Archive for May 15th, 2025
Descending again
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Descending from the prominence of Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington, via the PJ McArdle roadway, is where we left off yesterday and that’s what the shot above illustrates.
This roadway is cantilevered out from the face of the landform, and leads down to the flood plane level of the Monongahela River’s southern shore. The area which it makes its landing in is called either the South Side Flats or simply ‘south side.’
There’s a shot along this route that I’d really like to capture a decent iteration of for the archives, which is the Monongahela Incline riding on its funicular trackway over the road.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Like a lot of ‘shots I want,’ the practice is to haunt the location and get versions of the composition during different times of the day and weather conditions over time. There’ll be dozens of iterations, usually, until I get whatever the heck it is within the brain box that I’m going for.
All of the scouting I’ve been up to for the last couple of years is now moving into actual photography time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the sort of thing I’m going for, although I should have used a different lens to try and get some more blurry drop off and ‘depth of field.’ I shot this one with a zoom lens at f8, and the focal was dialed all the way out, which ‘flattens’ things too much.
A lens swap occurred prior to the next group of shots, as an 85mm f2 prime lens was affixed to the camera.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The 85mm was set to f2.8, but I still didn’t get the blur and drop off in background focus – bokeh, as it’s called – that I was hoping for. As mentioned, this is a shot I’m going to work until I get it right. I dig it.
The 24-240mm zoom lens is an omnivore and ‘walk around’ lens, allowing me quick focus across a large range, but it operates best with a narrow aperture like f8. The narrow aperture also restricts it to daytime usage, sans tripod.
The prime lenses are restricted to a fixed objective size, but offer larger apertures (f1.8 and up) that allow me to get a bit artsy fartsy and capture images in dark or shadowed locations.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I swapped the zoom lens back onto the camera, performed a quick inventory of the camera bag to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be, and thereupon one continued with his scuttling.
Your humble narrator was literally the only pedestrian along this route, except for the fellow at the bottom of the hill (mentioned yesterday) whom I’m pretty sure was well into the process of becoming a zombie.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along the way, this scene caught my eye. Goes to show that no matter how much effort mankind puts into something, nature always ends up winning out. Comforting, no?
Back tomorrow.
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