Archive for the ‘Queens Plaza’ Category
so special
A busy week arrives.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator has been somewhat less than fully engaged with my normal round for the last couple of weeks, simply in the name of enjoying the last couple of weeks of August. Uncharacteristic of me, periodic downtime is nevertheless a “necessary.” One believes that all true wisdom can be gleaned from 1970’s “prog rock” lyrics and as the band “Yes” proferred in their anthem “Roundabout” – don’t surround your self with yourself, move on back to square.
Ruts can be depressing, as are the daily demands of the world.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This week, I’ve got a fairly major Newtown Creek event going on (not a public event, unfortunately) which has been increasingly all consuming, that will play out on Wednesday evening. Suffice to say, it takes place on a boat, and that one has been tremulously watching the quite changeable weather reports that have accompanied the path of Hurricane Hermine up the eastern seaboard.
As soon as the event has passed, which will be after Wednesday evening, I’ve got a few new offerings for the general public as far as walking tours and so on that I’ll tell y’all about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The aquatic excursion will be a Newtown Creek event, onboard and co hosted by the Fireboat John J. Harvey, which I’ve been describing to invitees as a “Community Conversation about Newtown Creek with the Newtown Creek Community.” The event will bring together community representatives, business leaders, environmentalists, and government employees with the goal of discussing the future. I’m proud too say that one of the goals of the trip – to engage neighborhood people and organizations from the eastern section of the Creek (Maspeth, East Williamsburg, Bushwick) seems to have been accomplished. The event has been underwritten – in the name of full disclosure – by Connective Strategies and the Newtown Creek Group, who represent the “potentially responsible parties” named in the Superfund declaration.
Cross your fingers, as this should be a rather productive conversation. We are nearing the interval in which the post superfund future of Newtown Creek will be decided upon, and it’s one of my goals to ensure that everybody’s voice and concerns be addressed. As I’ve told multiple people – there’s a path which I think is the right one, but it’s not up to me to tell Maspeth what it needs. That’s what City Hall does, and unlike the Mayor I happen to believe in Democracy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As an aside, the probable serial killer whom I’ve christened the “Queens Cobbler” seems to have returned to the area, and resumed their nefarious work – as evidenced by a sudden dearth of “single shoe” occurrences.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
rational position
I really need a vacation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Part of the fun involved with buying a new lens is testing it out. Doesn’t matter how good or bad the device is, there’s “sweet spots” and contradictory failings which the itinerant wanderer needs to be familiar with if the thing is part of the daily carry. The B&H folks have a fairly generous return and exchange policy, and in my experience, the window in which you can hand them back the lens is a crucial interval for the investment. Accordingly, one has been shooting everything, and everywhere.
I can tell you this, the sigma 50-100 is one hell of a portrait lens, but I’ve had unequal results in certain circumstances. My effort at the moment is to discover where and when those failings occur, rendering them predictable.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the places this lens absolutely sings is in the dark. The shot above is “wide open” and was captured while I was waiting for the train at 59th street recently. I’ve been saying it for a while, but the subway system is an absolutely fantastic photography workshop. Worst case scenario lighting, with a reflective subject moving at speed through darkness.
I don’t often “open the hood” on the process I use to produce shots for Newtown Pentacle, but since a bunch of you asked after yesterday’s post…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shots above were captured at f2.2, with the lens dialed out to 94mm at ISO 5000. I’ve got a few other “bright lenses” but the sigma 50-100 really does a beautiful job drinking in the lurid shimmerings of pale light, and it literally outshines the other specimens in my “dark” kit. You can discern the lens’s aperture blades in the hot spots surrounding the R train’s headlights, incidentally.
Shots like these subway images are dependent, in my experience on shooting posture. There are US Army sniper rifle manuals out there which discuss shooting postures, and the body posture process which riflemen use to steady and focus their fire on targets is quite appropriate for the capture of light through a lens, IMHO.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From a different commute, the shot above was captured at Queens Plaza, and also depicts an R line train entering the station. There’s a bright, almost cartoony quality to the way that sigma’s “art” series lenses renders primary colors which required some adjusting on the saturation slider when I was working on the shot in Photoshop’s “camera raw” window.
For those not in the know, RAW format is essentially an uncompressed digital negative which allows a great deal of fine tuning to the captured shot as the file contains ALL of the information which the sensor saw, whereas JPEG is an image which is compressed and all the decisions have been made for you by the camera. Those decisions include color temperature, depth of shadows/highlights and so on. Every RAW shot can therefore receive a bit of a tweak, and I always shoot in that format.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the things I engage in when testing a lens is trying to push it to fail. Architectural detail does not work well with a wide open lens, due to the shallow depth of field. Even an infinity focus will produce unacceptable “bokeh” in this context, or at least it’s unacceptable to my eye. I want to see every rivet.
Saying that, the two shots of the Manhattan Bridge in today’s post were shot at f2.2 on a sunny afternoon.
I think I’m going to keep this lens.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
frightened messengers
Massing, massing, massive – in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just a few days ago, one found himself walking towards Hunters Point via the Northern Blvd./Jackson Avenue route which I refer to as “the Carridor.” I was heading for a public safety meeting, regarding the East River parks in Hunters Point, and as is my habit – the opportunity to stretch my legs and get a bit of exercise was seized.
