Location is derived from the great work of WikiMapia
Check this place on Socialmapia

Top photos chosen by u all:

I'm 17.582% of the way to the Boston side of the bridge
Made by Ed Yourdon
Note: for some unknown reason, this photo was published in an undated (late Nov 2010) blog titled Mattresses New York ? Supporting the Economy! ******************************************* The Harvard Bridge is marked off in smoots, starting on the Boston side of the bridge. And as everyone knows, the bridge is 364.4 smoots wide, plus-or-minus an ear. I had started off on the Cambridge side of the bridge before pausing for a moment to take the sunrise shots of the Cambridge Boat basin ... so I had traversed 64 smoots, and was thus 17.582% of the way across to the Boston side. If this is all a mystery to you, then consult this Wikipedia page for the details. Basically, it was yet another of the silly pranks carried out by MIT students: in October 1958, a fraternity pledge by the name of Oliver Smoot repeatedly laid himself out, end-to-end, so that his fraternity brothers could measure the length of the bridge in smoot-units (actually, he got tired before he got all the way across, and had to be carried by his fellow fraternity-pledges for the final few smoots). Distances were noted prominently at approximately every 10-smoot mark, with a few exceptions like the 182-smoot marking that said Half-way to hell. All of which is utterly pointless; nevertheless, the markings are repainted every year by the incoming pledge class at the fraternity (Lambda Chi Alpha) that Smoot had the dubious honor of joining, and the markings were preserved when restoration work took place on the bridge in the 1980s. For what it's worth, the Google Calculator incorporates smoots, and Google uses the smoot as an optional unit of measurement in their Google Earth software. As for Oliver Smoot: he graduated with the class of 1962, so it's possible that he and I passed each other in the halls of MIT once or twice (he as a senior, me as a freshman). He later became chairman of the American National Standards Association (ANSI) and president of the International Organization for Standarization (ISO). And his cousin, George Smoot, was a Nobel Prize winner. (If it really matters to you, I should also point out that one smoot = 1.7018 meters, or five feet, seven inches.) *********************** It was a lifetime ago that I stumbled off a Greyhound bus in downtown Boston, a clueless 17 year old kid with two suitcases that held all my worldly possessions. I dragged them out to the street (no roll-aboard suitcases in those ancient times), and asked a taxi driver to take me to an address in Cambridge that I had scribbled on a scrap of paper: 77 Massachusetts Ave. Aye, the driver muttered, in a dialect that never did become familiar during the next several years. SebendySebenMassAve. When he dropped me off, I noticed two things. First, enormous stone steps leading up to the entrance to an imposing granite building. And second, a long line of scraggly, sloppily-dressed young men stretching from the building's entrance down toward the street where the taxi had dropped me. Aha, I thought: I'm not the only one who forgot to fill out the official form requesting a dorm room. Welcome to MIT. I waited in line for two hours before being assigned temporarily, with two other equally absent-minded, newly-arrived MIT students, to sleep on mattresses in an East Campus dorm room that had initially been assigned as a single room to an understandably annoyed fellow from Cincinnati. One of the other temporary misfits, whom we immediately nicknamed Filthy Pierre, had just arrived from Paris with nothing but one large, heavy duffel bag that he dragged into the room. Its contents consisted of miscellaneous telephone parts, which he dumped on the floor and kicked under the bed before wandering out of the room to explore Boston. (He had not showered in weeks, and he was eventually expelled for burning a cross on MIT's Great Lawn on Easter morning. But that's another story.) Thus began my four-year experience at what many still consider America's premiere scientific/engineering university. That I survived and graduated is a minor miracle; and while I'll hint at the adventures along the way, in this Flickr set, you'll have to look elsewhere for the details... I continued to live in Cambridge for a couple of years after I graduated; took a couple of graduate courses in AI and computer science, taught a couple summer MIT classes to innocent high school students (one of whom challenged me to write the value of pi on the blackboard, to 100 places, from memory - which I did), took full advantage of MIT's athletic facilities, and 25-cent Saturday-nite movies at Kresge auditorium, which always featured the enormously popular RoadRunner cartoons, and occasionally walked through the same halls and pathways that I had first explored as an overwhelmed undergraduate student. But then I got a new job, moved to New York City, got married, settled down, and began raising family. After that, I typically travelled to Boston two or three times a year on business trips, but never seemed to have time to come back to MIT for a casual visit. But one of the advantages of a near-fanatical devotion to the hobby of photography is that you begin to appreciate that all of the experiences you internalized and took for granted need to be photographed -- for posterity, if nothing else. Some of my most vivid memories of MIT, which we took for granted - like the huge,red, neon, flashing/pulsating Heinz 57 sign out on the northern edge of the (Briggs) athletic fields -- are gone. Some of the legendary professors and deans have died and commemorative plaques have been erected in their honor. And there's a whole lot of new stuff - mostly new buildings and laboratories, whose specific purpose is a mystery to me - that I just have to shrug and accept. But the basic campus is still there. And the memories are just as vivid as they were, so many years ago. I can't say that I captured them all in this Flickr set; the photos were taken at sunset one evening, and dawn the following morning. But they'll give you an idea of what it was like, a long long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ... and what it's still like today.


