Waiting for the Train to New York, originally uploaded by briburt.

Update: Just learned that this shot is featured as Photo of the Day for 8 December 2009 on Bostonist.com.

I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately, but I find myself increasingly drawn to black and white photography, especially b/w processing that evokes a sort of timeless, mid-20th century feel. Even though this shot is of a fairly modern train station right outside Boston that serves Amtrak’s high-speed Northeast corridor trains (including the Acela), I thought that this shot had a sort of nostalgic feel to it, as though it could’ve been taken in 1946 just as easily as in 2009.

Anyway, I also did my best to accentuate all of the different kinds of lines — slanting, vertical, horizontal — in the shot by using the black and white processing. The color version just didn’t bring this out. I added a slight vignette to the lower left of the frame to try and encourage the viewer’s eye to slide right down the tracks to the vanishing point.

Overall, I’m quite happy with how this turned out, which is more than I can say for most of my photos.

This is the final photo in a series of black & white shots I took of the Boston Financial District skyline as I was wandering around the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway one night last summer. This is such a great location from which to make images: lots of fantastic skyline light, fountains galore, and also some night life to boot.

Of the three decent images I got from this spot, this is my favorite, as I think it really captures the energy of the fountain together with that sparkling light, so that you felt like you were standing inside a jewel box.

This shot was an attempt to capture the mood of a New York City Street at night. Of course, this began as a color photo, but as I started playing around with various levels of processing, I quickly realized that the situation almost demanded that it be processed as black and white.

The actual black and white processing was a continual experiment in trying to get the contrast of the scene so that it felt right to my eyes. I really liked the steam coming up out of the manhole cover and the headlights (especially how they were reflected in the steam), and I liked the light reflected off the lines of cars on both sides of the street, so I did my best to bring focus to all of these things.

On a higher level, while I’ve always been interested in black and white photography, I find myself drawn more and more in that direction with most of my photos. There’s a subtlety to the gradations of light that I’m finding more and more appealing than a lot of the highly saturated colors I’ve been focusing on for the past year or so.

We’ll see how that plays out long-term, I guess.

Christian Science Church at Night, Boston, originally uploaded by briburt.

This is a panoramic, wide angle shot of Boston’s Christian Science Church at night.

I made this photo by stitching together two wide angle shots in Photoshop, blending them together, and then processing as black & white in Adobe Lightroom. Had a lot of trouble initially getting the exposure the way I wanted it across all parts of the photo but eventually I got it the way I wanted it.

Boston Financial District Skyline at Night, originally uploaded by briburt.

Here’s a black and white shot of the Boston Financial District skyline under night skies taken from the Boston Harborwalk next to the Moakley Courthouse. It was a blustery evening with a storm front moving in, and I was afraid I would get rained on, but I managed to just get this shot in under the wire.

This shot was blended from multiple exposures and then processed into black and white using Adobe Lightroom. I am becoming increasingly drawn to black & white processing and have thus created a number of custom black and white Lightroom presets I use. If anyone is interested in obtaining them, let me know, and I’ll see what I can do to make them available.

Back Bay Skyline at Night, Boston, originally uploaded by briburt.

This is a shot of the Boston Back Bay skyline at night from the west side of the reflecting pool at Christian Science Plaza in Boston. The tall building in the center is the Prudential Tower. The round-ish building on the right-center is 111 Huntington Avenue, AKA “The R2D2 Building,” which is part of the Prudential Center complex.

Taken as part of the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk on July 18th, this is a panoramic view of the Custom House Tower looking across a cool circular fountain located on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway in the Financial District in Boston. Of course, one of the Big Dig‘s freeway tunnels is right below all of this. Hard to believe when this looks so much like an Old World city.

If you look closely enough, you can see other photowalkers with their gear near the fountain.

Route 128 Station just outside of Boston, MA