Meditative
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ultimately, I’m quite pleased with the 16mm wide angle lens that was recently added to my kit bag, but it has limitations that can be frustrating. I like leaving my zoom lenses at home sometimes, and using prime lenses with fixed focal lengths instead. After cracking this shot out I changed up the gear, affixing an 85mm lens to the camera instead, which is the opposite of the 16mm in most ways and not just magnification.
The hole in my arsenal is telephoto at this point. Rumor has it that Canon is finally going to let third party manufacturers into their RF mirrorless mount ecosystem, notably Sigma. What I’ve been desirous of with this camera system has been a counterpart of the old ‘all in one’ Sigma zoom I used to attach to my old crop sensor ‘7D’ model camera. I sometimes adapt that old warhorse onto the newer ‘R6’ camera I currently carry, but I’m throwing away a third of the image by doing so and it negates the point and advantages of the ‘full frame’ image sensor within the gizmo.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Also – I’ve been a fan of this F2 85mm lens since acquiring it towards the end of the pandemic, I’d mention, but I’d love to be able to ‘reach out and touch someone’ with a 300mm or greater zoom occasionally. The legacy Sigma lens I like is an 18-300 ‘all in one,’ if you’re curious.
My path back to HQ on this walk included having to cross Pittsburgh’s Monongahela River, so I headed over to the Smithfield Street Bridge (pictured above) to do just that.
As opposed to the 16mm with its typical ‘fish eye’ style distortion, the 85mm is pretty true and ‘square’ to the eye, and it needs little in the way of lens correction during the developing process – unlike the 16mm.
Truth be told, I don’t ‘need’ a long view 99% of the time and my preferred method for rectifying that sort of thing is to just find a better point of view that’s closer to the subject. Saying that, sometimes you can’t get a better angle from closer up, or something is happening and you’re nowhere near it. Train coming into frame, tugboat, wild boar? Seconds, that’s what you’ve got to work with, and that all in one lens is perfect for such situations.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying that, there’s a whole decision process that I force myself to have when I’m packing up my bag before leaving HQ. First question is the circumstance of light – what time is sunset/sunrise? Weather? Inside or outside or both? Am I bringing a tripod? Plan on doing filter shots? What’s my route and what do I expect to see? Lots of times, the answer is to just bring the heavy zoom lens, and switch out for a wide aperture prime when it gets dark. Saying that – All of this stuff gets pretty heavy on a long walk, so is there anything I can leave back at HQ?
Staying organized with all the gear is a real challenge, I’d add. Lens caps go in a certain pocket, as do gloves, and a tissue to blow my nose, there’s a small cotton towel I always carry in case it rains, there’s the phone, all of it needs to be kept track of. Every pocket has a designated purpose, and I’ve made religious obeyance of this a habit.
Nothing worse than the sudden realization that you’ve stupidly lost something along your way. At least to me.
Back tomorrow.
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Oh, the urbanity
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, a humble narrator had affixed a wide angle lens to his camera after riding Pittsburgh’s T light rail service – from HQ to the downtown section. The big building in the shot above is the U.S. Steel tower, the one at the bottom left is the William Penn Hotel. I was walking through the sort of area which one would normally associate with ‘public open space,’ but the area was roped off and adorned with ‘no trespassing’ signage. I had just watched a video the prior night describing this spot when it opened, and was hoping to get a few ‘now and then’ shots, but you can’t have anything nice anymore.
I’m told that the downtown area has been somewhat deserted since COVID and ‘work from home’ became a thing. The bosses and landlords are pooping their pants over their lack of relevance, thereby, so the playbook response has been ‘blame the homeless’ and tighten up access to public spaces where these people might gather, thereby. This reduces the number of ‘regular’ people who might be using the space too, which makes a pesky homeless ‘problem’ seem all that much worse since they’re the only ones that don’t have somewhere else to go.
It’s never ‘I’m charging my tenants too much per square foot’ with the landlords, is it? Pay no attention to that man behind that curtain…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One wandered around in a somewhat aimless fashion, up and down the streets, which are all still pretty new to me. There’s a lot of famous names carved into the walls in this section of the city – Mellon, Carnegie, Frick.
Personally, I had my NYC ‘radar’ activated. The homeless situation isn’t what I’d call dangerous (at least by NYC standards), but you’ve got a not insubstantial population of madmen and addicts wandering around, living in desperate conditions and they have expensive habits to feed. I didn’t experience anything negative other than rather pointed and aggressive panhandling, but I can see how ‘normal’ people would be freaked out and scared by such interaction.
By ‘normal,’ remember all the places I used to spend my time – often in the dead of night – along the waterfronts of NYC, and the various denizens thereof whom I would encounter. I’m not ‘normal’ in that regard, and have a lot of experience with this sort of circumstance. I used to be ‘friends’ with a guy who lived in a shipping container under the Long Island Expressway at Dutch Kills, who thought that the United Nations controlled nanobots that were embedded in his skin and which were designed to torment. His name was Doug.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Also as mentioned, this downtown stroll was a ‘short walk’ for me. My intention was to burn out about four or five miles of shoe leather during the afternoon and then head back to the T for a ride back to HQ, which is about five miles distant, before it got dark. I had timed this scuttle for late afternoon, which a weather report had prognosticated as being atmospherically calm and conducive for such activity.
It didn’t suck.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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T Time
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An internal staccato, as offered by a humble narrator’s bones and ligaments as they ground and popped against tendons and muscle groups deep within my roadway interface, hit a somewhat epic rhythm on a recent afternoon while staggering up a steep hill which leads from HQ to the nearby light rail station. ‘The T,’ as Pittsburgh’s light rail is called, was a part of my plan for an afternoon walk. I wasn’t planning on the musical accompaniment from the legs and feet, but you take what you can get during the cold weather months. The locale HQ exists in is lovely, but it’s a residential town and not chock full of the sort of visual stimuli one such as myself craves.
