Archive for July 19th, 2023
Will there be cake?
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, a humble narrator had purchased a ticket for a narrated tour of the Allegheny River from the Doors Open Pittsburgh outfit. The narration was grand, offered lots of ‘in the know’ trivia, and was conducted by two fellows who were passing the microphone back and forth. One of them was expert on the subject of Pittsburgh’s bridges, whereas the other was versed in city planning and the scholastic field of urbanism. Nicely done, I would venture to say.
Also as mentioned yesterday, my internal dialogue was ranting and raving about personal insecurities and generally chewing up the mental carpet. While all this was going on, I was clicking and whirring the camera as we moved through Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The sky was building up a storm, which was coagulating into the misty wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada. This was the same atmospheric interval which saw the East Coast turn orange and red, but at least on this day Pittsburgh only had a bit of haze. That would change a few days later, which you’ll see in a post later this week.
I was using one of my older lenses on this outing, an 18-300 Sigma. While shooting with it, I realized how much I missed its qualities and made a decision to bring a couple of other old favorites out of the locker and see how they react to the mirrorless camera. They all need an adapter to go from one lens mount to another, but there you are.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The mirrorless lenses I have are actually pretty top notch, but you don’t want to wear the same pants every day. Actually… I do wear the exact same thing everyday. One of my odd behaviors is that when I find a garment that fits well physically and is constructed robustly, and has lots of secure pockets, I go back to wherever I got it and buy 5 more of the thing, same color and size. Superman has multiple iterations of only two suits in his closet – Clark Kent’s dark blue business suit, and the Kryptonian leotards with the cape. It’s one less thing to worry about. There’s a winter version and a summer variant of the Mitchsuit.
‘What would Superman do?’ I ask myself that all the time.
After we docked, I positively jumped into the drivers seat of the Mobile Oppression Platform and paid my parking lot fee, then headed back to HQ about 5 miles away. I’m always checking the weather for interesting conditions that might make for good shots, and discovered that the next couple of days were going to be very interesting in terms of atmospherics. More on that, tomorrow.
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Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 