torn to
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sunset at Fresh Kills on… Staten Island…
As described yesterday, an invitation from the NYC Parks Dept. saw me and my pal Val travel all the way out to the western edge of the known universe to record the scene. This was part of their “Capturing Change” program, which I last got to participate in back in 2014. Remember 2014? Back then, the notion that America might descend into a Civil War at any second was the stuff spoken about by lunatics.
That’s one of my fancy pants shots above, by the way. There’s about six individual captures combined in that one. The wind was whipping the grass about, all that. Different exposures for fore and background…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So, you know how I’ve been telling you for the last thirteen years that the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself disappears into a pocket behind New Jersey?
PROOF! Photographic proof.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the trash caldera of Fresh Kills, with its extreme elevation, you get some pretty epic views. Go wide or go telephoto? What’s the subject? What do I want the image to say? What’s in frame?
That’s the actual thought process I filter through each and every time I hit the shutter button.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m glad I got to do this, and have to throw a major kudo at my pal Val, who did a heroic amount of driving through pretty heavy traffic to get us out here. It’s astounding how close Queens’ Astoria is to Fresh Kills on… Staten Island… it’s only 38 miles. Saying that, it took us close to two hours to get out here due to traffic.
As I’ve mentioned, I’m planning on leaving the City at the end of the year. One of the things which I’m having trouble equating is what distance vs. time means in the rest of the country.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By the time you’re reading this (it’s being written in mid June), I’ve been to Pittsburgh and back again. On that trip, which occurred during the third week of June, I drove from Pittsburgh to Youngstown in Ohio, and then to Wheeling in West Virginia, and back to Pittsburgh in about three hours. Literally a hundred and change miles, crossed in about one third more of the time it took us to go just 38 local miles here in NYC.
I could tell you how to fix the traffic here in NYC, within 20 years, with a moderate governmental investment – but nothing matters and nobody cares – and “bike lanes” and “affordable housing.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After the event, we piled into Val’s car and headed back into the thick of things at the center of the archipelago metropolis which is the center of the East Coast Megalopolis.
Back next week with something completely different, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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The Newtown Pentacle 
Beautiful pics!
That two locations in NYC are 38 miles apart by car is amazing, and that’s not anywhere the max end-to-end.
dbarms8878
July 15, 2022 at 9:14 pm
Hi Mitch- just when I was having a really rotten day, along come these especially great photos, thanks, feeling better already
Barbara pryor
July 16, 2022 at 11:02 pm
[…] in Astoria Park at Hells Gate in “fumbling in,” visited Staten Island’s Fresh Kills in “torn to,” and in “retinue of” I went hunting for a 7 train/Queensboro Bridge sunset […]
assorted hands | The Newtown Pentacle
December 29, 2022 at 11:03 am