Author Archive
unfrequented moor
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My plan for avoiding a series of thunderstorms on June 1st involved placing myself in areas which host some sort of structure above. The Pulaski Bridge just happens to be one of those structures. While waiting for a Long Island Railroad train to pass by, some bloke struck up a conversation with me. Turns out he was a homeless veteran who is residing at the Borden Avenue Men’s Shelter a few blocks away, and he described conditions there as being fairly grim. He was the kind of Vet who still dresses in his army uniform – khaki BDU’s and a boonie hat, long hair and a beard. Nice enough guy.
We seriously have to do better by our veterans.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Vet guy offered aid to a different homeless fellow that suddenly appeared, and agreed to walk him to another homeless shelter which is found in Greenpoint at Clay Street on the other side of the bridge, and they set off for Brooklyn together. I bid them good luck, and continued to use the Pulaski Bridge as a grandiose umbrella while photographing LIRR trains transiting to and from along the siding found under the bridge.
This is an “at street grade crossing,” which is fairly rare in NYC. Robert Moses spent a lot of time and treasure reducing the number of these during his decades in power.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The rain began to intensify, and a humble narrator deployed his actual umbrella while beginning to head back towards “civilization.” Once again, I took up station on a foot bridge over the tracks, and this time around it was the Long Island Expressway which offered me a “rain shadow” to shoot from. Rain shadows are caused by structures. If you know your zone well enough, you know exactly where to walk to stay mostly dry. There’s also wind shadows. Dry patch of pavement during a thunderstorm? Rain Shadow.
One of the problems with “modern design” construction, the sort that sends mirror box rhombuses thrusting rudely at the sky, is that they create strong wind currents at sidewalk level and they rob pedestrians of comfort. I’m of the belief that this is part of their design – to make the urban environment around them hostile so as to discourage loitering, and to encourage you to buy a luxury condo just to get out of the turbulence.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The rain I was experiencing was just the leading edge of a stronger system of storms heading into the area, so after a few more shots of passing LIRR trains, I shot back under the LIE and started heading back towards the subway in case I need to duck and cover.
As it turned out, just as I got back to Hunters Point Avenue and the 7 stop found there, it stopped raining. Hooray.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As long as I was there, and it was now right about the height of what used to be called rush hour, it would have been silly not to get some shots of the trains heading out of Sunnyside Yards and towards the City.
That’s a New Jersey Transit train, for the curious. They spend their days in Queens at Sunnyside Yards, in between rush hours.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An Amtrak unit or two came rolling by as well, and I decided that I was pushing my luck – weather wise. The scuttling continued, and rather than getting on the 7 (which I would have taken to Jackson Heights and then transferred onto an R or M) I’d instead take the chance and walk over towards Queens Plaza for a connection to the R at the downstairs IND station.
More on that tomorrow.
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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.
cavern eyed
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the 1st of June, two things were annoying me. Well… lots of things were annoying me, but leading the parade were an ominous weather forecast and a bit of lower back pain. I had stupidly deleted an entire folder of photos by accident the day before, and lost several nice shots so I was also really annoyed at myself. I decided on a pathway for the day’s effort which would involve constant access to areas that could offer me shelter from the prophesied thunderstorms and rain when they arrived.
Luckily, half of Western Queens is located underneath a highway overpass or an elevated subway line. Off to 31st street did I scuttle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A quick walk to the N line at 31st street saw me boarding a train and heading towards Queensboro Plaza. The N is an IND train, like the R and M, but it operates out of the IRT station at Queensboro Plaza.
Queensboro Plaza (IRT) is the one “upstairs,” whereas Queens Plaza (IND) is the one “downstairs.” How dysfunctional is the MTA? They still maintain an inter operational distinction between the two systems after nearly six decades of operating them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Moving through the transit system and seamlessly transferring from line to line is what makes you a New Yorker. My “don’t get wet” plan involved – as stated – staying close to areas of cover for when the sky broke open and rain started pissing down. Yeah, I could’ve just stayed home, but after accidentally deleting an entire “roll” of shots I had a fire in my belly to do some work.
Exultant, that’s how I felt when the 7 line arrived. One boarded the train and set off for my next destination.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Hunters Point Avenue 7 Station was where I debarked, and where the plan for my day continued. I got a couple of shots of a Flushing bound 7 on the other side of the station heading towards Court Square before scuttling up the stairs to the street.
