Terran Melconian: Cityscapes

In order to unclutter this page, I have now removed some of the pictures I liked the least and put them on their own page.

I took this picture along with several others of the barrels. I have some plans for modifications of one of the others, but this one was so good I thought it could stand by itself. It's not the sort of thing you'd probably want to hang on your wall, but it's just an amazing picture. I wish I could do this well regularly.

The scene was most assuredly NOT that green in person. The green shift (which I deliberately did not correct because I liked the way it looked) comes in part from the natural green-shift of the film for long exposures, and partly from the way the mercury vapor lights appear on film. If you're curious, you can look at a version with the film green-shift color corrected. Looks quite different, doesn't it? There isn't much that can be done about the lights, unless I want to play with the colors from each light's reflection individually.

The Lechmere Rug building is simply amazing. It looks like it came out of a time warp. You would have to be a colorblind dyslexic boll weevil to take an uninteresting picture of this building.

What's that smell, dear?

Don't worry, honey, I'm just cooking some more pictures.

(original here). All I actually did with this one was adjust the contrast and brightness to bring out a relatively small range of colors from the original image. There was no pasting in parts of other images, selective recolorization, or anything else complicated.

It's another sunset. It's not as good as some of the others, but it's pretty good, and based on what people ask for prints of, the sunset pictures are what everybody wants.

This is the infamous Hissing Sphere of Death in Kendall Square. In the summer, it's a fountain; in the winter, it emits steam and a hissing noise, hence its name. For several years, the fountain was inoperative, so everyone thought of the hissing steam part.

Pictures like this aren't really very hard to take, but you have to be willing to lug a camera and a tripod around at 3 AM, and then sit there for five or six minutes per exposure.

You may be wondering, by now, about what seems to be a strange obsession I have with orange barrels. It seems to run in my family, actually. It all started with my great-uncle Fritz, who once travelled over 1,500 miles stowed away inside a construction barrel stored on a freight train to be with his true love Emily. Sadly, once he arrived, his neck was permanently bent from curling up in the barrel, and she left him for the local greengrocer. It's really a touching story; my eyes tear up every time I hear it.

Shortly after I took the picture of the orange barrels above, I noticed it was becoming light, and thought I'd stay awake and take pictures of the sunrise, which looked promising.

I ended up spending over an hour standing over by the river, suffering from mind-numbing boredom and trying to dodge mosquitoes. The guy sleeping under a blanket 20 feet away from me was having more fun than I was; at least he was asleep.

As my reward, I got to witness a spectactularly crappy sunrise, none of the pictures of which were worth putting up. The picture above was the only decent one. Thus I get mind-numbing boredom and mosquite bites, and you at least get a halfway-decent picture. Such a deal!

This was the original picture I had in mind when I took the pictures of the barrels, but it took quite awhile to get the colors the way I wanted (and it took a long time to mask the barrels, too).

As you can see, the barrels and the background were separated, and operated on independently. For the barrels, I sampled the principal orange color, and changed the hue of everything to be that - that's why the barrels are their usual orange, and the yellow reflectors on top are also barrel orange. I did the same thing with the background, except in blue. Then I kicked the background towards cyan, because I liked the way it looked better that way.

I love you, Fritzie. Rest in peace.

This is a picture of MIT's Hayward Garage, which really is every bit as decrepit as it looks, or maybe even more so. When they say "park at own risk", they really mean it; occasionally chunks of concrete fall off of the ceiling.

Courtney says this one demonstrates I can make "eerie art pictures." I think it's supposed to be a compliment.

Oh my God! It's another fucking sunset! Bestill my spasmodically palpitating heart!

At least this one has water in it. It's actually one of my favorites, and if I weren't getting really tired of sunsets by now, I would quite like it. I had hoped the fountain would contribute more than it does, but I like it anyway. That fountain seems to have so much potential, but I've never gotten a good picture of it.

Update: I finally did! See #65 from October 2004 below.

This one might actually have been in Boston; I'm not sure. It was taken from part way across the Gilmore bridge, which goes from Cambridge to Charlestown.

Sunsets are supposedly romantic. I'm not convinced. If I were to try to watch a sunset with someone I was trying to impress, it would probably go something like this:

Romantic Interest: Oh, yes, it's so beautiful! I've never felt anything like this before!

