Wide angling in Oakland
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuing with a medium length walk through Pittsburgh’s Oakland section, one during which your humble narrator was carrying a ‘light kit’ camera bag, filled up only with prime lenses.
A ‘prime’ has a fixed focal length, 35mm or 85mm for instance. I normally do my photowalks with a zoom lens, but occasionally enjoy the delimiting effect and intellectual calculations that having to swap lenses brings.
The guy driving that back loader realized how ridiculous he must have looked, and threw me a thumbs up as he drove by with a gigantic potted plant on his front scoop. Gotta love the tradies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When I reached the ‘ceremonial center’ of Oakland, one decided to swap out a formerly installed 35mm lens for a wide angle 16mm model.
Not quite a ‘fish eye’ lens, it’s still a bit wider than the range of human vision, and is a fairly ‘bright’ piece of glass with a f 2.8 aperture.
As mentioned in prior posts regarding this walk, Oakland is a crowded and quite urban space. Especially so now that the college kids have come back from summer recess to resume their studies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Me? I was heading for the sort of places where I belong. The edges of the world, where you gaze over cliffs and ponder the oblivion below.
As established, everybody hates me and as such I’m best off avoiding the human infestation, at all costs. It’s only a matter of time before a torch bearing mob of peasants corners me in some old mill.
I’ve always known that my end will arrive with fire.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What’s become a fairly familiar path for me involves the rougher side of Forbes Avenue, where it interfaces with a highway’s off ramp, one that spits high speed traffic onto local streets.
If it seems that my mood has taken a dark turn of late, it has.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Oddly enough, given the plethora of ramps leading to and from the interstate and the high speed local roads below, the gargantua six lane and 1977 vintage Birmingham Bridge (the steel arch on the left side, above) over the Monongahela River isn’t directly connected to anything but local streets, on either side.
Literally, there are local street style traffic lights on both sides of this thing. It overflies a highway which it’s not connected directly to.
As far as the mood thing goes, read a newspaper. The future sucks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was really enjoying using the wide angle, as you may have guessed by now. It’s a regular part of my kit, one that I seldom use, but there we are.
Back tomorrow.
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