I love the esthetics of this particular station, and will reiterate my statement that the 7 is the most photogenic of all the subway lines.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Up on the sidewalk, there’s a hole in the fence I like to use when passing by, and luckily for me – the 7 line service is so frequent after its painfully long to install CBTC upgrades – another Manhattan bound train was already on its way into the Hunters Point Avenue station on the truss bridge over Sunnyside Yards which connects to the Court Square Station after traveling over Davis Street.
Yes. Nerd. Me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My next stop was a few blocks away, in DUPBO – Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp. There’s a Long Island Railroad siding hereabouts. If you’re in the neighborhood – usually weekdays between 4 and 6 – there’s a very, very good chance you’ll get to see something like the shot above playing out.
More tomorrow.
“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.
formidable skull
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 29th, a humble narrator was out and about on a short walk, and Long Island City was on the menu for the evening. I should mention that I’m way ahead of schedule on these posts for a change, and this one is being written on June 7th. Why so far ahead? Well, in the interim of the month of June, I’ve been to Pittsburgh again, and this time around I rented a car. At the time of this writing, I have no idea what wonders I pointed the camera at or whether or not I got anything worth seeing. Saying that… tick, tick, tock said the clock.
As I’ve mentioned, it’s time for me to leave this place, and thereby I’ve been on a holy tear with the camera trying to record one last summer’s worth of photos. Hence – the 6 image posts are going to be continuing for a while.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary, where a bulkhead collapse is underway at the turning basin, alongside 29th street. This was a handheld shooting night for me, as I wanted to travel light and not be burdened down with a lot of gear. No tripods or zoom lenses.
All I had with me were 35mm f1.8 and an 85mm f2 prime lenses. I did have a bit of camera support, I would mention. My pal Hank the Elevator guy got me a chunk of hard rubber that used to be part of an elevator’s brake pad, and another buddy – Sean the Carpenter – cut it and shaped an ARCA Swiss tripod mount into one side of the thing using a miter saw when his boss wasn’t looking. This gives me a nice flush rubber foot for the camera, and allows for shutter speeds normally precluded during handheld sessions.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Camera gear is famously marked up. I once needed a screw for one of my tripods and the folks at the camera store wanted $17. For a screw.
Same screw ordered off of an industrial equipment supply website cost me twenty five cents for two screws, and I still paid a 500% markup. A big part of “photography” is learning how to improvise and make your own task specific equipment. Those air conditioner foam insulation strip collars I’ve made for my lenses allow me to shoot through windows without reflection, and cost me so little to manufacture that they were almost free, for instance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are high;y engineered pieces of equipment that you’re better off just paying whatever they’re asking – tripod heads and that sort of thing really aren’t possible to manufacture at home. Also, given their critical role in holding the camera – you don’t want to experiment or be too budget conscious with that sort of thing lest you watch your camera tumbling down into Newtown Creek.
That chunk of elevator brake pad rubber attached to my camera when I’m just walking around is something that the camera shop would have likely banged me out of $50 for, however. Once, I dropped it shortly after leaving the house and then backtracked about two miles until I found it laying on the sidewalk about a block from HQ. It’s not something that somebody would assign value to, since it’s a chunk of hard black rubber. I assign a lot of value to it, on the other hand, since it absorbs vibration and offers me a friction inducing “camera foot” that doesn’t scratch the surfaces which I bring it into contact with.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I often refer to the two lenses I was carrying on this walk as my “night kit.” For those fo you who aren’t photography enthusiasts – a “bright lens” has a large aperture engineered into it – f1.8 for example. Zoom lenses become fiendishly expensive when the manufacturer incorporates a wide aperture into them – north of $5,000. The engineering is what you’re paying for on that sort of thing, as the optical formula is extremely complicated.
Thereby, the best I can do on my “day kit” involves what I can afford to own. That’s f4 for the 24-105, and my telephoto 70-300 is fairly untrustworthy in the sharpness department at anything under f8.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What trade off’s you have with the bright lenses, though, is a narrower field of focus. Notice how the Empire State Building is blurred out and the construction equipment in the shot above is sharp? That’s the narrower field depth at work. The smaller the aperture, the more is “sharp” whereas the larger the aperture is, less is “sharp.”
I won’t bore you with pixel density or color science. It’s terribly complicated.
“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.
cacodaemonical ghastliness
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 21st and I was out for a short/long walk which ended up being fairly productive. I was heading towards Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary, and along the way I stopped off at “Hole Reliable,” which is found along the fencelines of the Sunnyside Yards.
The reason this hole is so reliable is that it overlooks the Harold Interlocking, a rail junction used by both Long Island Railroad and Amtrak which is the busiest such bit of infrastructure in the entire country. You don’t have to hang around Long before something rolls by.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The powers that be have been busy spending your taxes on improving the Harold Interlocking, which is part of the larger “East Side Access” project that will be bringing LIRR service to Grand Central Station, and there’s a couple of new sidings which have recently been completed and brought into usage – like the one pictured above.
