Archive for the ‘Subway’ Category
lustrous balustrade
A few odds and ends, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An ex-Cat, this skeleton was observed in Long Island City up on the Montauk Cutoff tracks about a week ago. There were raccoon tracks surrounding it, which probably explains a lot about where the rest of the cat is. Pretty gross shot, I guess, but there’s a whole lot of existential reality all over LIC when you peek into its shadowed places.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A renewal of my previously stated opinion that the 7 line is far and away the most photogenic of NYC’s subways is offered. A comparison to Michelle Pfeifer in the movie “Scarface” would be made, but it’s inappropriate.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Finally, did you know that the “King of Shwarma and Falafel” food truck people have opened a brick and mortar storefront on Astoria’s Broadway at 31st street? Practically under the El? I do, which is why I was waiting for Our Lady of the Pentacle on that instersection recently, and I cracked out this noirish shot of the N/Q stairs to pass the time.
Mmm… Shwarma.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
wholly beneath
Detestation of the water lizard, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“There’s so many of us” is a choral from a song by the LA Punk band Fear, specifically their “Lets Have a War” anthem.
One is reminded of this ditty continually, and as I often find myself chiding narrowly focused members of the municipal governing class during meetings concerning the Newtown Creek situation – and effect upon the waterway of ongoing population loading of North Brooklyn and Western Queens – you have to think holistically about the “system.” The old adage about a Butterfly fluttering its wings in Borneo triggering a series of random atmospheric reactions which eventually result in an Atlantic hurricane often seems to apply. What’s one more truck? C’mon, it’s one truck…
What apocalyptic effect is just one more apartment house going up in Hunters Point, or Flushing for that matter, going to have? Who cares? That’s Corona, don’t you live in Astoria? Worry about yourself. Mind your own business.
That’s what people say, and I respond “think holistically.” That truck has to cross a bridge and drive down local streets, then it has to reverse out. Every truck trip is two truck trips, and it doesn’t just go through Greenpoint – but Bushwick and or Maspeth too. Maybe even Astoria, if it’s headed for the bridge.
The political districts of Western Queens and North Brooklyn serve to carve up the real estate development scenario and make things seem like the rising residential towers are individual examples of a series of an isolated and unconnected series of projects – not some vast littoral construction site that stretches out for a few miles – along the east river and between the Queensboro and Williamsburg bridges. It’s exciting to see the future taking shape, I guess, in the same way that a kitchen fire is exciting.
There is meant to be no cumulative relationship whatsoever between the Greenpoint Landing and Hunters Point South developments, which are separated by the Newtown Creek and connected via the G line subway. The 7 line crowding in Queens is (politically speaking) a Jimmy Van Bramer issue, the impending L line shutdown in Brooklyn a Steve Levin problem. When the L shuts down, MTA will be adding an additional car to the G and they plan on directing the L passengers to Court Square – where they’ll transfer to the 7.
Then they’re both going to have the same problem, the first of many such issues which the interconnected mega development of the east river coastline of Long Island is going to present.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The reason I haunt the transit corridors is precisely because that’s where you can discern the size and scope of the enormous build out that’s occurring across the boroughs and Queens in particular.
If you ride the 7, you are well aware that the entire transit corridor is booming with new construction, from its eastern terminus in Flushing right through Roosevelt, Corona, Jackson Heights, Woodside, Sunnsyide, and LIC, to its western terminus in Manhattan at the “Hudson Yards” megaproject. The so called “international express” is packed to the gills with commuters the whole way, even late at night. The City’s answer to mass transit congestion has been the creation of bike lanes. Bike lanes aren’t a bad idea by any means, but they don’t address the issues of how people will “get there from here,” and they leave an awful lot of older and disabled people behind.
You have to think holistically about the route of the 7, and the municipal needs of the people who are intended to inhabit all of these newly minted “deluxe apartments in the sky.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Holistic, as in totality, informs and instructs. Despite the tens of thousands of new neighbors – and to my knowledge – there are no new fire houses, hospitals, or police stations being planned or built along the corridor and route of the 7. We’re getting every last dollar out of the Bowery Bay sewer plant in Astoria, going strong since 1939, but there isn’t a new one in the works to handle the tens of thousands of new toilets being installed in Queens. Neither the Cops, nor DSNY, seem to be staffing up either.
In many ways, we could really benefit from the advice and talents of the late Robert Moses at this stage of the game. Moses thought holistically, and no matter what he built – there was a park attached to it. Did you know that the difference between expressways and parkways is that the latter has wooded shoulders that count as “parks”? That’s one of Moses’s, who was some kind of evil genius. If Superman was real and lived in NYC instead of Metropolis, Moses would have likely been his Lex Luthor.