Sculls on the river
Made by Ed Yourdon
While there are lots of individual sculls on the river, it's also common to see groups of two or three, skimming along the surface of the water with efficient precision. I don't know if these three were part of a team, or whether it was just coincidence that they happened to be at more-or-less the same spot in the river. That's the Back Bay section of Boston in the background. Note: this photo was published, for reasons unknown to me, in an undated (late Nov 2010) blog titled The many benefits of Memory Foam Mattresses Single. It was also published in an Oct 5, 2011 blog titled Alone on the river, with the same caption and detailed notes that I had written on this Flickr page. *********************** It was a lifetime ago that I stumbled off a Greyhound bus in downtown Boston, a clueless 17 year old kid with two suitcases that held all my worldly possessions. I dragged them out to the street (no roll-aboard suitcases in those ancient times), and asked a taxi driver to take me to an address in Cambridge that I had scribbled on a scrap of paper: 77 Massachusetts Ave. Aye, the driver muttered, in a dialect that never did become familiar during the next several years. SebendySebenMassAve. When he dropped me off, I noticed two things. First, enormous stone steps leading up to the entrance to an imposing granite building. And second, a long line of scraggly, sloppily-dressed young men stretching from the building's entrance down toward the street where the taxi had dropped me. Aha, I thought: I'm not the only one who forgot to fill out the official form requesting a dorm room. Welcome to MIT. I waited in line for two hours before being assigned temporarily, with two other equally absent-minded, newly-arrived MIT students, to sleep on mattresses in an East Campus dorm room that had initially been assigned as a single room to an understandably annoyed fellow from Cincinnati. One of the other temporary misfits, whom we immediately nicknamed Filthy Pierre, had just arrived from Paris with nothing but one large, heavy duffel bag that he dragged into the room. Its contents consisted of miscellaneous telephone parts, which he dumped on the floor and kicked under the bed before wandering out of the room to explore Boston. (He had not showered in weeks, and he was eventually expelled for burning a cross on MIT's Great Lawn on Easter morning. But that's another story.) Thus began my four-year experience at what many still consider America's premiere scientific/engineering university. That I survived and graduated is a minor miracle; and while I'll hint at the adventures along the way, in this Flickr set, you'll have to look elsewhere for the details... I continued to live in Cambridge for a couple of years after I graduated; took a couple of graduate courses in AI and computer science, taught a couple summer MIT classes to innocent high school students (one of whom challenged me to write the value of pi on the blackboard, to 100 places, from memory - which I did), took full advantage of MIT's athletic facilities, and 25-cent Saturday-nite movies at Kresge auditorium, which always featured the enormously popular RoadRunner cartoons, and occasionally walked through the same halls and pathways that I had first explored as an overwhelmed undergraduate student. But then I got a new job, moved to New York City, got married, settled down, and began raising family. After that, I typically travelled to Boston two or three times a year on business trips, but never seemed to have time to come back to MIT for a casual visit. But one of the advantages of a near-fanatical devotion to the hobby of photography is that you begin to appreciate that all of the experiences you internalized and took for granted need to be photographed -- for posterity, if nothing else. Some of my most vivid memories of MIT, which we took for granted - like the huge,red, neon, flashing/pulsating Heinz 57 sign out on the northern edge of the (Briggs) athletic fields -- are gone. Some of the legendary professors and deans have died and commemorative plaques have been erected in their honor. And there's a whole lot of new stuff - mostly new buildings and laboratories, whose specific purpose is a mystery to me - that I just have to shrug and accept. But the basic campus is still there. And the memories are just as vivid as they were, so many years ago. I can't say that I captured them all in this Flickr set; the photos were taken at sunset one evening, and dawn the following morning. But they'll give you an idea of what it was like, a long long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ... and what it's still like today.