Whenever I’ve taken this walk over the last couple of years, one thought seems to predominate as I cast my gaze around – “they’ve stolen the sky.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The sky has been stolen, or horse traded away, by the Real Estate people in collusion with the short term thinkers who populate City Hall – of course – but ultimately, who did they steal it from? Did anyone used to own the sky in Western Queens?
Definitively, somebody does own the sky now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The area around Queens Plaza and Court Square, in particular, has become a shadowed warren of glassy towers.
At the public safety meeting in Hunters Point, which was called due to a disturbing allegation of a rape occurring in Gantry Plaza State Park, the residents of the new buildings surrounding the waterfront had a chance to speak and offer their complaints about this and that.
Most of their comments boiled down to “I’ve lived here for twenty minutes, and this isn’t what the realtor told me it would be like.” Nobody told them that the Borough Motto was “Welcome to Queens, now go fuck yourself” it seems.
The tower people mainly offered quality of life complaints to the panel at the front of the room which included Jimmy Van Bramer and representatives of the Hunters Point Parks Conservancy as well as the various branches of law enforcement who have jurisdiction over the parks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You can barely spot the Citi Megalith anymore, which once stood as a lone sentinel.
The impossible thing which cannot possibly exist that lurks in its cupola… with its unblinking three lobed burning eye… no longer has an unoccluded view of the world below.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Wednesday, August 24, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. –
Port Newark Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
accordingly determined
Queens Plaza, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wowzers. It’s no secret that I’m concerned about the “population loading” of Western Queens which has been and is currently underway. From an urbanist point of view, there’s really no reason “why” you shouldn’t cram as many people onto every square inch of city center as you can, and Queens Plaza is – in fact – pretty close to the center of all things. Just ask the powers that be, they’ll rattle off how many subway and bus lines there are, and throw in the East River Ferry as well. They won’t mention hospitals, or the fact that LIC can’t seem to build enough schools to meet its current demands, nor the costs of expanded Police, Fire, and Sanitation units.
What are you gonna do, fight City Hall?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There seems to be a burst of construction activity going on at the moment over on Jackson Avenue between Court Square and Queens Plaza – these shots are from late on a Saturday morning about a week ago, incidentally. The construction guys had closed down Jackson to one lane, as they were moving in a tower crane and other equipment. To say that traffic was snarled…
Actually, automotive traffic is another thing that the powers that be generally neglect to mention when discussing this very modern corridor of some brave new world which is being built down here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The buildings at the far end of the shot above are closer to Court Square and the Citigroup Megalith, which has suddenly begun to seem a lot less out of place or wildly out of scale with the surrounding neighborhood. My guess is that all of the people who will be moving in here soon are meant to take the 7 train to work.
The 7 express is, of course and by the MTA’s own admission, at capacity as of right now. The riders of the 7 routinely describe overcrowded conditions, and complaints about having to allow several Manhattan bound trains to pass before they can even find a spot to squeeze into have been heard from as far away as Sunnyside and Jackson Heights.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To me, it stands to reason that the next waves of development should consider the creation of exurb commercial centers, outside of Manhattan. That would allow for job locations to radiate away from the titular center of the City, to the east and north. An office complex in Jamaica, or maybe Forest Hills? They’re served by several train lines as well. This Manhattancentric development model is really going to end up hurting us, but what do I know? I just live here.
Pretty soon, there’s going to be a gigantic number of people in Long Island City, all flushing their toilets at the same time every morning. Guess where all that sewage is going to end up? The 1939 vintage Bowery Bay sewage treatment plant in Astoria, that’s where. If there’s too much of the smelly stuff in the pipes under the street, like when it’s raining, it’ll go into Newtown Creek.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Thursday, June 30, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. –
Port Elizabeth Newark Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
heavy features
A few shots from NYC’s most photogenic subway line.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, a post was offered at this – your Newtown Pentacle – describing the 99th anniversary of the opening of the IRT Flushing Line’s Corona Extension. That’s the 11 stops between Queensboro Plaza and what’s now called 103rd Corona Plaza on the 7. My intention for that post was to show you every station, which I did in fact visit and shoot… but you know me… a week late and a dollar short.
Speaking of, I’m running a bit late today.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Large groupings of photos – in the case of the 7 line shots, I came home with something close to a thousand individual captures which have been boiled down to around 200 – create a sort of roadblock for me. They need to be treated as one continuous shoot during the developing process (I shoot in RAW format, so every shot gets a little love and attention). Procedurally, it works like this – an initial pass to cull out over and underexposed or just junk shots, followed by key wording and then cropping. At the end of the procedural stuff I finally get to do the “developing” stage which is the photoshop equivalent of what you film people used to do in the dark room when pulling prints. Once that’s done I can finally start spawning the final incarnations of the things you see, and upload them to the web for dissemination.
When you’re starting with a thousand individual images, this ends up taking a lot of time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I ended up riding the 7 for several hours last week, between Willets Point and Queensboro Plaza. To me, at least, it was worth the effort.
Speaking of transit, tonight at 6:30 at Riccardos by the Bridge in Astoria, there’s a meeting to plan a centennial celebration for the Hell Gate Bridge which I intend on attending. Come with?
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 