Archive for December 2010
Straddling Brooklyn and Queens
– photos by Mitch Waxman
Shots of, from, and around the Grand Street Bridge at the currently undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens. Welcome to DUGSBO.
Low Tide at Maspeth Creek
– photos by Mitch Waxman
Shallow as it is, Maspeth Creek at an extreme low tide on Wednesday the 22nd of December.
A few recent shots from Dutch Kills
– photos by Mitch Waxman
Funny, these shots only represent a duration of a couple of weeks, yet the variation in water condition is remarkable. The odd white goo coating the bottom observed in the first few shots has been reported to me as existing at the Gowanus Canal as well.
I’m going to be taking a little break, as far as hard core posting goes, to accommodate the holidays. Expect a few more slideshows, and some short posts until after the seasons festivities have passed. The winter session at this, your Newtown Pentacle, will officially begin in the new year but for now the posts will be terse but regularly offered.
Today’s holiday, of course, is Festivus.
Experiments 1
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Inspirado strikes in funny ways. To wit, Our Lady of the pentacle returned from one of her periodic expeditions to area thrift and secondhand stores with a used Viewmaster and several of the little travelogue reels which typified the gadget (The Petrified Forest, or Alcatraz, or Grand Canyon- there were thousands of these things, and it was a very popular diversion in the pre digital days).
For those of you born into the digital age, a viewmaster was a “toy” featuring a binocular sighting gizmo that focuses in on a tiny transparency contained on a ratcheted disc which is rotated into position via a lever. The whole device is held in front of an illuminated light source, and whatever the presented image is appears in the sights.
The Viewmaster people perfected the trick of a certain dimensionality, not true 3d of course, but the sort of analog stereoscopic illusion which you might be familiar with because of Disney animation with it’s multi plane camera work. This effect is something I had forgotten about, wherein comes the “inspirado”. There’s got to be a way to suggest that dimensionality, the “jump” as it were, in photoshop.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not quite as simple as “tilt-shifting“, the effect I’m trying to get (which I haven’t yet achieved, although these 2 images are fairly close) involves stacking the various layers of background with certain alterations to density and saturation. That “pop” isn’t quite there yet, which might represent a shortcoming in the actual photograph of course, but it’s fairly close.
Of course, there are those who do actual stereographs- YTF from the Newtown Pentacle group at Flickr has mastered the technique for instance- but I’m trying to achieve it in a single image.
Experiment, fail, theorize, experiment, fail- it’s all empirical- I’ll keep y’all posted…
Happy Birthday Mr. Moses
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The great builder, Robert Moses was built himself on this date in 1888. A controversial subject amongst the preservationist community, Moses nevertheless shaped the City of Greater New York into its familiar modern pattern.
from wikipedia
Robert Moses (December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981) was the “master builder” of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, Rockland County, and Westchester County, New York. As the shaper of a modern city, he is sometimes compared to Baron Haussmann of Second Empire Paris, and is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of urban planning in the United States. He changed shorelines, built bridges, tunnels and roadways, and transformed neighborhoods forever. His decisions favoring highways over public transit helped create the modern suburbs of Long Island and influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners who spread his philosophies across the nation.
Never elected to public office, Moses was responsible for the creation and leadership of numerous public authorities which he could control without having to answer to the general public or to elected officials. It is due to Moses that there are a disproportionate number of public benefit corporations in New York state, which are the prime mode of infrastructure building and maintenance in New York, and are currently responsible for 90% of the state’s debt.[3] As head of various authorities, he controlled millions in income from his projects’ revenue generation, such as tolls, and he had the power to issue bonds to borrow vast sums, allowing him to initiate new ventures with little or no approval from legislative bodies, bypassing the usual power of the purse as it normally functioned in the United States, and the cumbersome process of citizen comment on major public works.
– photo from wikipedia
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The jewel in his crown was always mighty Triborough, and it was the center of his empire.
from wikipedia
Originally named the Triborough Bridge Authority, the authority was created in 1933 as a public-benefit corporation by the New York State Legislature. It was tasked with completing construction of the Robert F. Kennedy (Triborough) Bridge, which had been started by New York City in 1929 but had stalled due to the Great Depression.
Under the chairmanship of Robert Moses, the agency grew in a series of mergers with four other agencies:
- Henry Hudson Parkway Authority, in 1940
- Marine Parkway Authority, in 1940
- New York City Parkway Authority, in 1940
- New York City City Tunnel Authority, in 1946
With the last merger in 1946, the authority was renamed the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority.
Generating millions of dollars in toll revenue annually, the TBTA easily became a powerful city agency as it was capable of funding large capital projects. From the 1940s-60s, the TBTA built the Battery Parking Garage, Jacob Riis Beach Parking Field, Coliseum Office Building and Exposition Center and East Side Airlines Terminal, as well as many parks in the city.
The Newtown Pentacle 