Archive for the ‘newtown creek’ Category
queerly disturbed
Ahhh…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An interminable period, that’s how one would describe the rain situation last weekend, one which got in the way of pointing the camera at cool things at night. Most of Sunday was spent in careful observation of the outside environment and the monitoring of predictive meteorology information. A window was going to emerge on Sunday night where there would be fog but no rain, and a humble narrator would be ready to fly into action when it arrived.
I didn’t really fly, instead I left HQ and hailed a cab. The driver was told a street address, to which he replied “Really?” After affirming my destination, we set off. My timing worked out perfectly, as it was still drizzling when I got into the two ton death machine cab, and steady precipitation had stopped.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Soon; I found myself scaring feral cats, avoiding a particularly slippery patch of mud, trying not to fall into any giant puddles, and in general having a grand old time at the Newtown Creek till well after midnight. It’s spooky in the creeklands at night, with all sorts of mystery sounds emanating from inky black shadow. There’s also the whole “by yourself with no one around for blocks and blocks physical vulnerability” thing. At least it wasn’t cold, and there weren’t any wolves or teenagers roaming about seeking victims. Really, the only interaction I had with anybody else involved exchanging convivial greetings with a couple of Indian guys waiting for their trucks to be loaded at a Korean food warehouse.
The shot above depicts the street end of Meeker Avenue in Greenpoint, which regularly floods.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This whole enviromental craze is particularly annoying during the summer, as all that foliage blocks my points of view and is constantly blowing around in the wind. Seasonally devastated plant life, all withered away to brittle sticks and twigs, is better. Often have I wished that I could power wash the shorelines of Newtown Creek with herbicides… it would be historically accurate… and I’d get a better shot if the Brooklyn Queens Expressway was framed by a nice lunar landscape littered with garbage. C’est la vie, huh?
While shooting this particular photo, I heard a noise behind me, and upon spinning about to analyze my surroundings a black cat suddenly jumped between the shadows. It was just like a horror movie.
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surged back
Friday tugboat!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That brutally cold Friday the day after Thanksgiving? Actually, the Friday night after Thanksgiving? Yup, a humble narrator was clinging to a bulkhead in Greenpoint watching a Tug deliver an empty barge to SimsMetal and preparing to tow away a full one. There’s two different approaches to night shot photography in this post, incidentally.
The first and the last images are relatively wide aperture and high ISO shots with a shutter speed just fast enough to freeze the movement of the maritime industrial action. By “relatively wide,” I mean f4.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot above is typical of the sort that you’ve been seeing a lot of lately at this – your Newtown Pentacle – narrow aperture and long(ish) exposure at a fairly low ISO setting. Anything that’s moving at all has a bit of motion blur, especially the tugboat, which has been reduced down to a series of light streaks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One had made the trip to Greenpoint in pursuance of capturing an image of the moon rising over Newtown Creek, a shot which just didn’t end up working out for me in the end. Ultimately, I came home with a few “worthies” on my camera memory card, but nothing to write home about.
Tugboat!
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choking gasp
Great Gallopping Golly Gosh Gee, it’s Wednesday again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
High over Hunters Point in Long Island City, the POV looks southwards across the Long Island Railroad’s terminal passenger stop on the Lower Montauk line, various incarnations of which have been found here since 1870. In place even longer than the LIRR station, is the intersection of Newtown Creek with its parent waterway East River. Beyond is Greenpoint, which has been there for a good stretch, and that’s Manhattan on the right side of the shot which has also enjoyed a long occupancy hereabouts.
That’s the Williamsburg Bridge at center distant, which has been hanging out over the river since 1903. It’s an immigrant superhighway!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
September of 1954 is when the children of Brooklyn and Queens exploded into revelry over the opening of the Pulaski Bridge. One always refers to the area seen above as “DUPBO” or Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp, opining that “you need to get ahead of the Real Estate guys on this sort of thing or you’ll wind up living in “Westoria” or something.
The Pulaski Bridge is also an immigrant superhighway of sorts, connecting Queens’ Long Island City to Greenpoint in Brooklyn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot looks northwards, where you can still spot the three major bridges of Western Queens all in one go by peeking over and around the residential towers of LIC. The Queensboro (1909), Hells Gate (1918), and Triborough Bridges (1936).
Tower Town, indeed.
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professional duty
Friggin Wednesdays…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One suspects that this will be a seldom read post, given that the vast majority of New Yorkers will be going somewhere else today. I plan on staying in Astoria, just to defend the neighborhood against burglars and sneak thiefs.
I also plan on walking out into the concrete devastations of Newtown Creek a few times, in pursuance of more nocturnal shots like the ones in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The City has been replacing its street light heads with cold colored LED luminaires in recent years, which are meant to provide brighter and more directed light onto roadways. The State is still using the old school sodium lights which produce a warm yellow-orange light.
A humble narrator is often fascinated by the spots where these two different colors of artificial light mix, as in the case of the shots above which is in DULIE – Down Under the Long Island Expressway – here in LIC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As it happened, when I surmounted the Pulaski Bridge in pursuance of gathering a shot from the span (a photo which was unfortunately blurry due to the transmitted vibrations of passing traffic), workers from the NYC DOT Bridges unit shooed me back along the walkway so that they could safely open the draw bridge for a passing tugboat.
Wasn’t that nice of them?
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oblique thing
Friday odds and ends, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yesterday’s snow storm really seemed to catch the City of Greater New York flat footed, huh? I actually had to contact Jimmy Van Bramer at one point in the evening to let him know that Broadway in Astoria hadn’t seen a snow plow or salt spreader all day. Within 15 minutes of me contacting the Councilmember, the plows came rolling through, which is one of the reasons that I’m glad my representative in the City Council is Mr. James Van Bramer. It’s also one of the reasons that I detest the Mayor so much, as since he’s been in office basic City services such as clearing roads during snow storms have become dependent on “knowing somebody important.”
Progressive in name only, or PINO, that’s what the Dope from Park Slope is. Every Mayor since John Lindsay has heeded the importance of clearing the roads in Queens during snow events. The Mayor tweeted that he was caught in traffic like “all of his fellow New Yorkers.” Unlike his fellow New Yorkers, the Mayor was in a caravan of NYPD driven SUV’s. His fellow New Yorkers, largely, opted to take the Subway instead. That’s what we do. Unfortunately… MTA… which I’m happy to report that former Borough President of the Bronx and failed Mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer is once again interim chair of. I know…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shots in today’s post were captured around Newtown Creek, as part of a series of night shots which have recently been presented at this – your Newtown Pentacle – in recent weeks. Above is a shot of the Maspeth Plank road site during an unusually low tide, and is one of the few where I actually set up a portable light.
This particular light is an LED floodlight which is nice and bright, but doesn’t have much “throw,” meaning that at close distance it’s particularly effective but that the light diffuses out into nothing after about 5-10 feet. This is a long exposure shot, so the light gathering quality of this sort of exposure allowed me to light up those bits of wood you see which have somehow survived in this spot since 1875 when Ulysses S. Grant was President of the United States and once supported a privately owned bridge across the Newtown Creek called the Maspeth Toll Road.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One plans, weather depending of course, on lugging the tripod and camera bag around at night again this weekend. Who knows what I’m going to see? My heartfelt desire would be to somehow get permission to enter Calvary Cemetery at night and record the darkened landscapes there, but that’s not likely to happen.
If you see some weirdo in a filthy black raincoat on the side of the road with a yellow safety vest and a tripod, that’ll be me. Don’t bother me though, I’ll be working.
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