A kind of sequel to my Bandit’s Roost shot.  Here it is again:

My version:

In this case, just curves:

I’m not being philosophical.  This is the street I walk down constantly.  And now, from above.  Yeah, I know, they look old, but the neighborhood has that feeling, so I went with it:

To me the slopes are heaven.  Up and down the mountain, with the skis making that wonderful sound when they go against the snow.  There is always that moment when I’m up on the chairlift and the wind is blowing and it is completely silent.  I love that.  As close to heaven as we get here on earth.  Whilst actually being tethered to Earth.

Today the slopes looked like heaven.  Maybe heaven is a ski slope.  Maybe once you get to heaven, it is just slopes everywhere.  That’s a heaven I could get behind:

All glamour tonight on the WrongSideoftheCamera.  Nothing else allowed:

So we got there a bit early for the wedding gala and weren’t allowed to go into the library.  Instead I took my friends over to Copley Plaza, figuring that there had to be some kind of drinks nearby or at least some fun to be had.  And there was fun to be had, believe me.

In case you don’t know, Copley Plaza is a hundred year old hotel in the middle of Boston catering to the creme de la creme of Boston society.  So obviously of course us.  Just kidding.  But anyway, I mean you’d think that place was Versailles if you went in there.  I mean check this out:

Who or what is the last person you’d expect to be living in such a place??  Any guesses??  No.  Not really…  Well, of course the answer is a dog.  Yes a dog.  No, not one of those drool factories that I favor, rather a sweet labrador retriever named Catie Copley.  Check out her super swanky digs:

I was going to make a joke about the place going to the dogs, but Catie Copley seems very sweet.  And there is a little book written about her in the bookshop, about how she went on a trip with her suitcase.  Must be difficult to pack when you don’t have thumbs, but oh well.  Anyway, the book begs the question.  Why would leave digs like those???

Someone has to go on the exotic weekend ski trips.  Someone has to go to the galas.  Someone has to attend the fashion shows.  And that person is me!

No, I am totally kidding.  So I attended the Boston Wedding Gala, not exactly New York Fashion Week, but probably a ton more fun.  I took a bunch of people who were totally not in any way getting married any time soon to eat free cake and to wear fake mustaches.  And with that winning formula, who can go wrong??  Well, we had a lot of fun.

The culmination of the gala was a fashion show.  Those two words — fashion show.  I mean they just conjure up so many great images, don’t they??  Fashion and a show??  You can’t possibly go wrong.  In the past, my fantasy was to walk the runway at the fashion show, but now it is of course to photograph the fashion show.  I imagine myself sitting next to Grace Coddington at Paris Fashion Week.

Well, the fashion show was fun and glamorous and all the rest of it.  On a technical note, I used my giant Sunpack magnesium flare flash.  Just kidding, but it is a giant flash that emits much light.  It will be pretty obvious which shots I used it with and which not:

I haven’t lived in Boston for that long.  Nearly three years.  That’s a lot of time if you are a dog or a newborn, but in terms of my life, it really isn’t that much time.  I have on many occasions written of my love for the city and what it’s motto should be “Boston — If You Don’t Like Us, We Don’t Care.”

But they do care and they have a lot of pride in their monuments, landmarks and quirky corners.  They want you to know about them.  They just aren’t going to spend a lot of time making them super beautiful as all.

Yesterday I almost literally stumbled upon such a place.  A work duty took me to the Sam Adam’s brewery, with its kegs and its large metal containers that look like aliens.  And the free beer drinking hour, all observed enthusiastically.  Then, suddenly a suggestion comes.  Let’s visit Doyle’s Cafe or just Doyle’s Bar (or Baaaah as the locals would say).  This place had been featured in movies like Mystic River, so it had to be worth a visit.  At least to soak up some local color.

The staff was crusty.  I didn’t want to sit next to a portrait of Mitt Romney, but I had to anyway.  They didn’t really enjoy a large group of people ordering nothing but beer.  I’m not sure what they thought about the crazy person with the camera.  Oh well.  This blog has readership in some interesting corners of the world, so to those people and to the locals, I present to you Doyle’s in all of its vintage glory:

Well, I went skiing yesterday for the first time in nine months.  This is a moment I have been waiting for since my last run on my last day of the last season of skiing.

I anticipated that is was going to be a hard day of skiing.  I have a brand new pair of boots and I was skiing in Stratton, a place I have never visited.  I eagerly went up the ski lift to the top of the mountain and looked for the first green, easy trail.  I started to ski and then had to stop.  I was too exhausted and my legs were burning.  I skied up a little further.  And then stopped again.  This pattern continued until I got to the bottom of the mountain.  A whole hour later.  I skied away wondering if I had ever even skied before.

I went up the ski lift again.  This time it only took me fifteen minutes to get down a rather long trail.  That was a bit better.  I figured four clean runs and I would attempt something a bit more difficult.  I went up the ski lift for a third try on the green trail.  I fiddled with my camera just long enough to watch a brand new pair of North Face gloves go down below the ski lift, never to be heard from again.  Skied down gloveless.  Skied again, gloveless because I am that kind of glutton for punishment.

Went down to the ski base, bought another pair of gloves.  I guess something about being in the warm air for a second convinced me that even though the ski gods were telling me otherwise, it was going to in fact be a good day for skiing.  Went up to the base of the top of the mountain, skied off the lift, immediately onto another lift that took forever to go to the top of the mountain.

Here is what I saw when I got to the top of the mountain.  Just breathtakingly beautiful:

Not only did I see this, but I also skied through it.  It was an intermediate track that led into a black diamond.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with ski lingo, black diamond indicates the highest level of difficultly in ski terrain.  We aren’t talking that kind of skiing when a person is dropped out of a helicopter and is ready to ski, but rather steep terrain that involves a lot of control.

Black diamonds have scared me and I continually said to myself that I wouldn’t ski one until I had been skiing for five, no maybe ten years.  Turns out black diamond day was yesterday.  I knew as soon as I entered the black diamond area.  It was steeper than anything else I had ever experienced but somehow and I don’t know how, I told myself I could do it.  I could navigate it.  I could hold it together long enough to get to the bottom.

And I did.  I could not believe I had skied over something that difficult on my first day back. I have the pain today to prove it, but somehow skiing the black diamond has made me believe that you never know until you try.  Not trying is worse than failing.  If you fail, at least you tried.  If you didn’t try…