Selah, yo
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When your humble narrator is motoring about by himself, here in Pennsylvania’s Pittsburgh, the camera is usually sitting on the front passenger seat – just in case something interesting happens. More often than not, nothing interesting is going on, but a new habit I’ve been cultivating is to stick the camera out of the car’s moon roof and crack out a shot or two when I’m stuck at red lights. The film making crowd would call this the gathering ‘B-Roll’ footage.
To me, street intersections are yet another one of the scenarios which doesn’t normally get photographed, and is thereby worthy of a bit of notice. This is West Liberty Avenue, an arterial roadway, at the corner of Macneilly Road in the Dormont section. I was heading straight on West Liberty for a few miles, passing through the tony Mount Lebanon suburb and towards Bethel Park for my ankle ‘PT.’
The ride took forever, as school was letting out, and obeisance along the scholastic sections of this road to a 15mph speed limit is the law here in the Commonwealth.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one’s from the South Side Flats area, nearby that brewery I often mention that has the CSX tracks running along it. That’s Mount Washington in the background, and there’s all sorts of motor vehicle/rail/light rail infrastructure on that slope.
The procedure with these shots is to twist the camera’s screen out to a ninety degree angle and then awkwardly aim the thing out the roof hole of the car. You have to account for the camera not being stabilized by squishing it against your face, but that’s just an adjustment to get used to. Everything else is autofocus and zoom.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The hard part is keeping your car out of the shot, but a purposeful inclusion is offered above. I’ve been astonished by the numbers associated with train collisions recently. In 2023, for instance, there were 2,192 collisions with moving trains in this country which caused 247 fatalities and 766 injuries. I’m not quite sure how drivers didn’t know a train was coming in a circumstance like the one above, but not all intersections between the track and road are gussied up with signal arms and bells. Also, half of U.S. population are dumb asses, so…
At any rate, Happy New Year, and I’ll be back tomorrow with something different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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 
Leave a comment