The Newtown Pentacle

Tuesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As described yesterday, a humble narrator bought his way onto a ‘photo safari’ event at the Carrie Furnaces in Pittsburgh’s Swissvale section. A National Historic Place, Carrie was once part of U.S. Steel’s Homestead works – which – during its time – was the largest steel plant on the planet. A guide from the Rivers of Steel outfit, which cares for and manages the place, had given us a brief overview and walk through description of where we could and couldn’t go. After that, she headed back to the front gate, and since free reign was now in effect – I got busy.

These are all tripod shots, and represent a delicate balancing act as far as exposure goes. Within the structures, it was either morning daylight shining through, or deeply shadowed. As in the case of the shot above, it was both simultaneously. Luckily, I know a camera trick or two to handle this sort of thing.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’ve mentioned ‘photo stacking’ before, although in the context of focus. This technique involves moving the lens’ point of focus, on a tripod mounted camera, around the frame during multiple exposures. For example – You do one close up, one middle depth, and one focused on infinity. In photoshop the three are combined, with the software building a single uniformly sharp image out of the three. I’ve used this technique a lot over the years, and it’s particularly useful when doing landscape shots.

You can also photo stack for exposure. This gets a little more complicated, and the hard part of it is remembering what you were doing when you shot the subject in the field, as you’re slogging through the image folder while back at HQ and in front of the computer. The shot above, for instance, used one exposure and point of focus for the interior foreground, and a second set of settings for the brightly lit exterior. A lot of trial and error has gone into understanding what to feed the software, as far as the raw image, in order to get a predictable result.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This one uses a more traditional application of the technique, with one focus point trained on the interior brick and metal combined with a second shot that was focused without. Yeah, I know… as the kids in Quadrophenia would have remarked: wizard.

While we were doing the walk through, I was already hatching my plan for how to shoot this place. I had decided to spend a half hour or so inside the plant itself, and then walk widdershins (anticlockwise) around it. This decision was based on where I thought the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself would be hanging in the sky, during my visit to Carrie Furnace.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Also described yesterday, I wish that I could offer you a granular and well understood picture of what you’re looking at, but I know very little about metals production and about steel in particular. Truth be told, the phrase that kept on popping up in my brain while shooting these images was ‘Triborough Bridge.’ Now… that’s something I know about.

A theory (originally offered by Robert Caro) which I’m fond of is that Robert Moses was the reason that the USA ended up being the 800 pound Gorilla during WW2. When Moses placed the steel orders for Triborough in 1932, the furnaces of Pittsburgh were reactivated, after their slumber in the early days of Great Depression. The steel supply chain was also activated, creating an economic and industrial wave which rippled out of Pittsburgh to the coal and iron mines of the interior via the railroads. A forest was cut down just to make the lumber needed for Triborough’s construction scaffolding. Some 31 million man hours, playing out in 134 cities across 20 states, went into Triborough, as Caro stated.

When Pearl Harbor occurred nine years later, it didn’t take too long for the United States to conjure up a brand new Pacific Fleet to the Japanese, for their consideration, because ‘hell with the lid off’ (as Mark Twain once described Pittsburgh) was all fired up and ready to rock. If Moses hadn’t brokered his power to build that massive bridge complex with its 17.5 miles of roadways in NY Harbor…

The steel in the Empire State Building was created at Carrie, as a note. That’s bit of trivia is something I learned off of a beer mug in a Pittsburgh bar and it seems to be true.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Sorry, NYC slips back in sometimes… this is Pittsburgh… not…

I began my slow circling of the Carrie Furnace, with the camera mounted up on the Sirui Carbon Fiber tripod that I’ve been using for the last five years or so. It’s just light enough to be ‘carryable,’ and therefore I almost always have it with me. I seem to recall that I had the camera set up for ISO 100, F8, and exposure time was whatever it needed to be. I didn’t use the wired shutter release switch as I normally do, and just had the camera set to wait out a small delay after I hit the shutter button to ameliorate ‘shake.’ I opted for the Canon 24-105mm lens this time around. I had others with me, but the wide to telephoto range of this piece of glass was perfect for the site.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The yellow chains seen in the middle of the shot indicated ‘no go’ areas as designated by the Rivers of Steel people. They explained that these areas were unstable and could be dangerous, which is also why we were asked to wear hard hats. Situations like this are also where the virtue of using a zoom lens for this sort of location comes into play.

Back in Queens, I’d regularly get contacted by photographers who were interested in Newtown Creek but were a little worried about their safety or where they could go. I’d always gladly take them out for a walk, and pass on the things I’d learned over the years. Invariably, I’d find them walking onto slippery shoreline rocks, or doing some other dangerous stunt to get a close up of something. After they were done and safely back on the pavement, I’d say ‘isn’t that a zoom lens’?

Back tomorrow with more from Carrie Furnace.

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