Cambridge: Harvard Bridge - 364.4 Smoots to MIT
Made by wallyg
The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. It is named after an MIT fraternity pledge at Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, Oliver R. Smoot (class of 1962), who in October, 1958 was rolled head over heels by his fraternity brothers to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge. The smoot is equal to his height (five feet and seven inches -- 1.70 m), and the bridge's length was measured to be 364.4 smoots plus one ear. Everyone walking across the bridge today sees painted markings indicating how many smoots they are from the Boston-side river bank. The marks are repainted each year by the incoming associate member class (similar to pledge class) of Lambda Chi Alpha. Markings typically appear every 10 smoots, but additional marks appear at other numbers in between. For example, the 70-smoot mark is omitted in favor of a mark for 69. The 182.2-smoot mark is accompanied by the words Halfway to Hell and an arrow pointing towards MIT. Each class also paints a special mark for their graduating year. The rival FIJI fraternity previously (as they currently do not have an active chapter at MIT) painted over the markings in purple, their fraternity color, only to have them soon repainted, presumably by Lambda Chi Alpha. The markings have become well-accepted by the public, to the point that during the bridge renovations that occurred in the 1980s, the Cambridge Police department requested that the markings be maintained, since they had become useful for identifying the location of accidents on the bridge. The renovations actually did them one better, by scoring the sidewalk on the bridge at 5'7 intervals, instead of the conventional six.


If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins...
Made by FerPecT_sHotz
- Benjamin Franklin. Happy Birthday America. I went to the Boston Pops fireworks display and watched from the Mass Ave Bridge. I vastly underestimated the timing and was there like 3 hours early but got a nice spot with the view of the Back Bay skyline and the setting sun behind me. The fire works started at 10:30 PM and lasted for about 30 min. It was always one of my dreams to shoot a fireworks display and I had prepared everything except the all important black cardboard square. So I improvised and used my lens cap to blackout the lens between exposures, fortunately most of the shots came as sharp as this one. The problem with shooting fireworks is that they get over so fast and its difficult to learn and make corrections. Here are the few tips I managed to learn 1. Get a sturdy tripod and a remote shutter release. 2. ISO 100 or the lowest you can get. 3. Aperture should be F8 or 11 as that is going to give you the sharpest images. 4. Use a wide-angle lens and set the focusing manually to the hyper-focal distance. 5. Try getting something interesting in the frame other than the fireworks for a bit of depth. 6. Set your camera to manual mode and use the bulb setting covering the lens with a black piece of cloth or cardboard between explosions. These were the things I managed to do to get these shots and I got them from trial and error and from other much more experienced photographers. It was my first time shooting fireworks with manually setting the camera I think I am hooked.


Liquid Archive - Festival of Arts, Science and Technology (FAST)
Made by Ehsan Hoque
Details at: arts.mit.edu/fast/liquid-archive/ Explored ---------------------MIT FAST Light Set----------------------------- Happy 150th to MIT. MIT is usually known for its innovation in the general area of technology. But its contribution to arts remains a well-kept secret. Being a graduate student at MIT Media Lab, we get to live by the famous saying, “Arts challenges technology and technology inspires arts”. During the first day at the lab as graduate students, we were told by the founder of MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte, that Media Lab was created to welcome students who wouldn’t otherwise fit into the traditional fabric of MIT. This unique culture motivates students to leave their comfort zone and learn new things everyday with a fearless mind. To celebrate MIT’s 150th anniversary, Tod Machover, professor of Media Lab, takes the initiative of Fast (Festival of Arts, Science and Technology) and encourage students to submit projects. This set is dedicated to all the amazing projects that students have developed over the course of 6 months, including one (http://moodmeter.media.mit.edu/) from me.


