Archive for the ‘Astoria’ Category
diminutive monkey
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I often wonder if all of this is actually happening or if I’m suffering the effects of coma in a hospital bed somewhere and my brain is firing off random hallucinatory ideations. Like the “this all might be a computer simulation” scenario, how could you possibly discern what is real or not if your conscious mind is trapped like a “ship in a bottle” within the delusion. Without an outside reference point, your point of perception is warped by the atmospheric container it dwells within. It’s astronomy from within the atmosphere versus the clear views available from space.
As mentioned yesterday, one ponders existential questions while wandering around Queens in the dead of night during a global pandemic.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Everyone is the hero of their own story, or at least they should be. I’m the villain of my own, or at least I find villains more interesting than the heroes, so I claim the role. Lex Luthor? He’s trying to protect the human race from an all powerful alien overlord. Joker? The only man in the entire City brave enough to laugh in the face of a sociopathic Billionaire who dresses up in bondage gear and spends his nights beating up poor people. God hates you for your sins, Lucifer loves you just as you are.
There’s around 177,000 stories living in the naked Astoria, I plan on learning a few more of them in the new year.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Incredible luck governs over me, I realize. One of the skills I’ve developed during these pandemic months is the ability to choose a path through one of the most densely populated sections of the planet which offers zero company and little or no interaction with the humans. It wasn’t terribly late, either, I’ve just managed to find something new I’m good at – avoiding company and the concomitant commiseration of microbiota that comes with it.
Cooties.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, December 28th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
prehensile characteristic
The last Monday morning of 2020 is here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pondering, that’s what I do when I’m shlepping along and scuttling about and in between photos. My thoughts will wander to this or that, and I’ll often turn over recent conversations or arguments in my mind, wondering why I said or did something. Often, I’ll remind myself that everyone hates me. Can’t blame them either, a humble narrator is quite objectionable as a person and doesn’t really belong in the company of polite society. Too much of a wise ass. That’s always been my problem, but I just can’t stop myself. The world is hysterical, if you get the joke. I don’t, but I pick up a lot of trivia along the way, which feeds into the pondering.
I had to break the news to a friend recently that munchkins aren’t actually the punched out holes of Dunkin Donuts, which is something I thought obvious. It felt like I was telling him that Santa Claus isn’t real.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Did you know that the reason you associate eating carrots with improved eyesight via Vitamin A ingestion is actually British WW2 propaganda, propagated to hide the efficacy and existence of their novel “radar” military technology? They actually said that their “spotters” could see the Luftwaffe coming due to a carrot rich diet.
The dyes and colorings in modern military camouflage clothing are chosen primarily because of interaction with the invisible infrared spectrum used by night vision equipment, which is more important than performance in the spectrum of visible light discernible by the human eye?
Did you know that New York City has less than four days worth (supply estimate is 14.6 million gallons, primarily stored in 800 gas station underground tanks and a handful of bulk storage facilities) of the 3.4 million gallons of gasoline and diesel liquid fuels we consume every day stockpiled within our borders?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Did you know that Astoria’s 31st street used to be 2nd street Avenue, and before that it was called Debevoise Avenue? How about that the elevated tracks above it opened on February 1st in 1917?
Like I said… pondering.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, December 28th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
equally garrulous
Merry Christmas, which is also Shabbos.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just a few shots from the walk home, after visiting Hells Gate. I saw a few teenagers walking by, so I hid behind a thing for a while, cowering in apprehension of their intention or attention.
Teenagers… no impulse control.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Bosses renamed Mighty Triborough a few years back, rechristening it as the Robert F Kennedy Memorial Bridge, and this shot depicts the area “Down Under” its off ramp. That would make this “Down Under the Robert F Kennedy Bridge Onramp” or “DURFKBO.”