Or we can extend the bike lanes into the subway stations, as “There’s so many of us.”
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
stench and anguish
Queens Plaza, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Terrifying is how I usually describe the rate of real estate development around Queens Plaza, but I do have to admit that all the high visibility construction materials, which are orange, that currently surround the transit hub really do add a bit of color to an otherwise dour locale. Ten years ago, the only colors you associated with Queens Plaza were soot green, soot gray, and just plain soot. There were also little piles of blood here and there, but… y’know.
I’m sure the residential towers in the shot above, rising on the site of a former chemical factory, will end up being encased in the same sort of pale blue glass that all the other recent arrivals sport, but it would be great if we could permanently adopt some colors from the other side of the color spectrum around these parts – just to liven things up and provide some contrast with the increasingly occluded sky.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As part of the “affordable housing” bonanza being led by the Big Little Mayor these days, I’ve been brainstorming for ways that I can get in on the feeding frenzy. Having no desire to alienate parkland or build a luxury tower on a former playground in a NYCHA housing project, this has forced me to get creative.
Sleeper cars on the subways! That’s my idea. Imagine tooling around the City in your own personal car, like some sort of modern day Artemis Gordon and James West. Sleeper cars on the Subway would defeat “NIMBY” sentiments for homeless shelters as well, as the shelter wouldn’t reside in any one neighborhood for long (except in the case of the Franklin Avenue Shuttle).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NIMBY thing, as thrown around by the Real Estate shit flies and their acolytes, bugs me.
The way it’s used by these oligarchs is contextually meant to throw a recidivist cast on local activists who oppose the wholesale destruction of their communities by external forces seeking to squeeze every bit of bank they can from functioning neighborhoods. The subtext is that the people who presently reside in Queens are atavist or racist, or anti “progress,” and must be done away with.
Since this “progress” is the seeming goal of real estate oligarchs like Donald J. Trump – replacing working class residents with higher end tenants while claiming their developments will address historical wrongs – as the new populations can be exploited in deeper ways than the old ones due to the size of their wallets – the NIMBY accusation against opponents plays quite well in the press who want to please their principal advertising customers. If “NIMBY” doesn’t work, however, then the real estate lobby moves on to “racist.” Tell me, are rich people now an ethnic bloc? If race figures into luxury real estate development, what are the demographics of the moneyed class who are the anticipated tenants of these towers, and that of those who are displaced by them? I also point out to our overwhelmingly single party political system that these new residents won’t necessarily be members of the Democratic Party, which will kind of mess up your franchise and that iron grip on political power you currently enjoy.
The higher end tenants moving into these towers will not have a back yard to complain about anyway, as they’ll be living on top of a former chemical factory in Queens Plaza. Does Janovic or Home Depot offer interior design supplies in shades of “soot”?
Upcoming tours and events:
“First Calvary Cemetery” walking tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, Saturday, October 8th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“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
clean shaven
Getting around town, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The wheel of the year is about to turn again, and the particular station we are in – what the Pagan crowd would call “Lughnasadh” – is about to give way to the pleasant temperatures and beneficial quality of light which will begin to lessen when Samhain rolls around at the end of October. The whole pagan wheel of the year thing is directly tied to harvesting various sorts of agricultural crops, of course, but a humble narrator is no farmer. Rather, for me the harvest is about photos.
Pictured above is mighty Triborough, as seen through the windshield of an “automobile” owned by a friend who allowed me to enter her moving mechanical contrivance for an afternoon. These “automobiles” are bothersome contrivances given to toxic exhalations and the consumption of a troublesome form of fuel, but quite handy when one’s desire is to photograph the “House of Moses.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The twisting complications leading away from the Queensboro Bridge in Long Island City, are pictured above. These ramps were erected to serve the needs of the automobile, and given that unlike Mighty Triborough – the Queensboro was not erected upon a fairly blank slate – they wind and snake through a shadowy and confusing warren of buildings. The ramps emerge and then disappear behind buildings, seeking out connections to the high speed roads built long after the Queensboro itself was built.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My preferred method for getting around the City is found in the shot above. Given that I live three stops out from the titular center of the megalopolis, it is madness to consider owning one of these “automobiles” for one such as myself. One does miss the freedom offered by these devices, of course, as your humble narrator used to be an enthusiastic motorist in his younger days. Saying that, one does enjoy the challenges offered by mass transit, and the puzzle of getting from A to B when unfamiliar destinations are scheduled to be focused in upon.
Saying that, I cannot fathom why Manhattan’s 34th street Herald Square station is so damned hot.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 