Full Moon & Light Trails
Made by Alex Tran | atran.photography
Explored: July 17, 2011 - Thank you so much fellow flickr-ers! Cars and a bus travel across the bridge of Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, Mass. This was the shot of the night. I was only expecting to shoot only the Boston skyline at dusk but when I was walking back across the Mass Ave. bridge, I had a great view of the skyline, the cars zooming by, and the unexpected full moon that rose behind! I really like the bus that drove by; to me it gives the shot an extra 'pop'. You can even see the scrolling LED marquee in the trail! I go to Boston frequently yet this is the only time I pretty much stopped to enjoy the view. It was a very nice night to shoot. It was warm but not humid, and the skies were very clear. This was my first real shot at car light trails, I hope you enjoy! Canon EOS 60D on tripod Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS My blog.


In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity...
Made by FerPecT_sHotz
- Winston Churchill. I took this shot about an hour before the 4th of July fireworks and that's the reason for so many boats being there on the river. I took this shot from the Mass ave Bridge between Boston and Cambridge. As we were waiting for the fireworks the sun was setting behind lighting up the clouds. I also wanted to check which will be a better solution for tricky light situations so I took a bunch of shots with the ND Grad filters and by shooting HDR. I think from HDR one gets a more dramatic shots but with ND filters you get a more natural dreamy colors not quite as stark as an HDR image. for this shot I wanted to give the sky a nice dramatic look and went with a tone mapped HDR for this one. I had also taken couple of shots with ND filter and will post them in the coming days.


Dreaming Sailing Star
Made by Thuyhn
Steal away, on a sailing star, We can drift away, so far. Catch on to a dream, Float along a star-filled stream. Come drift away with me, Because dreams are vast as the sea. Maybe we could sail away, Onto the crest of a new day. Sailing across an ocean of stars. Floating beyond the moons of mars. Still falling fast asleep, Praying for my soul to keep. Untethered with billowing sails. Drifting away on whispering veils. Floating away on a ship of wonder, and headed north, Sailing on a star, gracefully rocking back and forth. Crossing over the milkyway at night, Set adrift like a comet at pre-dawn light. A shooting star, weary traveler sailing wayward. Heading toward the dawn, off the starboard, Across the the twilght, off to a distant star. In dreams, we can be whoever we are. ~ST.JAMES~


SMOOTS
Made by ribizlifozelek
A smoot is a unit of length equal to five feet seven inches - for people. The pledgemaster for Smoot's fraternity (Lambda Chi Alpha) used Smoot as a unit to measure the length of the Harvard bridge, because he was short and his name had a scientific ring to it. The length of the bridge is 364.4 smoots and one ear. 'Smoot' also became an optional measure unit of Google Earth. Oliver Smoot (MIT class 1962) was President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and he was also the chairman of the American National Standards Institute -- a career befitting his college days.


Keep Safe this Earth, Plate II
Made by Almond Butterscotch
On Black I know it's been a while since I've uploaded photos on a regular basis, but time and I have become distant strangers as of the past few months. I'll try my hardest to get a few of my backlogged photos rolling out (dating back as far as the DMU Boston meetup in October of 2010), but I can't promise anything. In the meantime though, here's my 200th photo uploaded to flickr! (Now my Pro membership is worth it, right?) Mamiya C220, 80mm, f/3.5, 1/500 sec Ilford FP4+125, D-76 stock, 8.5min Epson 4490


Boston University Bridge
Made by keithemmerich.com
I am spending all my time either shooting sunrise or sunset...I love color like this...it is cold outside and my fingers are going numb...but this made me pretty happy. I went to BU and this was shot from the Boston University Bridge...I don't think I ever fell in love with the east coast but it's nice to see it again. Spending the day relaxing and some visiting but soon to my favorite place in the world...Walden Check out my website specializing in Metro Detroit Wedding Photography take a look around and enjoy thanks.