I don’t know what the deal is with that glowing portal on the Triborough. I’m scared of it, and I don’t know why. It has a sinister portent.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Merry Christmas, Lords and Ladies. Tomorrow is a good opportunity for having a Kwazy Kwanzaa, don’t miss out.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, December 21st. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
diverse states
Full throttle Thursday, and Merry Christmas.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in some detail yesterday, I’m playing around with the settings on the new camera, and trying to do so in visually interesting but lonely places. Part of this endless drivel about photographic process has mentioned the concept of combining multiple shallow depth of field and varied exposure shots into a single image, like the one above.
There are 38 individual photos incorporated into the shot above, and that’s what it looks like when a tugboat goes by at Hells Gate… what… how are you filling all the empty pandemic hours you’re experiencing? Sheesh, on Xmas eve, too.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My plan for the holiday involves rewatching several episodes of the Star Wars “Clone Wars” series. As I’ve got the time this year, I’m trying to watch all of Star Wars in the order of story continuity, and having suffered through the first two of the prequels, its time to nestle into the winter with the cartoon series (which is arguably the best Star Wars ever done, imho). Don’t judge, I was a nerd before it was cool to be a nerd. The hipsters are nerd poseurs. Imagine giving a shit about how you look or what people think of you. Haircuts, the lot of them.
Pictured is another focus stacked but entirely different shot, depicting the Hell’s Gate Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mission accomplished, the camera was converted back to handheld mode, which is a process so incredibly simplified with the new unit that I kept on thinking that I missed something. My walk home involved crossing Astoria Park. It was an uneventful crossing with no wackadoodle interaction. I had to pee, and the air smelled like marijuana smoke. After finding a tree to water, and breathing in the atmospherics deeply, one was able to relax and slouch roughly into the scuttle back to HQ.
Merry Christmas, y’all, from the other fat guy with a white beard – the one in the filthy black raincoat.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, December 21st. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
rather undersized
Woh, it’s Wednesday again, and FESTIVUS!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The images in today’s post represent a great deal of “in the field” improvisation and a minimum amount of in the studio photoshop work. They were done entirely “within camera,” which means that I didn’t do any retouching to them. Saying that, the gathering of these shots saw me changing exposure and focal points all wildly nilly. I still haven’t perfected the technique behind all this – although shots you won’t be seeing until 2021, which I gathered just the other night, suggest that the underlying logic governing what I’m doing here is finally revealing itself – but I’m pretty happy with these results. This is what I was hoping for, while I was freezing my tootsies off at the waterfront in December, so hooray.
Focus and exposure stacking, that’s what this thing I’m working on is called. The shot above was captured at f1.8, and if you click through to the original at Flickr you’ll be able to see individual rivets.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Frequent commenter George the Atheist, who is a knowledgable photographer in his own right, chides me often that I should just get on with it and do a long exposure. One often uses this technique, and long exposure has been a “thing” for me for quite a while now. Problem with long shots involving water, however, is that you lose all the surface detail in the waterbody as the long exposure shots render its as a mirror. This has it’s charms, of course, but I want the mirror AND some detail in the shot as well.
That’s what I mean when mentioning the term “intentionality.” Intentionality is the difference between a snapshot and a photograph, and the difference between “I meant to do that” and “I got lucky here.” Serendipity is awesome, but so is having an idea and then making it real.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If I was a patient person, I’d be photographing birds or something. I’m not a patient person, so I didn’t stand there at the East River (during mid December) long enough for a railroad Locomotive to arrive and cross the Hell Gate Bridge. That would have made this one of my favorite photos of 2020. Instead, I was slavishly punching buttons and moving the various settings about on the new camera, trying to bend it to my will.
There are twelve f1.8 2 second exposures ganged up into that shot above. Around four of them are seriously underexposed, one is highly over exposed, and the rest are on meter. I love that the entire image is sharp, that there are both mirror reflections and surface texture in the shot, and there’s a fullness to its contrast. I’m not stoked about the blown out lights in the Bronx or all along the horizon. I’ve since worked out how to shoot around that. I’m also really interested in the wave patterns, and plan on experimenting with that a bit next time I’m at Hells Gate.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, December 21st. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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 