Me: That's nice, dear. Now hurry up and put your pants back on; we have to go outside and watch the sunset.

Hey, this one isn't a sunset! I hope I don't have any more sunsets to add in this batch.

The only interesting thing about this picture is that I changed all the colors to blue. I picked the blue from the sky (which looked almost exactly as it does here) and applied it to everything else (which did NOT originally look like it does here).

See for yourself how much better it looks by comparing to to the Original Image.

This is the street under the Longfellow Bridge. It's been slightly edited, mainly to remove the green-speckled noise in the areas which should have been dark (the noise is primarily green instead of red or blue because of the film's green-shift in long exposures). If you're wondering what the area looks like, and why the hell there's no wall visible between the light and the railing, check out the previous exposure from the same roll, where I forgot to turn off the flash. It's a horrible picture, but it is illustrative.

I love this picture. I've greyscaled everything but the boat, but it works so well because everything except the boat really was dim and greyish.

I just call these pictures "Greater Boston", because I'm not sure whether I should list the town I was in, or the town the picture was of. Obviously, I was standing in Cambridge for the pictures of Boston, and I was standing in Boston for the pictures of Cambridge, like this one.

Normally I think construction cranes are an eyesore, but I think they actually make a positive contribution in this picture.

and now it is time for me to rejoice, because this is the last sunset I have to add in today's update.

I'm not entirely happy with this one, but I'm not sure what I'd like to be different, either.

This is perhaps my favoriate sunset picture so far. Therefore, of course, the camera shook slightly during this one, making it unsuitable for printing and hanging on my wall.

Nonetheless, it's good enough for using as a wallpaper, and I do.

As the MBTA red line trains pass inbound along Main St., emerging from the ground to cross the Longfellow Bridge, they generate bright flashes of light as the electricity arcs across some gaps in the rail. You can see the itself on the right side of the picture, and reflections of it from several places on the train.

This picture is actually pasted together from four separate exposures. I tried to do this before and failed; my problem was that I was using a lens with too much distortion. The Nikon 50mm lens I used for these pictures was adequate, and the results are what you see. This picture is an amazing 13300x2100, and I could probably get it printed at something like 10 inches by five and half feet.

I'm not entirely sure I like the way one of the boats appears twice, but by the time I noticed it was much too late to do anything about it. I'm not entirely sure I dislike it, either, so perhaps it's just as well.

You may be wondering how I took this picture. Streetlights, after all, aren't blue... are they? They are when they're first warming up. This particular light was having problems; it was going out and starting up again every few minutes. I stood around waiting, and took this picture when the light first started up. It was cold, so given how long I had to wait for each picture, I took only one... and it came out beautifully. I love it. All the colors here are completely honest, and the composition pleases me more than the best of the many pictures I usually take of the same subject often does.

Hey! It's another sunset! Oh goody goody goody! Now I am so happy, I run from the cattle prod!

Ok, I don't actually have anything against sunsets. Quite the opposite, really; I often go out of my way to watch them (live, that is). It's not the fault of the sunset pictures that people don't like my other work. After all, if I really didn't like them, I'd stop taking them.

This picture is one of my favorite sunset pictures so far, mainly because I like the tree silhouette. One of the reasons I enjoy taking pictures like this in the middle of the city is that conventional wisdom says it's not supposed to be possible. The societal meme is that, aside from perhaps a few architecturally interesting buildings, cities are ugly decrepit places full of filth and nastiness. I like poking at this meme and deflating the rural bigots a bit.

What do you think about the headlights and cars over on the right? I considered removing them (making them black), but I couldn't make up my mind.

This is a picture of the Cambridge power plant and its steam, over by Land Boulevard. I used ISO 800 film in order to get this picture; if I'd used 100 as I usually do, the steam would have moved too much during the length of exposure required.

I'm glad I took this picture when I did, because they've changed the lighting at the generation plant, and it's now much dimmer and red instead of the bright white it used to be.

This picture was taken right next to the one before it; it's a picture of the canal that's near the Cambridge side of the Longfellow bridge. Everything except the lights and their reflections have been desaturated.

