After a delightful dinner watching the world go by on a lovely spring evening from my front row seat on Newbury Street, I strolled around the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston.
The mysterious funk of this alley prompted me to retrieve my car-bound Nikon mirrorless camera. The view, devoid of nearby shiny modern buildings, felt pregnant with with old-time story and possibility.
Graphically complex scenes like this lure me to capture them with multiple exposures. I snap a frame to check exposure and start the mental calibration of how many exposures might look good.
Like a painter making a sketch before the squeezing paint, I capture a single image of the visual raw material to ready myself for multiple exposure show time.
Around the corner and down Boylston Street, the facade of Dick's House of Sport sported bands of color. I layered exposures of the strips, striving for a Piet Mondrian look and feel.
Satisfied with the above work, I after the fact captured the raw material.
Blaring sirens clued an approaching fire engine. I instinctively crouched down (safely between two parked cars), spun the dial for a slow shutter speed of 1.6 seconds and captured the blur of the passing light festooned vehicle. Hope all were safe.
These outdoor seating restaurant lights proved to be grist for my blending mill.
However, forgetting I had programmed in a slow shutter speed, when I turned my camera upside down for exposures four, five and six, I unintentionally and delightedly created dynamic blurs of light.
Earlier in my explorations, this epigraph that adorns The Boston Public Library's McKim building stopped me in my tracks.
THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY
Pondering cuts to education and the federally mandated narrowed scope of allowable classroom topics, I struggled to make the profound words legible in a single image.
I am not completely satisfied with this layering of library images as it feels repetitive and derivative of prior work. However, perhaps it clearly represents struggle and dissatisfaction. Order and Liberty indeed.