Y’know, I’ve spent something like 15 years watching them do all the construction on this, and it’s kind of cool to see it being used.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nothing new to report from Dutch Kills. Nobody cares, nothing matters, and 29th street continues to subside and sag into the collapsing bulkhead at the water’s edge. Turns out that the reason there’s always a puddle there is that the undermined street has broken a water line pipe. That’s great, as now it’s also a DEP problem – in addition to being an EPA, DEC, DOT, and MTA problem. Eventually, the entire alphabet will be involved.
Sigh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My tree of paradise seems to be embracing the warmer weather, and at the time this photo was taken, had just become clothed in foliage.
I didn’t plan on walking directly home on this particular evening, as I was desirous of getting a few low light shots of the 7 train. Accordingly, over to the Hunters Point Avenue stop did I scuttle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My 7 line plan was to take advantage of how frequently the service arrives – usually in about ten minute intervals – to hop on and hop off at the various stations that I don’t frequent.
As a note, I’m a fan of that new OMNY fare control scheme of theirs. Here’s a tip – the OMNY system lets you use your phone to pay for your fare. The credit card you thereby designate for transit use (I’m on an iPhone, can’t speak to how Google Pay works on Android) should therefore be one where you receive some sort of benefit for using it. Some cards have cash back rewards, others have airline miles that accrue with use, others send a few cents to a charity you support – you get the idea. I’ve tied all of my transit charges into a single card account – LYFT/Uber, Amtrak, Subway and Bus, Ferry. This also makes talking to my accountant about transit spending rather simple.
I have a friend who has all his monthly bills flow through benefits/rewards cards. This way he’s never late with a payment, and manages to get some benefit out of his outlandishly high electric bills.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I traveled on the 7 for a bit, following my plan to hop on and hop off. The shot above is from the 33rd Rawson stop, and it’s a Manhattan bound train rounding the elevated curve nearby the former Swingline Stapler building on Queens Boulevard. One night soon I’m going to doing this sort of night time excursion on every stop of the 7 all the way out to Flushing and back.
Keeps me out of the bars. Back next week with more, 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.
fiendish subjects
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 19th saw me taking a short walk around the Sunnyside Yards and cracking out a bunch of shots of passing trains.
That’s a New Jersey Transit train set on the so called “turnaround” track nearby 43rd street which allows the operator to reorient the thing towards Manhattan as opposed to heading into Queens via the East River tunnels. On another siding of the turnaround track is an Amtrak Acela train set, which was just sort of sitting there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At Honeywell Street, I noticed the train cars on the lower left hand side of the shot above. They’re done up with “New York Central” heraldry. At first I thought I might be accidentally traveling in time, but no. Turns out these are “heritage” passenger car units which are operated by some private outfit.
One of the Facebook groups I’m subscribed to is for train enthusiasts, and the “foamers” filled me in as to what these cars are, who operates them, and so on. Turns out you can ride on these heritage cars if you’ve got money to burn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Also on Honeywell Street bridge (which is found at Queens’ 35th street), one of the many hidden fence holes allowed a view into the Acela maintenance facility at Sunnyside Yards. This is a particularly hard thing to get a shot of, incidentally, and the shot above is heavily cropped in.
I headed back to HQ in Astoria, as the 20th was meant to be a fairly busy day that started early.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 20th I was back at Newtown Creek Alliance HQ in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section for a sit down meeting with a friend who was volunteering business advice to our little non profit that could. It may be a non profit corporation, but it’s still a corporation. When advice and wisdom are on offer from somebody who runs and has run far larger entities is on the table, you would be foolish not to absorb as much of it as you can.
Of course, I had to excuse myself a couple of times to wave the camera around as a strong front of thunderstorms approached.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Creeklands were suffused with a heavy fog, being pushed by the pressure waves of that line of storms. This kind of urban atmosphere is absolute candy for a photographer.
Saying that, after the meeting ended, I needed to “get out of dodge” and start heading home quickly lest I get drenched when the storms arrived and all of that fog suddenly condensed and dropped to the ground. A scuttle of the rapid type ensued.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My plan was to cut through the Newtown Creek Nature Walk at the sewer plant in Greenpoint, then to surmount and cross the creek at the Pulaski Bridge. Luckily, I was carrying an umbrella. Managed to get this one of the Empire State Building framed up all nice before the sky opened and it started pissing down in torrents.
More tomorrow.
“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 