This picture exploits the fact that most artificial lighting appears differently colored on film. The colors are usually more pronounced than when you see it in person, and Kodak Supra generally does this in a pleasing way. I knew this would happen, and took this picture not because I liked the way it looked when I was there, but because I thought I'd like the way it would look after the film had had its effect.

By the way, Kodak has discontinued the film I used to take these pictures, and no longer makes a single decent ISO 100 print film. Don't get used to using Kodak film; you'll just be sorry when they discontinue it a couple of years later.

This picture wasn't quite so purple originally, but I like it better this way. I could see this on a postcard... well, if it had more famous buildings in it, anyway.

In case you care, this picture was taken with a point&shoot camera on a small tripod strapped to a post.

Left: This is a small part of what was originally intended to be a long panorama of the skyline. Most of the rest of the picture wasn't very interesting, but this part was, particularly the greenish reflection on the glass Hancock building. The colors here are subdued, and you may not appreciate it if you have a monitor with poor color rendition.

Right: Another take on the same scene. Because it's later at night, the interior lights from the buildings are much brighter relative to the sky. Which version do you prefer?

On Breeds Hill, in Charlestown, is the Bunker Hill Monument, commemorating the Battle of Bunker Hill. The Battle of Bunker Hill was part of the American Revolution, which the Americans won, in spite of tactical weaknesses such as not being able to figure out which hill they were standing on.

Perhaps a lesson to be taken from the Revolution is that geography is not a major asset in war. History is, however, and had the United States paid more attention to its own beginning, it might not have lost a guerilla war in Vietnam and be in the process of losing another one in Iraq.

There are some wiseass photographers out there who say that all you "really need" is a 50mm lens, and you can "zoom with your feet". This may technically be true, but the bills for helicopter charters and digging large pits in the street really add up. After a few months, it's enough money that you probably could have afforded a new lens or two with it.

Between 3rd and 2nd streets, Otis Street turns into a park, and this building is one of the ones which faces onto this park. I like this picture because of the rich colors of the red building (with yellowish late-afternoon sun), blue sky, and green trees. The architecture of the building is also interesting enough to give the picture a worthwhile subject.

Of course, as is the nature of bureaucracy everywhere, this beautiful entrance now goes entirely unused; there is a sign directing people who actually want to go in to a small side door around the corner.

If you don't like the way the buildings seem to be leaning backwards, you can try this perspective-corrected version.

This picture and the last two were all taken within a few blocks of each other.

and I'm really running out of things to say about them.

now for something completely different! If it wasn't obvious, this is an MBTA red-line train (new style) coming across the Longfellow Bridge, shortly after sunset. I've tried to photograph trains coming across the bridge before, but I like this one better than my previous attempts.

Thank God for small penises.

If people were confident about their manhood, they wouldn't keep trying to outdo each other by building more spectacular buildings. If they didn't keep building large, expensive buildings to look impressive, I wouldn't be able to take pictures like this one of those buildings.

They build impressive buildings and get chicks; I take pictures and my girlfriend gushes about how I'm an "artist." Everybody wins!

I'm fond of this fountain, and this isn't the first picture I've taken of it, but it is the first picture of it operating. The sun is directly behind it, which is why the water is so light and visisble. I tried several other pictures from other angles, but the one with the water backlit is the clear winner.

You can also see a version with a much faster exposure, which captures the water as individual drops instead of blurring them into streaks. I like both versions, but I think I like the longer exposure a little bit better.

This building is across the canal from the Cambridgeside Galleria. It apparently houses the Monitor Group, although I have no idea what they do; all I could find was a bunch of BusinessDoubleSpeak, so I'm guessing they're either in finance or law. I can't imagine I'd approve if I understood, but at least they have a building that looks neat as one walks by it.

This picture is highly dependent on good color rendition, which is in turn dependent on film. I used Agfa Ultra 100 to take it, and I think it worked quite well.

Yet another sunset picture, but I like this one too. I'm not sure if I like it better like this, or with the left 1/3 cropped off, but it's easier to crop it more than uncrop it later, so for now it's staying like this.

This building used to be owned by Lotus, prior to their acquisition by IBM; I believe it's now vacant or rented by some other companies.

