Mirror mirror, on the floor
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When Pittsburgh’s North Park was created, a waterway called Old Pine Creek fed into a marsh hereabouts. The Great Depression era engineers got busy, and created the largest manmade lake in the State of Pennsylvania with the help of hundreds of Work Projects Administration laborers. 75 acres in size, with trails around it, Marshall Lake (aka North Park Lake) is annually stocked with game fish, and there’s at least a couple of Bald Eagles which form the top of the littoral food chain here. The licensed citizenry can fish here, as it’s considered public land.
These shots are from about 6:30 in the morning, and there were already hundreds of people jogging on the trails, and I also spotted two fishermen casting their lines.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a warm morning, with little to no wind, so the lake itself was pretty much a perfect mirror. I set up the tripod and got a few shots of the rather bucolic scene. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to see here at North Park, which is some 3,300 acres in size. There was a giant Pterodactyl sized Heron flying around, but I didn’t get a shot worth mentioning of it.
The camera was set up for landscape style shots. Lately, I’ve been considering bringing along a second camera body geared up for ‘catch as catch can’ shots, for use when the main camera body is purposed towards and busy with these sort of photos.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The lake is shaped somewhat like a boomerang. The water flows out to a spillway on the eastern shore, which maintains its level. That’s where I was heading next, because ‘infrastructure.’
The spillway feeds into a waterway called Pine Creek, which is ultimately a tributary of the Allegheny River, joining its parent at the Borough of Etna section of the Pittsburgh Metro several miles distant.
Back tomorrow with a very cool chunk of infrastructure!
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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 
Why is the sky always darker and/or bluer, in the sky in the water reflexion in a landscape photo?
georgetheatheist . . . Ansel Adams
September 21, 2023 at 3:36 pm
Physics
Mitch Waxman
September 21, 2023 at 3:50 pm
Need more info. When you use a polarizing filter on a landscape, quite often the sky gets bluer if the glass is angled correctly, no? But look at your first photo here. It looks like the reflected sky in the water was somehow polarized without a filter being used. This happens most of the time when a landscape has a body of water in the foreground reflecting the sky: the reflection is richer in coloration.
georgetheatheist . . . Ansel Adams
September 21, 2023 at 6:53 pm
No clouds in sky, sun behind hill. Lake under hill, w lots of particulate matter in it. Light move thru air better than water.
Mitch Waxman
September 22, 2023 at 10:14 am
Still makes no sense. The clouds in the sky behind the hill have more detail than their reflection immediately below in the water. Also, note the little tree by the water at the very far right. It is lighter than it’s reflection in the water. These examples contradict.
georgetheatheist. . . Ansel Adams
September 22, 2023 at 2:32 pm
The air is full of particles, but they’re so small and light that they are suspended and thereby do not refract light as much as the larger particles suspended in the water column, which itself eats up light so much that two or three feet down i occluded. Also, as mentioned in the post, this was about 6:30 in the morning, which means it was twilight as the sun hadn’t ‘officially’ risen. It was dawn, meaning angled light casts shadows. Beyond that, check with a physicist. If you’re intoning that I ‘effed around with the shot in photoshop, I didn’t – this is what it looked like.
Mitch Waxman
September 22, 2023 at 2:39 pm
I didn’t “intone” anything. Look at the 2nd photo. There’s no difference between the land at the top and its reflection in the bottom. But in the 1st photo there is a marked difference between the sky and the reflection of the sky. I suspect it has to do with the polarity of the light but I’m not sure. That’s why I posed the issue to begin with.
georgetheatheist . . . Ansel Adams
September 23, 2023 at 4:40 pm
Again – atmospheric versus liquid diffusion have different levels of light penetration. Also, the angle you’re seeing in the sky is far different than the ground one. If I was at a 50 percent altitude on a plane or something, I suspect you’d see similar luminosity top and bottom.
Mitch Waxman
September 23, 2023 at 4:43 pm
Lovely photos! Who cares about the physics.
dbarms8878
October 14, 2023 at 8:44 pm