Photos and Raytracings: Lesser Cityscapes

This one was just plain fun.

The crooked venetian blinds are what makes this image.

When I first got my "water resistant" camera, I had to try it out.

Conclusion: It's water resistant, but cleaning the water droplets off of the lens is a bitch.

Still, I think the picture was worth it.

You wouldn't expect a picture of a random office building under construction to look very interesting, but this one does. The yellow insulation does it, really.

Fluffy clouds!

    I see a teddy bear!

I see a snake!

    I see a gigabit fiber network!

I didn't even realize the motorocycle was in this picture until after I got it back and scanned it it. I'd actually been taking pictures of the graffiti at the time.

If you're hand-holding a point-and-shoot camera anyway, you might as well hold it at an interesting angle.

I had some versions of this picture with better car light trails, but they weren't as good in other ways. They were taken with a larger aperture and the bench was out of focus. Oh well.

Everybody loves the bottom-lit trees. I'll probably get around to taking a picture of the ones in Harvard Square eventually (or not... I went back and they've been GONE for some time now).

This scene was quite a bit lighter when I was actually there. This should be fairly obvious, because you never get as bright a sun as the picture shows with a sky that dark. Nonetheless, I think it looks good this way.

This picture is one of the ones I took with a point-and-shoot camera that I had with me while doing something else. Don't knock it.

This is a picture of the sky taken from around Kendall Square. I can't really explain why I like it, but it passed the "would you hang it on your wall" test, so here it is. Note the prismatic lens flare in the middle of the cloud. I considered taking it out when I was dustspotting the picture, but I decided it was cute enough to leave in.

Pictures like this show you a scene in a way that you could never see it in person. No matter how dark the glasses you wear, the logarithmic nature of your eyes ensures that you'll never see things with high enough contrast for the buildings to be that dark with the sky that light.

Oh, please ignore the big white stripe on the left. I forgot to crop this one. I'll do that real soon now.

This is a picture of MIT's building 54, the tallest building in Cambridge. I think I took it while standing at the top of the stairs next to building 8. Building 54 was still in the sun, while building 18 (in front) was in the shade. Both buildings, by the way, were designed by I.M. Pei.

I think this picture looks attractive largely because the yellow-beige of the building goes well with the blue of the sky.

Oh, look. It's another sunset. Isn't that nice?

Ethel: I love sunsets, Harold. Don't you remember when little Jeffy was three, and he painted the sunset on the fridge with finger paints? Why, I can still see it in my mind...

Harold: Zzzzzzzzzz

Anyway, these were taken from around the intersection of Third and Cambridge streets, near the top of the hill. I like the on on the right; Courtney liked the one on the left, so I put it up too.

All these sunset pictures are starting to make me feel dirty. I'm not sure what proportion of the pictures on this page are sunsets, but I'm afraid to count them, because I know I'm not going to like the answer. Nonetheless, all the people who actually want prints of my pictures gravitate towards the sunsets, so it seems stupid to stop putting them up...

I was reluctant to put this one up, initially, because I don't think it's as interesting as some of the other sunset pictures I've taken. It's simpler in both shapes and colors, but I decided that there might be times when this was a good thing, and I included it anyway.

This is Courtney's favorite building in the Boston skyline, so when I was there on the day of a sunset that reflected well in it, I had to take a picture of it for her.

This building (whatever it is - I've never bothered to go check what's in it) doesn't appear in most of my skyline pictures, because it has the misfortune of being on the wrong side of the Longfellow Bridge, around the curve of the river. It's not that I don't like it, but that it usually isn't visible from where I am unless I want a big chunk of Memorial Drive in the foreground.

This building, near the Cambridgeside Galleria, is one of the buildings which used to be owned by the Lotus Software Corporation before they went out of business.

I don't think the colors are quite right, but I didn't like it in black and white, because I think the difference in color between the blue arch and the red brick is important to this picture.

Copyright (C) 2007 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