Dave’s Photo Blog

I decided to get a new car stereo last week. You have to love America – you can just show up at Best Buy, purchase the thing, then drive your car around and have them put it in immediately. Of course, it might take three or four hours for them to finish, especially if you have a Ford that needs half the dashboard replaced, but hey, it’s still immediate. Anyway, I suddenly found myself on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge with nothing to do and some serious time on my hands. But of course, I had the camera.

I’ve taken plenty of pictures of this part of Cambridge. It’s very tempting to just stand by the river and take pictures of Boston, the Museum of Science, the Longfellow Bridge and so forth. But having done that before I decided to walk towards Kendall Square and see what I could find. There is this one backwater right behind the Square next to a power plant that I always found interesting, so I headed on over and checked it out.

And as you can see, I wound up with a really interesting setting. The sun was behind my right shoulder as I walked the footpath on the west side of the channel. But the water itself in shade due to the large buildings behind me. It was one of those situations where the water became a beautiful glassy mirror. Me being one who loves abstract photographs, reflections, movement and water all combined together, well, I had a blast. The sun was also at an angle that the camera really didn’t pick up the inevitable flotsam on the surface (and believe me, there was much flotsam). It also didn’t pick up the crap under the water. OK, maybe I took one or two spots out, but that’s about it. What it did pick up was a beautiful wavy reflection of the buildings in the area, including the power plant above and apartment complex below here.

But perhaps the best image came from the power plant. The water next to the pier was calmer (being in the lee of the wind) than the water in the open. In this shot, the pier’s reflection is sharp and not very wavy, but then as you look up to the actual transmission lines you are picking up the ripples in the surface of the water. This picture might be a bit odd to grok at first, but you have to remember an old photographer’s rule – the reflection is always a bit darker than the original.

This picture is rotated 90° from how it was shot as are the other two above. I shot this one looking down into the water with the top of the pier cut-off near the top of the viewfinder. Then I took ‘em home, fired up Lightroom and rotated them.