The Newtown Pentacle

Tuesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Recent endeavor found your humble narrator, in the company of Our Lady of the Pentacle, on Pittsburgh’s North Side at a fundraiser event for the National Aviary. Read all about the Aviary at Wikipedia, or visit their site to hear it from the horse bird’s own mouth.

It was quite a party, with a tropical theme, and there was food and drink and entertainments involved as well. To wit, upon our arrival, a lion dancer troop were busily starting a performance.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A locomotive trench, which I often shoot Norfolk Southern rail traffic along, is next to the Aviary’s property which is similarly located in Allegheny Commons Park, so this isn’t an altogether unfamiliar spot to me. Saying that, I knew that the Aviary was here, but circumstance hadn’t carried me and the camera here as of yet. Normally, spots like this are filed under ‘winter stuff’ for me.

Museums, zoos, interior spaces, churches. Winter stuff.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This was a pretty well attended fund raiser. After getting the ubiquitous wrist bands, we entered the facility. They had bar and food set-ups, but I have to mention that the ‘way finding’ here was just awful.

Those ‘you are here’ wall maps you often see in public spaces like hospitals and museums would have been helpful to move the crowd along but… alas. There were, therefore, hundreds of people congealing and crowding wherever they first discovered a bar or catering style table.

This sort of event planning thing annoys me, and it is one of the many subjects which I’d jump and down about when doing tours and galas and all that back in the Non-Profit sweatshops of NYC. ‘You enter the event,’ ‘what happens then?’ Where do I send you, what will you find, where are the bathrooms? Where do we want them to leave their money behind?

You really need to figure all this stuff out in advance before the guests arrive. Every time is somebody’s first time there, so plan on that too. Greeters shouldn’t be clustered around the entrance, rather stationed at strategic points along the route you want to the guests to ‘discover.’

I have spoken.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s a series of environmental set ups at the National Aviary, with this wetland one hosting a number of smaller critters. They’re flying around, and walking around, in the same area which the guests are. Neat.

If you’re wondering, tomorrow. Tomorrow is when you see all birds. Today is when you see the Aviary.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Ok, here’s a few of the birds.

I was walking around with the wide angle 16mm lens on at this particular moment. Nobody likes hearing what I’m carrying in my camera bag more than Our Lady, and she was absolutely ‘rizzed’ by my lens choices. So exciting.

Her husband can be sooooo entirely pedantic when discussing his gear, which is part of why Our Lady is so long suffering.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’m told that’s some kind of duck up there in that shot above.

This was a social event, so I was trying to travel light and left the heavy zoom lenses at HQ. I had a very basic kit with me – an 85mm f2, a 35mm f1.8, and the 16mm f2.8. This is the core of my night kit tools, as I figured (correctly) that it would be dark inside – as far as the amount of light that a camera would need. See? Pedantic.

Tomorrow – lotsa boids.

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“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.