Archive for December 2016
febrile energy
Getting high in LIC, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
None of these shots are recent, I’ll first offer. To magnify that statement, due to the recent and quite abysmal climatological conditions, one has been forced to dig into the archives this entire week. Secondly, one is so thoroughly bored at the moment that if a television reporter suddenly presents a story about a black hole opening up in Astoria – interpret that as the fact that my event horizon has finally collapsed and I’ve given in to the ennui.
Pictured above is a set piece from an Angeline Jolie movie that was being filmed in LIC around seven years ago.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is full of desire and ambition, wanting to get higher and higher in the name of gathering uncommon views of everyday things. The most photogenic of NYC’s subway lines is in the shot above, as is a NJ Transit train heading back to the City after sitting out the day in Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Northern Blvd., looking towards 31st street, in the shot above. I call the section of Northern between 52nd and 31st streets the “Carridor” for several reasons.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Sunyside Yards, with the Degnon Terminal behind it. For some reason, LaGuardia Community College, which is partially housed in the big white structure once known as “The Thousand Windows Bakery of the Loose Wiles Company” has decided to paint their building gray and brick over the thousand windows.
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obsolete phraseology
Getting high, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s not so easy getting high in the age of terror. Once upon a time it was fairly easy to gain entrance to a building and find your way to the roof, but not so much anymore. Accordingly, whenever I get the opportunity, the camera is deployed.
This one is from a friend’s wedding, which was held at a Manhattan hotel on Park Avenue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Gridlock Sam didn’t necessarily want me to be bodily hanging out one of his office windows, on Broadway and Houston Street, but since I was there anyway for a meeting…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one was gathered in LIC from the roof deck of one those shiny new condo towers, and looks down on Hunters Point Avenue, the LIE, and a little bitty piece of the Sunnyside Yards.
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secretive youth
Existentialist archive stuff, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Everything is kind of gray at the moment, ain’t it? I’ve always preferred the British spelling of the word gray, incidentally, they use “grey” over there. They also use “colour” which is a prettier spelled word than ours, IMHO. That’s some nameless and bland east side of midtown Manhattan office building in the shot above, just if you’re curious.
The shot was chosen purely for its bleak and hopeless character.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You wouldn’t believe the amount of preparation it took to get the moon shot above, at least in the chaotic environment and sooty air of Astoria, Queens. Tripod, long lens, lens extender, manual focusing, compensating for the counter revolutions of the planet and planetoid… yeesh, at least it wasn’t cold out that night. As a note, there’s some math genius out there who has calculated lens focal length vs. maximum aperture and created tables which tell you how long your exposure can be before movement begins to affect image fidelity. Google it.
The moon moves across the night sky in a surprisingly fast fashion, incidentally, at least when you’re looking through something like 700mm of optical magnification.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of Astoria, or “Point A” as I call it… it’s always great to come back here from Points B or M (or Point SI for that matter) even if it’s dark and raining. Can’t see the moon on those nights, of course, but Astoria rules no matter what the weather is like. Well, the cold sucks, but…
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easily showing
Continuing archive week, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of my favorite “night shots” of the last few years is presented above, depicting the mausoleum of Stephen Whitney in Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery. I was there well after dark with the folks from Atlas Obscura, on a summer night when I and two other narrators read Lovecraft’s “Horror at Red Hook” to a group of tapophiles.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was actually listening to the Horror at Red Hook audiobook (Audiorealms version, Wayne June narrating) when I caught this shot under the 7 train tracks on Queens Blvd. over in Sunnyside.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was thinking about Lovecraft, in general, when the shot above was captured in the Lower East Side section of Manhattan not too far from Hester Street. As a note, Jakob Riis described this area as being “Jewtown” or “The Ghetto” in his many anecdotal accounts of life in 19th century NYC.
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clung round
Night time in Queens, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This week, you can expect exactly zero newly minted shots from this humble narrator. One part of the reason for that is that Xmas week postings are (annually speaking) the ones with the lowest readership at this – your Newtown Pentacle, the other is that due to the gloom, wet, and cold last week – I wasn’t exactly outside a whole lot. As is my habit, a few shots were selected from the archives for presentation, your consideration and possible amusement.
That’s Sunnyside Gardens in the shot above, shot sometime in the late night or early morning, if memory serves.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Point A in my life is Astoria, Queens. All journeys start at “Point A,” for me, and end there as well.
Pictured above is 31st street beneath the elevated tracks of the Subway, on a drizzle choked evening.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of the elevated, I stand by my assertion that the 7 line is the most photogenic of all NYC’s Subway lines. That’s her, crashing through LIC.
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