InstaMeet = InstaFun

This weekend was the ninth World Wide Instagram meet-up, and the Boston IGers chapter had it's own version. They hold meet-ups almost once a month, but I haven't been to one before, since I'm pretty new to Instagram. They always post great photos afterward that look like a lot of fun, so I decided to go it alone and get some shots. Plus they planned to walk the Seaport District, and it was a good opportunity to photograph an industrial, urban area I haven't had the chance to get to in a while.

In a nutshell, it was awesome. We had a huge group of people and great weather. It's fun to hang out with a group of photographers who all stop and take photos along the way, and no one gets annoyed that it takes 20 minutes to go two blocks. We may have caused a few traffic jams when our whole group would fan out at a great photo opp. It was amazing to be around so many people who thought the same things were visually interesting.

For instance, someone thought one of the girls who was wearing a green dress would look great holding the Instagram-issued red balloon up against the brick. Naturally, so did everyone else. So while the pictures themselves came out great, what was even better was the behind-the-scenes photo of all of us trying to get the shot. Photographers really know how to make a crowd.

Below are the group of photos I posted to Instagram from the day. I'll be back to my regular themes this week, but couldn't help sharing these shots with the new friends I met. Check out all the photos from the Boston meet-up, which also continued on Sunday with a trip through Beacon Hill. And if you've thought about coming along on one of these before, definitely do so next time. It's a really welcoming, supportive and fun community to be a part of! Follow IGersBoston for all the details.

Sign of the times

This theme was a lot of fun. Boston has a great mix of old historic signs as well as a lot of neon, art deco and other signs left over from the 60s and 70s. They combine to make for some very visual landmarks along the streets, and bring color to some otherwise plain brick facades.

This is a case where I knew most of the signs I wanted to photograph in advance and went out specifically to those locations. Only a couple of these were ones I stumbled upon along the way. Or for instance, I went to Fenway Park knowing there would be something great there, and ended up photographing the sign painted on a wall that’s kind of off the beaten track, rather than right out front at one of the gates. But the Paramount marquee, piano store, liquor store, Coca Cola ad and Beacon Street sign were all ones I picked out in my head while thinking about this theme.

The main challenge was similar to that with the streetlights, of not shooting everything from below looking up. That’s how most of these signs look their best, which is logical since they were specifically designed to be viewed this way. But I tried to mix it up as much as possible, and I did end up with angles or viewpoints apart from what I planned on for a few, once I got there and saw the best angle (or found there was a truck parked where I was going to stand).

Finally, I included at the bottom one of my favorite photos of Boston that features the inspiration for this theme: the Citgo sign. I thought about including the Citgo sign in this theme, but ideally would like to take the photo from somewhere at the same level, rather than from below, and couldn’t figure out the best way to do it in time. And why try to out-do a photo I like so much anyway?

Sunset over Citgo, from the Top of the Hub viewing level

Art week wrap-up!

Last week was Art Week in Boston, with tons of official and unofficial events. For me, it was more of a photo week, and I learned and saw a lot!

It started with the Entree to Boston Arts party hosted by ONEin3 Boston, an organization that focuses on the city's younger residents. Major art organizations had representatives there to answer questions, give away offers, and explain why their events are awesome. As someone who works at a museum, it was nice to meet other art employees as well and network a bit. We came away from the party with a solid list of must-see events. Here are a few of our upcoming plans:

See Smart People and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with the Huntington Theatre Company thanks to discounted tickets for the under 35 crew (complete with after party).
Have a swanky night out at Third Thursdays at the Gardner Museum. I've been looking forward to seeing the new fashion exhibition of Carla Fernández.
Score $10 tickets to any Arts Emerson show just by calling the same-day at 10am!
Finally see the legendary Boston Gay Men's Chorus during Pride Week.
Start counting the days to Boston Ballet's performance of Swan Lake in fall.

Moving on, the focus shifted to photography. The fourth annual Flash Forward Festival mainly took place over the weekend, but a great pre-event was held by the Boreal Colletctive, an impressive group of photographers out of Canada. Their work is mostly photojournalistic, but they have a range of jobs and the photos they shared were all from their personal projects. What made the event stand out was the format: each photographer showed 20 photos, for only 20 seconds each, while providing some narrative and context. It was a great way to sample their work and see a lot of amazing photos. I especially loved the work of Ian Willms.

The rest of the festival is made up of an array of exhibitions throughout Boston (most still ongoing) and two-days of lectures and panels. I attended all three on Saturday and really enjoyed the presentations by Sadie Quarrier, Senior Photo Editor at National Geographic (hello dream job) and Stacey Baker, Associate Photo Editor at the New York Times Magazine. Both were talking about the influence of multimedia and cell phone cameras on their publications, and showed great feature stories and projects. I think I was most inspired that they were women in high-up photo and editing positions, which is not often the case. They didn't have normal career paths (neither started as photographers) and they worked their way up without really having an ultimate goal position. It was nice to hear I'm not already five years behind.

From Sadie, check out the amazing and immersive multimedia projects on the Nat Geo website. They are true feats of photo technology, logistics, design and talent. The most interesting was on Serengeti Lions and a great resource is the library of video interviews with their staff photographers.

From Stacey Baker, take to heart that the NYTimes Magazine is seriously using Instagram to find photographers and images for their stories. They still hire and commission photographers in the traditional sense, but they're expanding how they look at images and building the visual side to their stories. Her Instagram feed is a fun project on the legs of New York (must see to understand) and the Photo Director Kathy Ryan has beautiful photos from around the magazine's offices.

The last panel was about long-term projects (really long term, as in 5+ years), and while this isn't really what I'm doing at the moment, it was a good reminder that you don't have to finish something right away for it to be good or for you to be doing something important. It's ok to let it change and expand over time. I thought of longer projects as something you needed funding for or a different job (still debatable), but these photographers have made it work around their other responsibilities. Maybe I'll find one or maybe I'm already working on one without realizing it!

Many exhibitions are still open, so go and see photos at the PRC, Griffin Museum and great outdoor installations on the Greenway.

In the shadows

This was hands down my favorite theme. I've intentionally put it off in order to challenge myself with other themes that may be out of my comfort zone or at least something different. But with warmer and sunnier weather, I couldn't resist any longer. I love the patterns created by light and shadow, or not even patterns sometimes, but interesting abstract art painted on everyday objects and surfaces. The theme also lends itself well to architecture and geometry, two more of my favorite subjects.

There's not much more to explain about this group of images. Except for a streak of cloudy days in there, I had an abundance of photos and had to edit them down to these best nine. Enjoy!

Easy being green

This theme was again devoted to one color, green, just like the very first week. At the beginning, I had the same concerns as I did last time: that I wouldn’t find enough shots of that color. And just like last time, I was happily surprised to find it everywhere. As soon as you start looking for a color, you start to notice how often it’s used in everyday places. I didn’t even have to resort to photographing new spring plants, one of the reasons for picking green. I found a great variety of subjects, but they all still have a unifying look. The two colors I’ve done are now some of my favorite photos, and they look the best when displayed together.

I really like the first photo I posted of the garden hose (right). It's a perfect sign of spring and was a shot of color on an otherwise quiet residential street. But as I went along and came across so many other green options, I found that the color was filling up the frame much more than in this first one. So I decided to replace it with another image I didn’t originally post up on Instagram. I think they match so well now that I won't say which one is new!

Enjoy and here’s to finding more green things popping up from the ground soon!