Tag: cityscape

Travel Tuesday

Insights from a walk around Boston Seaport with a camera’s eye view. We catch the Art Deco United Shoe Machinery Building at 160 Federal Street as a highlight of this image.

Sometimes our travel doesn’t need to take us very far to cause us to have interesting observations. For this installment, the travel was just my commute to work, and the opportunity to walk around the Boston Seaport area with camera in hand.

Here’s one of the views from my saunter…

Boston Skyscape

What caught my attention, as you can well imagine, is the shining roof of the art deco building. This building is located at 160 Federal Street in Boston, and was built in 1930 as the United Shoe Machinery Building. At 24 floors, it actually was the tallest office building in Boston for 20 years. As you can tell, it is no longer that.

What really attracted me to this skycap was the contrast of varying styles and eras of building construction. It’s always interesting to see how architecture evolves and how differences can come together. Sounds like a great concept for many other facets of society.

Travel Tuesday

A little brain teaser for all of you observant blog readers… from this photo, can you tell which city I’m visiting?

As I’m traveling for work for a week of face-to-face (F2F) meetings, I thought I’d share an image from Monday morning’s stroll to the office. I noticed something that was new to me, as it’s been a while I went to our corporate headquarters.

Here’s what I came across…

Acorn to the Max!

This rather sizable acorn was standing proud as a reminder of the city’s nickname. So for fun, I will leave it up to all of you to guess which city I am in! The winner gets bragging rights!

Have a wonderful day!

Thursday Throwback – 6

Cherished memories of the port of Rotterdam, a city filled with vibrance and resilience.

In this installment in this series, I’m going back to the year 2011. This year I had to travel to the Netherlands several times due to family members passing away. While this happens to all of us at certain times, it’s never pleasant and these trips are etched in my memory. At the same time, there are also great memories from these trips. I spent time with my favorite aunt, as well as some good outings with much of the family.

As I was sauntering by the water with my aunt, I captured this photo…

Port of Rotterdam

The port of Rotterdam is a significant part of the city’s industry and pride. It has long been the most important port for getting goods up and down the Rhine river. Getting this shot was a bit tricky due to the low light conditions, so I placed my camera on a mooring post for stabilization. This enabled me to get both a reasonable exposure and depth of field.

Rotterdam will always be my home city, as this is where I grew up. It provides me with lots of great memories, whether school times or museums. More than anything this is a vibrant city, always alive with an energy that connects to its motto: Sterker door Strijd (Stronger through Effort).

iPhone Friday

Summer’s End – a lasting memory

Sometimes a photo is not about creating the perfect image, but rather to capture something that speaks to us. This is very much the case for today’s image from one of my trips to Raleigh, NC…

The great John Prine

This wonderful mural can be found next to the GoRaleigh bus station on East Martin Street. It was part of a marketing campaign by John’s record company to draw attention to his album that was released in 2018; Raleigh was one of the selected cities, along with Chicago and Nashville, to get a mural, as it is home to a significant fanbase.

I captured this image on February 19, 2020, during what would be my last business trip prior to the pandemic. As I learned some of John Prine’s songs in guitar class, this mural touched me. Little did I know that John would pass away less than 2 months later due to complications from COVID-19.

Tuesday Photo Challenge – City

Trains, trams and buses!

Welcome to week 175 of the Tuesday Photo Challenge!

After such a great week of your key contributions, I had to do some searching to find another theme that is worthy of your creative inspirations! It took a bit of searching to find a theme that we didn’t cover yet, but I found one. For this week, the challenge is for a rather wide-ranging theme, as it is City. It can be the city of your dreams, the city of your residence or the city of your birth.

I very much look forward to seeing where your favorite cities are located around the world!

Here’s a view of the city of my birth…

Centraal Station

Rotterdam is a wonderful city that continues to evolve over the decades. The view here is of the new Centraal Station (Central Train Station); the Netherlands has a tremendous public transportation system, that is both on schedule and convenient. As parking is at a premium, I usually use this option to go visit the cities!

The full rules of this challenge are in TPC Guidelines, but here’s the tl;dr:

  • Write a post with an image for this week’s topic
  • Please tag your post with fpj-photo-challenge (if you’re not sure about how tags work, please check out this WordPress article about tagging posts)
  • Create a pingback link to this post, so that I can create a post showing all of the submissions over the week (note: pingbacks may not appear immediately, as my site is set up to require approval for linking to it; helps against previous bad experiences with spamming)
  • Have fun creating something new (or sharing something old)!!

Have fun, and reminisce of your city!

Tuesday Photo Challenge – Night

Bring on your best night light!

Welcome to week 160 of the Tuesday Photo Challenge!

My apologies for not getting last week’s round up out first, but it’s been challenging to cram a week’s worth of work into 2 days before my trip to Ireland. I’ve looked a bunch of your wonderful, wheel posts and they are stunning! For this week’s challenge, I’m going for a darker subject: Night! Personally, I enjoy the look of shooting at night, as the contrast between light and dark is so pronounced. In your approach to this week’s theme, feel free to bring any old night into the light!

I hope you have fun with this theme!!

Here’s a shot from last week…

Boston at Night

Last week was spent in Boston, as Red Hat held its annual Summit there, which was a truly inspiring event! As I was walking back to my hotel after one of the ancillary events, I came across this bridge and saw that the moon was looking lovely between the high-rise buildings…

The full rules of this challenge are in TPC Guidelines, but here’s the tl;dr:

  • Write a post with an image for this week’s topic
  • Please tag your post with fpj-photo-challenge (if you’re not sure about how tags work, please check out this WordPress article about tagging posts)
  • Create a pingback link to this post, so that I can create a post showing all of the submissions over the week (note: pingbacks may not appear immediately, as my site is set up to require approval for linking to it; helps against previous bad experiences with spamming)
  • Have fun creating something new (or sharing something old)!!

I’m looking forward to what creatures the night might bring to the light!

Succumb to Decay?

Advancements cause decay…

The WordPress Daily Prompt has the theme of Succumb.  While there are many ways to approach this prompt, the one that came to me first is to document the ongoing decay and how it threatens to the buildings that once were the backbone of a vibrant community.

The village of Turners Falls was established as a planned industrial community based on the ability to harness the power of the Connecticut river by building a dam and power canal to drive industry.  As the power canal still rushes through the town, one can imagine the din of that era, as mills next to the canal were actively producing their goods.  As with many of these towns, industrialization slowly moved away from them, as water power was replaced by fossil fuels, causing the town to succumb to slow decay.

These days, Turners Falls is a charming little town to visit with an interesting historic district.

One of the old mill buildings along Powers Street…

Powers-Street-Decay_14E2072_3_4_5_6-crop
Powers Street Decay

As you can see in this image, this mill building was already in an advanced state of decrepitude, as the window on the right side shows the sky behind it.  I’m not sure, if the building still stands, but it called from a past era on this autumn day!

Have a wonderful day!