I really seem to like the color contrast of brick with a blue sky in the late afternoon or early morning, as you may have noticed. I don't think the pictures fully do it justice, however, and I'm still working on ways to improve the color rendition somehow.

Almost all of this picture is a reflection in the canal. The thing you can see right side up is the rock wall in the upper-left corner, which I deliberately included for some perspective.

Oh, look, it's my favorite color scheme - blue and yellow!

I have a strange fascination with this building. It's ridiculously decrepit, and yet I keep finding myself drawn to it. I've tried unsuccessfully to take pictures of it at night several times, and this is the first picture of it which I think turned out well. The yellow sun seems to work well with the bricks and grass to make this picture very colorful.

The weather was absolutely amazing on this day; there was bright yellow clouds in the foreground and dark stormclouds which had just blown over in the background. Normally at this time of day things which are not directly let by the yellow sun look bluish, from the sky light; the presence of the clouds eliminated this here, leading to the unusual colors.

I went to Brussels for business and took only my digital camera with me. I generally find that digital cameras, due to their sharp cutoff at the light end, do very poorly with night exposures. I am highly amused, therefore, that the two pictures from Brussels I thought were the best were both night pictures.

This picture was taken in Poelart Square, next to the Palais de Justice designed by Poelart. In addition to being pretty, it gets my award for "most excessive use of blue LEDs".

This is my other picture from Brussels. It's just a windowbox in a window of some unknown building I passed, but I found it striking. This picture was the only one I took that night. A couple days later I decided I liked this picture and tried again, but I concluded the first one was the best.

This picture was also taken with my cheap digital camera, and I find it truly amazing that there are not huge areas of blown-out highlights with no data where the lights hit the building.

"If you can't make it good, make it big. If you can't make it big, make it blue." This picture has a large blue building with interesting architecture - what more is there to want?

This effect was possible because half the sky (shown in the picture) was overcast, whereas the other half (behind me) was clear and blue. This lead to the contrast between the blue reflected in the Hancock building and the dark grey sky behind it.

here's a photograph so traditional that even a purist would surely approve!

The lighting here is completely real - the boats are the brightest thing because a hole in the clouds caused the sun to hit them, not because of any artificial retouching.

I've been trying for at least a year to take a good picture of this fountain in the canal without much success. I'm finally happy with this one.

I've taken a number of versions of this picture during the daytime as well; the curve of the arches is very appealing to me.

I take pictures on black and white film exclusively at night, because I can get high-speed black and white film which I think has better grain and tone than comparable color film. This is not the case for low-speed film, so any black and white pictures you may see that were taken during the daytime were actually taken on color film and then desaturated during subsequent postprocessing.

I don't know which street exactly this was, but it was taken while walking between East Cambridge, where I lived at the time, and Bova's, which was open in the middle of the night and had tasty snacks for me to eat.

One man's trash, as they say, is another man's photo contest entry.

I took this picture when a couple of friends showed up unexpectedly at my door, told me that the river was much calmer than usual, and talked me into getting into their car and going with them to Harvard Square, since I was a Photographer and could Do Something with the unique environmental effects.

There are strong lights at the end of the footbridge - in my opinion they are too strong for my purposes in taking a picture like this. Perhaps this picture would do better taking at dusk or dawn when there is some other significant non-point source of light.

The day I took this picture, I'd had a very difficult slog through the snow, having forgotten how my knees dislike walking several miles on slippery surfaces. I took very few pictures, in spite of having hauled all the camera equipment, but this was one of the ones I got, and I actually quite like it. The Spring and Summer pictures in the oddities gallery was taken the same day.

I hate the Gehry architecture so much, yet this little microcosm looks OK to me.

This picture was taken with a digital camera, employed in a situation with a very large range from light to dark. I didn't care, however, because I didn't want most of that information in this picture anyway.

I quite like this picture, which captures both the Boston skyline and the Longfellow Bridge in silhouette in front of it. It was taken handheld at night with very high speed film; in this instance, I consider the high contrast a very desirable effect.

Copyright (C) 2010 by Terran Melconian. You may mirror this page for personal use. Images may be downloaded and printed. All other rights reserved.
For questions, purchasing prints, etc, email