New Year's Eve timelapse 2.0

I'm not about to attempt another year of photographs each day like I did in 2009, I would like to get back to posting here more. One way I hope to do that is to simply post one photo -- at least -- from each excursion, adventure, trip or day of shooting. Simply put: If I take a picture on any particular day, then I'll post it. If I shoot many, I'll pick one. That should help to inspire me.

And so we begin with one of the 800+ shots from my second (annual?) New Year's Eve timelapse. Again, we were visiting my former college roommate in the Boston suburbs, and I set up the camera and timer in the living room, but chose a different vantage point to get more faces as people sat on the couch and faced the TV. It was also a bit more inconspicuous -- instead of on a tripod in a corner, it was on the top shelf (a cubby hole, really) of a bookcase in a different corner. I'll have to come up with something new for next year. This shot came just a couple minutes before midnight.

New Year's Eve timelapse

New Year's Eve timelapse, originally uploaded by DC Products.

For my second timelapse (here's the first), I set up my camera in a corner of the living room on New Year's Eve. My wife and I were in the Boston suburb of Milton, Mass., staying with my college roommate, Bryan, and his husband for their annual party. Casey and I have gone up for several years now, so it's become a great tradition we both enjoy.

My first thought was to set up the camera in the kitchen to document Casey's preparations for the party (it's her thing), but there was no out-of-the-way place to set up the tripod. This spot in the living room was the next-best thing, because it shows the path to the kitchen through the dining room and also contains the TV, where we all gathered at midnight.

The music for this version is Frightened Rabbit's "Extrasupervery," chosen for the simple fact that it was the only song on my computer that came close to the 87-second length of the video. All the rest of my music was on an external hard drive at home, and I didn't feel like shortening a different track. (When I posted the video to YouTube, I just went with one of the tracks available on that site.)

Day 365 of 365

Snow on The Fens

It wouldn't be New Year's Eve in Boston without snow. It's happened to us the last several years we've come up here to party with my college roommate, our parents, and dozens of friends. Thankfully, this year's burst was compressed to about a three-hour window from the late morning to mid-afternoon, and hopefully we'll have nothing more the rest of the day.

Day 242 of 365

Hitchin' a ride

Heading home from Boston, we passed three motorcycles on the Mass Pike that each had a stuffed animal (mascots?) riding along on their bikes.

Day 241 of 365

Welcoming the guests

My college roommate married his partner in Boston the day Ted Kennedy was laid to rest. We had to dodge the closed streets around the Westin on Friday night with all the presidents spending the night there, and we had to dodge the raindrops on Saturday. But when it was all said and done, it was a grand yet intimate celebration at the Boston Public Library.

Here, they welcome the guests on the landing of the entry hall, standing on the spot where they were later married.

Day 240 of 365

Afternoon in the courtyard

At the Garrison Square Apartments, Boston. I looked up after laying down on a slate wall to relax while waiting for Casey to come back with the key to our guest suite.

Day 144 of 365

Penny watches the bocce action

Despite the nature of the game -- balls being tossed around the lawn -- Penny had little interest in our bocce game on the Cape. Kathy and Casey had a lot of interest in Penny -- and their cocktails. Summer's great.

Day 143 of 365

Best on the Cape

Our Memorial Day weekend trips to Cape Cod (a gathering of my mom's college friends and their kids -- now some of us with spouses) always includes a run to Four Seas down the road for six-to-eight quarts of ice cream for the weekend. It may be the best ice cream anywhere.

Day 142 of 365

Fenway sunset

Began the vacation with a Mets-Red Sox game at Fenway Park in Boston.

Day 2 of 365

Abandoned on Tremont

It only took two days into the New Year and my photo a day resolution to get to the point where I shot just one subject and let that stand as my shot of the day. (We're still awaiting the first instance of "taking a picture just to fulfill the daily quota," however, because I would've taken this photo based on the dilapidated building under any circumstances. But I'm also not sure I would've had the camera in the front console of the car, ready to grab and take a quick shot, had I not set this ambitious goal for myself this year. So it's already paying off.

We were getting gas at a Sunoco station on Tremont St. in Boston's South End and I looked across the road at this boarded-up building on the corner of Tremont and Northampton St. I couldn't find much on these former stores online, though another Flickr user doesn't think Fred & Emma's has been open for some time. I'll have to ask Bryan if he knows anything about it, but he's only lived in the neighborhood for a little more than a year.