Archive for the ‘Photowalk’ Category
enervated experience
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Apologies for the mid day update, lords and ladies. Today’s Maritime Sunday post focuses in on an event which occurred several years ago. Mundane and ordinary, it all started when I saw the Carnival Miracle cruise ship maneuvered up the Hudson by the tug Miriam Moran.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The cruise ship piers on the Hudson, which are analogous to the West 40’s street grid in Manhattan, offer berthing opportunity to the gargantuan vessels of the modern cruise industry. Like a game of horizontal Tetris, however, these ships have to be rotated into position before they can lock into place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Functionally, this is not unlike wrestling a floating Chrysler Building into place, while fighting not just wind but river current as well. Such is the life of a tug captain and harbor pilot, of course, and their long experience in such matters make it seem commonplace.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the Miriam Moran post facto on the Hudson, after having accomplished its task.
Project Firebox 62
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– photo by Mitch Waxman
This graffito clad sentinel is found on Conselyea Street.
A tough guy, this box has stood its ground like any native son of infinite Brooklyn. When trouble pops up, it’s the first one to let the bosses know what threatens the neighborhood. They keep him out here on the corner to remind everyone back home that someone is always looking out.
irresistibly borne
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– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few more shots from the low light photography exercise I’ve been forcing myself to perform all winter.
Couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this place. It’s a dinosaur, a relic of the “old” Queens Plaza, which has somehow withstood the arrayed powers and potentates who have completely remade most of the area. One would hope that for the sake of history, and in order to preserve the cultural heritage of the Borough of Queens, that this shop and its signage be granted landmark status and preserved “as is”for all time.
Obscured by the lamp post, one would add, is the signage that reads “Ladies Welcome.”
I’ll bet they are.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Elsewhere in the neighborhood, Acela was in its bed and snug as a bug in a rug.
Acela maintains a difficult schedule all day and really needs her rest. She is very sweet however, and everyone has nothing but good things to say about her. This is where the modern train receives maintenance and attention from trained mechanics and engineers, at the Sunnyside Yard.
from wikipedia
Generally Amtrak train crews consist of an engineer, a conductor, and at least one assistant conductor. Acela trains also have an On-Board Service crew consisting of two First Class attendants and a Cafe Car attendant. In addition to the food service provided in the Cafe Car, on most trains an attendant will also provide at seat cart service, serving refreshments throughout the train. First Class passengers are served meals at their seats on all services.
At Amtrak, the On-Board Service crew is considered separate and subordinate to the Train and Engine crews. Acela maintenance is generally taken care of at the Ivy City facility in Washington, DC; Sunnyside Yard in Queens, New York; or Southampton Street Yard in Boston, Massachusetts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Apologies are offered for any unintentional “artsy fartsy”ness to the shot above, I was just trying to push the exposure and catch the light. This one was on Northern Blvd. incidentally. All of these were handheld shots, at a variety of exposures and iso settings using environmental light, for you photographic types.
ecstasies and horrors
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– photo by Mitch Waxman
Peculiar shapes framing the opalescent moon- no doubt due to a dynamic weather system, rather than some external force, intelligence, or madness inducing entity of supra normal scope which can exist only in the imaginings of a madman- caught my attention while returning to Astoria from the hoary lanes of Greenpoint. It seems sometimes that one spends most of his time occupied in perambulating between the two communities and those happy neighborhoods which adjoin the two.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Trying to ignore the shining parallelogram of clouds which lent our world’s largest satellite a menacing cast, your humble narrator elected to continue working on the whole “night photography” thing, and began fumbling about with camera settings and nervously whispering to myself. Skillman Avenue, normally a well traveled and busy thoroughfare in Western Queens which adjoins the Sunnyside Rail Yard, is a ghost town at night, although there is a feeling of being watched.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was not being paranoid either, as dozens of security cameras actually were watching me. Whether someone is ultimately watching the camera feed is another matter, of course, but the machines notice all things. They especially notice a weirdo in a black raincoat waving a camera around in near total darkness. Such thinking kept my mind off the menace of the lunar threat, and the curious way that the parallelogram in the sky unsettled me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One supposes that he is just too fragile for this world, a stunted flower straining out from the cracks which mar a post industrial field of pavement. Perhaps it is fated that I follow my ancestors into convalescence and begin the search for an institution of charitable design which might house and insulate me from the terrible possibilities which lurk at the edge of sanity- for if one finds himself a selenophobic, may he not be accused of being a lunatic?
particular lepidodendron
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– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent obligations called for me to enter the sense shattering psychic cauldron which is the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, obligations which I was actually quite happy to perform- mind you- but… most of the City is too young to have any ghosts in it. This isn’t the case down on William, once Rose, street. This lane has been known to those of European descent since before the great fire of London.
Buried beneath the despicable and bland veneers of modern day oligarchy lurks an occluded world.
from wikipedia
William Street is a city street in the Financial District of lower Manhattan in New York City in the United States of America. It is one of the oldest streets in Manhattan and can be seen in the 1660 Castello Plan of New Amsterdam. It runs generally southwest to northeast, crossing Wall Street and terminating at Broad Street and Spruce Street, respectively.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was in the neighborhood for the plainest of reasons, to practice my craft and photograph a party thrown by colleagues and friends and to capture the ceremonial awarding of a plaque to an honoree. In accordance with my custom, an early arrival was sought, but the MTA had other plans. It was lightly raining, and as always the darkness of Lower Manhattan was a palpable and lurking presence. Physical darkness, that is, not spiritual.
There is plenty of the latter in Manhattan, for my part at least, but it was literally a “dark and stormy night.”
from wikipedia
Broadway is a street in the U.S. state of New York. Perhaps best known for the portion that runs through the borough of Manhattan in New York City, it actually runs 15 mi (24 km) through Manhattan and The Bronx, exiting north from the city to run an additional 18 mi (29 km) through the municipalities of Yonkers, Hastings-On-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, Tarrytown and terminating north of Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in New York City, dating to the first New Amsterdam settlement. The name Broadway is the English literal translation of the Dutch name, Breede weg.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst on William Street, the location of a Delmonico’s restaurant was crossed. Having just a moment or two before I was needed at the event, some fiddling around with the camera settings allowed me to capture the above shot. Normally, this is the sort of thing which you’d clearly use a tripod for, but this shot was handheld.
Always plagued by a timorous constitution and tremulous hands, one has been studying the training techniques espoused by the Great Houdini himself over the winter months, in an attempt to develop a steadier grip on both camera and reality.
from wikipedia
In 1929, Oscar Tucci opened a “Delmonico’s” popularly called “Oscar’s Delmonico’s” at the former Delmonico’s location at 2 South William Street (sometimes listed as 56 Beaver Street) in New York. The Tucci incarnation adopted the original menus and recipes, and became distinguished in its own right, continuing to attract prominent politicians and celebrities. It was open continuously until it closed in 1977.
In 1981, a new Delmonico’s was opened at the location by Ed Huber, which operated until 1992.
The building was vacant until 1998, when the Bice Group acquired the property and again opened a Delmonico’s, with Gian Pietro Branchi as executive chef. In 1999, the restaurant was sold to the Ocinomled partnership, which continues to operate Delmonico’s at the South William Street location. The current website lists the address as 56 Beaver Street.
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