little more north to Pering Cove Beach hoping to the Race Point lighthouse (Matt was determined to visit one lighthouse at least). No such luck: it was even further from where we were to it. Below’s a panoramic shot of Pering Cove Beach:

A beach of nothingness yeah. We backtracked to waiting for the shuttle bus to bring us back from what was the beach back to the town center. Below was my point of view for about an hour: starring at tall grass blowing in the wind:

His face says it all: our moods:

Back at the town center, we still had about 3 hours to kill before our fast ferry arrived at 7:30 PM to bring us back. It was getting real windy. We toyed with the idea of hiring a boat to bring us to a third lighthouse – Long Point – but one look at the choppy waters, and that we would be going in what looked like a small dinghy, we gave up the idea.

So we occupied ourselves people-watching, like this local cop stalking for a hot dog at The Red Shack (I had a hotdog here too).

Lounging around at the town center:

By 6:30 PM, a layer of fog was settling in on top of the strong winds. This was what it looked like. You probably can’t see from the picture too: but our ride – the Provincetown III – was returning and is in the picture.

I stuck myself at the front of the ferry and did the whole “I’m the King of the World!!!” thing sans Kate Winslet, enjoying the full blast of a cold evening wind on a fast ferry. When I returned, Matt observed that my face showed evidence of the wind blast.

Took a shot of the setting sun too at 8:10 PM:

We got back to Boston at about 9:15 PM. All dark: and it was a real feat getting shots like the below. On the slow Sigma 18-250mm lens. I’m getting real good at handheld long exposures, thanks to this trip.

So, the Provincetown trip was a mixed bag, considering the costs of getting there and returning. Crummy weather, and distances that looked a lot further than on the map. Still, the climb up the Pilgrim Monument, the very colorful residences, shops and restaurants – and of course, that we were approached by men in drag – made up for it.:)

Commercial Street runs about 5 km and almost parallel to the coastline of Provincetown. Both sides of the small one lane street are lined with many art galleries, shops, museums and restaurants. We didn’t step into too many of these establishments though, being contended just to walk for most of the stretch and soaking in the atmosphere.

Here’s a small selection of the hundreds of pictures I took while walking along Provincetown. Most of these below were taken using the E-PL1. Captioned where appropriate or when I can remember.:)

Revere Guest House – with vacancy:

Residences:

Flowerbeds adorn many of the inns and residences:

Provincetown also has a thriving artist colony, and many of them feature their works in small galleries along the street.

“Spank the monkey” LOL:

I think the Spank the Monkey shop was selling exotic jewellery. Another shop selling the same type of wares, but with a more ‘traditional’ storefront.:)

The Provincetown Library. They’ve got a special reading room that says “Technology-Free Zone”. No computers, no notebooks, no PDAs, no MP3 players. Heck – I don’t think you’re allowed to even fiddle with your mobile phone.:)

The pilgrims from England first made landfall in the America in Provincetown 400 years ago. To commemorate their landings, the Pilgrim Memorial Monument was built between 1907 and 1910, with then President Theodore Roosevelt laying its cornerstone in 1907. The tower itself is about 77 meters tall, and is 106 meters above sea level in view of it being built on a small hill:

At the base of the tower is the town’s museum.

Admission to the tower itself wasn’t free though – an admission charge of USD7 was levied. It was a non-brainer: just about every visitor to Provincetown has climbed the tower, and we weren’t going to be left out. The store below even sells T-shirts for visitors who complete the climb.

As a side note: the noticeboard on display in front of the museum’s entrance states clearly “There is no elevator in the tower.”:)

The museum houses many artifacts from the early settlers of Provincetown. There are more pictures of the museum in the Flickr album.

One particular set of paintings caught my attention: it was a series of five paintings depicting the key events of the Pilgrim landings. Below is a picture of the first event (there are four more such paintings):

Onto the tower itself! While 77 meters doesn’t sound like much, I judge it to be about 12-13 levels high. That’s a view from nearly the top floor downwards, taken with the D300 pointed downwards. The camera strap was coiled twice around my wrist – if the D300 slipped, it would have shattered into a couple million pieces:

The view up top was incredible. It was terrifically windy (you’ll be able to hear it in the video segment below) up top. The view was blocked by glass and iron grills, ostensibly to stop people from taking the fast elevator down, head first.

How did we get such pristine pictures though? Well, the D300 (and Matt’s D90) was stuck through the metal grills, and I turned on Liveview.:)

I managed to get a couple of really nice panoramas from up top, though the view range and number of composite images were limited because of  how little I could turn the D300 in a panorama sweep.

Just to show how tall the tower is, below is a snapshot of Matt going to the ground to get as much of the tower as possible.:)

Videos next. The first one’s a pan around the tower’s base:

Another video showing me struggling up the final steps and emerging at the top of the tower. The color balance on the camcorder’s a bit messed up when I emerged at the top, so I restarted a new clip for the third video below.

And finally, the magnificent view of Provincetown from the top of the tower. Very windy!

Next post: Provincetown’s Commerical Street.:)