The longest trip I had out of the country was a three week visit to New England in 2010, and arranged as part of a two year long work project I was in between my institution and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT – alongside Harvard University – are situated in the city of Cambridge, just a few train stops away from Boston – and both cities are among some of the oldest settled cities in the United States. Whenever I’d finished work each day, I’d take the subway down to explore the cities. The equipment I took for this trip were the same as the Japan trips: the old Nikon D300 with Sigma 18-250mm and Nikon 18-55mm, and the Olympus E-PL1 – taking 4,185 and 829 pictures on them respectively.
Sample #1 @ Massachusetts State House: ISO200, 24mm, f8, 1/250s. Adjustments were Exposure +0.50EV, Highlights -75, Shadows +30, Vibrance +5, Saturation +5, Dehaze +50. Original Blog post here. The state capitol and seat of government for the state, built in 1798 and still in use today. I didn’t get to actually step into the House, but the building is part of the Freedom Trail. Bumped up color vibrancy for this picture in post-processing.
Sample #2 @ Old State House: ISO400, 18mm, f7.1, 1/125s. Adjustments were Exposure +0.50EV, Highlights -100, Shadows +20, Vibrance +5, Saturation +5, Dehaze +60. Original Blog post here. Built in 1713, and among the oldest buildings in the country. It’s used as a museum today and sits surrounded by modern skyscrapers in the city’s financial district, making for an interesting juxtaposition between the old and new.
Sample #3 @ Old South Church: ISO200, 28mm, f7,1, 1/200s. Adjustments were Exposure +0.5EV, Contrast +5, Highlights -100, Shadows +40, Vibrance +5, Saturation +5, Dehaze +40. Original Blog post here. This Gothic Revival styled church was completed in 1873. Weather was clear but cloudless, so quite a bit of adjustments were done to give the picture more dynamic range.
Sample #4 @ Blue’s Bed and Breakfast: ISO400, 18mm, f3.5, 1/3s. Original Blog post here. Adjustments were Exposure +0.40EV, Highlights -100, Shadows +50, Dehaze +25. I stayed in a lovely B&B home of a Harvard Museum of Natural History staffer, and like my old homes in the city of Cambridge, it was beautifully decorated. This is the main dining room where I had my breakfast every morning. Adjustments were done to get a bit more detail from shadows and reduce glare, but still keep the general warm ambiance evident from the picture.
Sample #5 @ Provincetown: ISO200, 18mm, f10, 1/250s. Adjustments were +0.20EV, Highlights -100, Shadows +60, Vibrance +8, Saturation +12, Dehaze +40. Original Blog post here. This and the next picture were taken during a day trip our ang mo family friend – Matt – and I did to the small coastal resort town located at the tip of Cape Cod. The town is well-known for its artists, holiday homes, and also for its energetic LGBTQ community. The photo here is of The Pilgrim Monument to commemorate the 1620’s first landfall of the Pilgrims.
Sample #6 @ Returning to Boston: ISO3200, 28mm, f4.0, 1/10s, Temp 3250K. Adjustments were Shadows +10, Whites +30, Tint -15, Dehaze +5, Noise Reduction 26. Original Blog post here. The D300 seems to have misjudged the temperature of the image and emphasized blues a bit too much, which I’ve tried to counter here by reducing tint.
Sample #7 @ Whalewatching: ISO200, 92mm, f7.1, 1/200s. Adjustments were Contrast +10, Higlights -100, Shadows +15, Vibrance +8, Saturation +11, Dehaze +41. Original Blog post here. One of the two whalewatching trips I did during my trip. This one is the first again with Matt and off Gloucester. Matt has a hilarious blog entry about this trip, and yep, we saw some magnificent breaching! The lens was the Sigma 18-250mm, but the lens was actually set to just 92mm to increase the viewing angle. It was hard for me to tell where the whales were going to appear next!
Sample #8 @ Trinity Church: ISO200, 18mm, f6.3, 1/160s. Adjustments were Exposure +0.40EV, Contrast +6, Highlights -100, Shadows +40, Dehaze +60. Original Blog post here. Church in the city that was completed in 187, and noted as one of the ten most significant Buildings in the US by the American Institute of Architects. I visited the church twice during my stay to take photos. The first photo here is taken from opposite the church and at the Boston Public Library.
Sample #9 @ Trinity Church: ISO400, 18mm, f3.5, 1/5s. Adjustments were Exposure +0.30EV, Contrast +5, Highlights -75, Shadows +50, Vibrance +5, Saturation +5, Dehaze +40. The adjustments I’ve done here are again to reduce glare and to retrieve detail from the darkened areas of the image.
Sample #10 @ Harvard Memorial Hall: ISO200, 18mm, f4.5, 1/200s. Original Blog post here. Adjustments were +0.50EV, Contrast +10, Highlights -100, Shadows +6, Whites +10, Vibrance +5, Saturation +5, Dehaze +50. Imposing Neo-Gothic memorial to the sacrifices made by men from Harvard University during the American Civil War. This was fairly late in the afternoon but still quite sunny. Adjustments have added quite a bit of needed color, especially to the sky layer.
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