Archive for January 17th, 2019
much attention
Woodside area, Roosevelt Avenue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Throughout 2018, particularly from the end of the summer through the autumn and all the way into December, a nighttime photographic survey of Newtown Creek and its surrounding neighborhoods was undertaken. As regular readers of this – your Newtown Pentacle – will tell you, every nook and cranny around the waterway saw me show up in the dead of night and set up the tripod. Because of this effort, I’m trying to take a Newtown Creek break and shoot other things for a bit. Sometime in the next couple of weeks I need to go shoot another progress report on the K Bridge project, but I’ll do that when I feel like it and have some time to kill. Right now, I’m really interested in the 7 train corridor.
Coincidentally, since the aforementioned corridor has a de facto roof on it provided by the elevated tracks of the IRT Flushing Line, it’s a bit less “chilly” than it is hanging around the waterfront in January.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve always wondered about what it’s like living near the Woodside stop on the 7, where there’s both an elevated 7 line stop and a Long Island Rail Road station. Noisy, I’d imagine. Luckily for the folks that live here, it’s also on a primary approach to LaGuardia Airport which is found to the north. The folks that live on the block pictured above actually have an awesome Irish Bar on their corner, Saints and Sinners, so they can at least find solace or succor deep in their cups if the noise is keeping them awake at night. HQ back in Astoria sits atop a subway tunnel, the IND Broadway Local or R line. I barely even notice the vibrations anymore. You don’t hear anything, other than minor rattling emanating from the cupboards.
It’s best to just ignore the rattling, or any of the sounds which come from deep inside the walls, at Casa Mitch.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
58th street, which at Roosevelt Avenue is just a few blocks from the dead bang geographic center of NYC at Queens Blvd. and 58th, is where I decided to start deploying the tripod and other long exposure gear to try and capture the amazing amount of light kicking around in the steel rafters after dark. During the day, it’s just a mass of hard shadows up there, and a fairly difficult place to get the right exposure due to the bright shafts of sunlight peeking through the steel. There aren’t a lot of middle tones, essentially, to meter against in such a contrasty environment.
More tomorrow.
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