I personally found Boston to be a bit of a strange place. Well, and by Boston, I mean the downtown area specifically. I think in my mind’s eye I was envisioning something like New York City, where it’s wall to wall people and just craziness happening all the time. That was NOT my experience AT ALL with Boston… quite the opposite in fact. I found the city to be surprisingly quite, especially after business hours. There were seriously only a handful of people milling around anywhere I would go. Not at all what I was expecting.. but kind of cool actually! I much prefer the quite to the hustle and bustle.

Anyway, while I was in Boston I wanted to make sure to get a nice cityscape image. The question though, was where do you go to take the best pictures of Boston? I had been told that the view from the Cambridge side of the Charles River was quite nice, and it is, BUT the view of the city there is super wide, and not exactly what I was looking for. After walking around Boston I decided that any good shot of the city must include the former Custom House (now owned by Marriott) in the skyline, and if you can see it from Cambridge, I could never spot it.

After giving up on the Cambridge side of the city, I decided to try my luck with South Boston. One nice thing about the downtown area is that it sits on a peninsula, so if you want your pictures to include water, you’ve got lots of options! Just across Seaport Blvd (or Northern Ave if they’ve got it opened back up to pedestrian traffic) and to the north is Fan Pier Park, which has a super nice Harborwalk along the water. THAT was the view I was hoping for. All the buildings are stacked up nicely AND the clock of the Custom House is clearly visible (just wander around until you’ve got it lined up the way you want it). You will want a fairly wide lens, as the buildings are pretty big still from that viewing distance, but it turned out to be a great place to photograph Boston.

One other place I will try when I go back to the city is East Boston. There is park there called Piers Park that, from a map anyway, looks promising… but it was a good distance away so I didn’t try it.

–Dan Thompson

Fan Pier Park