A Walking tour of Boston's Beacon Hill with PhotoWalks

Stamping my foot on the ground as if that would somehow comfort my frozen toes, I wondered if taking this photo walking tour of Boston's charming Beacon Hill neighborhood would be worth enduring the shivering cold for.

I was standing at the appointed meeting spot in front of the Robert Gould Shaw memorial, staring at the golden dome of the Massachusetts state house across the street, fiddling with my camera settings while waiting for the Photowalks tour guide to show up. A typical tourist activity, yes. But not quite so typical on a January weekend in New England, which explained why only myself and my brother signed up for today's walk around Beacon Hill.

What had possessed me to suggest taking this tour in such appalling weather anyway? My fascination in exploring historic, charming neighborhoods in Boston, for one, but a "regular" walking tour would suffice for that. What caught my eye on the PhotoWalks website was their emphasis not only on history, but also on providing tips on taking better, more creative pictures. Being an avid traveller who loves to document my trips, in both prose and photos, but being quite unsavvy in the latter as far as photo composition techniques and eschewing fancy camera equipment in favor of an easy-to-use point-and-shoot, a photo walking tour seemed tailor-made for me. In short, I really just wanted to stop tormenting my friends and blog readers with lousy vacation pictures.

Pretty soon, Saba Alhadi, founder of Boston PhotoWalks and our guide for today, arrived and the tour was on! Since we were already conveniently standing in front of it, Saba directed our attention to the Shaw memorial.
After a brief explanation of the main protagonists Captain Robert Shaw and his regiment, the first ever African-American soldiers who saw battle in the civil War, she instructed me where to stand to block out the sunlight, and demonstrating with her own camera (point 'n shoot!), Saba showed a few creative close-up shots that we could take highlighting different parts of the soldiers' and horse's anatomy.

The goal was that instead of taking a standard, boring, flat photo of the entire memorial, our pictures would capture the figures' action and dynamism. Most of the time, this involved finding the correct angle to take the photo from, and remembering standard advice (which she dispensed to amateur me) such as moving in physically closer to the object being photographed instead of using your camera's zoom feature, and foregoing the use of flash in conditions where lighting is sufficient. We repeated this creative photo-taking exercise with the Massachusetts state house, and I was quite pleased with the result (photo at top of article).



We moved on into the Beacon Hill neighborhood proper, with its trademark gas lamps lining the small, narrow streets. The quiet elegance and tranquility of Beacon Hill appealed to me, and I made a mental note to consider the neighborhood if ever I moved to Beantown in the future, quite conveniently ignoring the concept of affordability. Back to Photowalks mode, Beacon Hill is a minefield of photo opportunities, as every salivating tourist knows. Seeing me starting to take a picture of a gas lamp decorated with holiday wreaths, Saba gently suggested slightly tilting the camera to one side for a more creative take on the photo (the left-most among the three small pictures above). Hmmm...why hadn't I thought of that before?



In addition to historical facts about Beacon Hill and Saba's anecdotes about famous writers and residents, what I found most incredibly useful after 1.5 hours of the photo walk (with stops in St. Louisburg Square and the most photographed street in Boston, Acorn St.) were Saba's ideas for photo opportunities that I simply did not notice, such as windows with beautiful reflections of the buildings opposite, door knockers, houses with lovely arched doorways and other unique architectural details, ice particles that had formed, and so on.

Embarrassing to admit, but if I were exploring on my own, most of these details would have escaped me, and my pictures would be much lamer. And I suppose that is what seasoned photographers have that an inept newbie needs to develop - an eye for noticing and appreciating the beauty in mundane objects, then capturing them in images that make them transcend their ordinariness. Quite a mouthful, I know, but that's one of the lessons I learned from this fun and interesting experience, which I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone. Yes, even in the dead cold of a New England winter.

Click here to view the complete album from the Beacon Hill photo walking tour.