This wasn’t going to be one of my long walks, instead I was shooting for burning out a few miles in an area which is coincidentally photogenic. As mentioned in the past, Pittsburgh has this weird dealie going on, regarding the T. When you’re heading into the center city you pay the fare as you board, whereas as you’re heading away from the city you pay when you debark the train set.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s a comfortable ride, most of the time, the T. Gets me the five or so miles from HQ to the City of Pittsburgh in about 20 minutes, unlike the R train back in Astoria wherein a journey of a similar distance (say… Astoria to Union Square) would consume the better part of an hour. While riding to my destination in the middle of ‘downtown,’ I decided to spend some of my afternoon with the newish 16mm wide angle lens which I added to my bag at the end of last year.
I’ve discovered a trick regarding Amazon, btw. Let’s say that there’s some frammistat or gizmo that you want, but don’t like the current pricing of it or the thing is from a brand which seldom discounts… if you put that item onto a ‘wishlist,’ the site will inform you when there’s a change in price to items on that list. That’s how I found out that two lenses (which I wanted rather than needed) were discounted by more than a third last year, during Christmas sale season, and that’s how they ended up in my camera bag.
Canon almost never offers that deep a cut in pricing, I’d add. You gotta jump quick when they do. Same rules as Apple.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The T uses underground stations in the city center, having taken over an old freight tunnel that’s under the downtown area, when the service was conceptualized. The modern system replaced a far more extensive Trolley style service. I still haven’t taken a bus anywhere here (which was the other replacement for the trolleys), as it’s a lot simpler to just drive the Mobile Oppression Platform to vehicular sorts of destinations than deal with mass transit and the unknown, but that also means I’ve been missing out on seeing Pittsburgh’s ‘Busway’ system. Private roads these busways are, often elevated, and only municipal and transit vehicles can travel on them. How cool is that?
Pictured above is Steel Plaza Station, where I left the T system and got back to that rhythmic popping and creaking that my legs were offering. More on what the wide angle lens saw, later on this week.
Back tomorrow.
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Walking here
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, I’ve been having a devil of a time with the sort of aches and pains one associates with age, and particularly so in my legs and feet. To be fair, I’ve got a full resumes worth of injuries to the roadway interface that are the source of my troubles, but this has been a literal pain in the butt for the last few weeks. Best thing to do is exercise, get the gears spinning, and stretch out all of the meaty rubber bands contained within. Best thing to do, for me at least, is lean into it.
I headed over to the Monongahela River’s South Side frontage, here in Pittsburgh, and got moving. This was a much shorter walk than the one mentioned earlier this week, about four miles – I’d reckon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I seem to be the only person in Pittsburgh that focuses in on the T light rail. It ain’t the 7 train back in LIC, as far as cinematic good looks, but there’s something about the T service which I find visually interesting.
One really wasn’t ‘photowalking’ on this particular day but the camera is always ready to go, and so am I. You can happily wear your headphones on this trail, and I was revisiting an old favorite – Mike Duncan’s “History of Rome” podcast – as I scuttled along.
It reminded me of a forgotten opinion I hold that Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (the last and worst king of Rome before the Republic) is one of the dumbest sounding names in all of western history. I’m often surprised that Trump hasn’t added a ‘Superbus’ onto his name.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, a CSX train came shooting along the tracks, hauling coal. That’s the Fort Pitt Bridge on the left, and the Smithfield Street Bridge on the right. There’s a fence between you and the tracks in this section, one which is about five feet high, I’d guess. Not hard to shoot over it.
Back next week with more from the Paris of Appalachia, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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“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.
Frustration
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The weather has generally not been on my side during February, and after the trip to NYC, one has found the rubber bands in his legs and feet tightening up and offering generous amounts of discomfort. The only way out of this particular trap for me is to follow one of the mottos which people who know me in real life are sick of hearing repetition of, the one about ‘internally lubricated parts and using or losing them.’
Thereby, any spare minute when I don’t have to be sitting down, I’m standing or moving. It hurts less the following day when I do.
A recent afternoon found me with an opportunity to stand AND move, so I hopped into the Mobile Oppression Platform and headed over to the ‘Seldom Seen Greenway’ trail, which is a quick drive from HQ. I’ve mentioned this place several times in the past.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yes. I was back hunting for a certain shot which I desire to collect.
No. I did not get it, again, even though I stood around like a schmuck for about two hours.
Funnily enough, a few people appeared along these isolated tracks and interesting conversations ensued. One bloke described the problems he experiences running a dairy farm in the 21st century, another one was a genuine young railfan who aspired to achieve a Master’s degree in Urban Planning someday. Really wasn’t expecting to see anybody up here at all.
Man, just look at that composition… if only there was a subject in the shot, huh? Imagine it, a Wheeling & Lake Erie RR locomotive right in the middle of the photo. That would really be something, wouldn’t it?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While walking gingerly and defeated, down the muddy trail leading back to the paved sanctity of a parking lot, a humble narrator was cursing and frustrated.
Two hours I stood there, feet sinking into the mud along the tracks. I mention this sort of thing – and not because I enjoy describing my failures. Instead, it’s to describe that there’s a process behind the camera which you have to oblige and that whereas you can as ready as possible – gear, time of day, light etc. – sometimes you still come home empty handed despite the effort and preparation.
That’s ok too. Part of the process.
Also, I gotta get me one of them railfanning radios at some point, so I can decide whether or not I’m going to spend my time sinking into the mud productively or not. I actually came back to this exact spot a day or two later and did the exact same thing – stood around waiting for a train for hours, but ‘no bueno.’
Back tomorrow.
“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 