Bridge I::In Blue
Made by Dr. RawheaD
Hasselblad interpretation. Wow, totally unintentional, but it just so happens that the horizontal angular FOV of the SWC/Biogon almost perfectly matched the :lol: Let's see... so that was taken @ 16mm, which is the equivalent of 24mm on a full frame (35mm), so the SWC's horizontal FOV is equivalent of a 24mm I guess (of course, the diagonal FOV will be much wider, more like a 20-21mm).. Explored, Mar. 29th, 2010, top spot #7; thanks!! Front Paged, Mar. 29th, 2010; thanks!


“Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it...
Made by FerPecT_sHotz
- Robert Motherwell. Another bunch of shots I took at the Boston Pops 4th of July celebrations at Boston, MA. The fireworks are a fun event to shoot with the only problem being that you can't change your vantage points as its often packed and thus getting interesting locations are very challenging unless you have a bunch of assistants. another problem will be windless nights as the smoke will ruin you shots if there are no winds to move the smoke. So you are forced to under expose to avoid massive clouds of smoke ruining your shots. So fun as I said earlier..


Breaking away
Made by Thuyhn
Breaking away, Towards a dream of a new day, Hoping, wishing on a better way, Like the dog that has been beaten, made to fear, I look for the chance to run from you, disappear. Yet I know that I depend on you to take care of my needs, Leaving isn't so easy, When your very soul, you conceeded. What now lonely one, Abused and afraid to care? What will we do now to find peace, Continue to let them strip you bare? Is there no way to run, Or break away from the cycle within! Break it, Break the walls, Let love enter in! Marnie L Jameson


Harvard Bridge (4)
Made by AntyDiluvian
Since 1958, the unofficial unit of measure for the Harvard Bridge has been smoots. (It's an MIT thing.) For some reason Smoot 69 is labeled heaven. I'm not sure why. In the movie M*A*S*H, the cheerleaders for the MASH squad yell, 69 is divine! 69 is divine! Maybe there's a connection. I'll have to look it up. (You don't suppose it has anything to do with this, do you?)


'Twas a very good night...
Made by FlowrBx
...to meet a special Flickr friend, , for the first time and to have the privilege of going on a photowalk through Boston with her! Lisa: Thanks for having me and for bumping me out of my comfort zone. You are every bit as dear as I knew you would be! You have an open invitation to come to Nebraska anytime, especially if you let me give you my Trader Joe's shopping list before you come - that last box of dark chocolate that I grabbed is awesome but almost gone... :))


There are times when silence has the loudest voice...
Made by FerPecT_sHotz
- Leroy Brownlow. Another shot before the 4th of July fireworks started at Boston MA. I was about and hour early for the fireworks and there were hardly anyone on the bridge but the sun was setting behind and was painting the clouds with beautiful colors. So I decided to see what results I could get by using ND grads and HDR. I personally like the subtlety of the ND Grads to the moody Drama of HDR. But I guess both has their uses. Below is an HDR shot of the same scene..


Charles River Esplanade
Made by idashum
The Charles River is an 80 mi-long river that flows in eastern Massachusetts, USA. At the far end, of the Charles River Esplanade stands the Hatch Shell, where concerts are given in summer evenings. The basin is especially known for its Independence Day celebration. Fun Fact: Brandeis University, Harvard University, Boston University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are all located along the Charles River.


At 350 Smoots
Made by Haikiba
The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot, a fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha, who in October 1958 lay on the Harvard Bridge (between Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts), and was used by his fraternity brothers to measure the length of the bridge. (364.4 total) 1 smoot = 5 feet 7 inches ~= 1.70 meters (from Wikipedia)


Skyline del centro de Boston
Made by guillenperez
La vista de Boston desde el puente de Harvard es una de las más clásicas postales de la ciudad, pues se ve todo el skyline del centro por detrás de los veleros y el parque en la orilla del río Charles. The view of Boston from Harvard bridge is one of the most classic postcards in town, because it's possible to see the center skyline behind the sailing boats and the park in Charles river shore.