thing therein
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the 4th of July, I planned to get shots of the Macy’s Fireworks show on the East River, but didn’t want to go anywhere near the water. I had two spots in mind, and was debating which one to gravitate towards. Luckily, both spots had a common corner where my paths diverged, so I chewed on the decision while walking towards it.
The shot above and the one directly below are actually from July 3rd, when I took a short walk around the neighborhood just to stretch my legs.
Along my way, nearby Sunnyside Yards, I spotted this van. A Holy Roller, indeed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When walking past Sunnyside Yards, it’s impossible for me not to crack out a few shots of the trains they have on display.
Amtrak does a whole lot of maintenance work here. Cleaning, stocking, mechanical stuff.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the 4th of July, I finally had to make a decision about where I was going to shoot the fireworks from. I initially considered the area around Dutch Kills.
As mentioned previously, the trick with fireworks is to create a “sense of place” in the shot. Given that the 4th of July fireworks will always have the Empire State Building in the center of the display…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I set out from HQ a couple of hours in advance of the scheduled show, and actually changed my mind while en route.
Greenpoint Avenue at the Long Island Expressway would be my spot!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along the way, I passed by an FDNY maintenance facility and they had just opened the roll up door as I was walking down the street…
Firemen! Firemen! Firemen!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Fireworks, as described at the beginning of this week regarding another display at Astoria Park, require a simple exposure formula. F8/ISO 200/4-8 second exposures. I claimed a spot, and believe it or not, I was soon surrounded by Blissvillians and Sunnysiders here on the onramp for the Long Island Expressway at Greenpoint Avenue.
I intended, therefore, to include the crowd and the traffic in my shots. It was a part of the show, after all.
– photos by Mitch Waxman
The YouTube video above is what I got. No sound on this one, so no point in headphones. It’s a series of still images strung together in a slide show.
Back next week.
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heretofore reclusive
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A bit of Newtown Creek business found me at Newtown Creek Alliance HQ in Greenpoint recently, specifically on June 30th. After the meeting concluded, one decided to take advantage of a nice patch of light and air and scuttle back to Queens via the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge.
Greenpoint Avenue Bridge is 1.3 miles from the East River, and connects the Long Island City neighborhood of Blissville to the Greenpoint section of the Eastern District of Brooklyn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given that I’d been out of town for a week or so, and I didn’t have any particular plans for the evening, my plan evolved around visiting Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary in LIC, and then making my way over to Queens Plaza to catch a train back to Astoria.
It was a particularly comfortable night, weather wise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over at Dutch Kills in LIC, there’s the former Loose Wiles Bakery building, which serves the community in modernity as “building D” of the LaGuardia Community College campus.
This shot was gathered from the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge. A similar early morning shot back in February saw me walking back home with a case of frostbite in my fingers that bedeviled me and caused numbness for nearly a month. A man for all seasons, that’s me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My eidolon of hope, a lone tree of paradise growing out from under the eave of a factory building along a Federal Superfund site, was in flower.
That tree is the same speciation as the titular focus of Betty Smith’s “A tree grows in Brooklyn,” by the way.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After confirming that the bulkheads on 29th street continue to collapse, unabated by any activity on the behalf of New York City or State, the Thomson Avenue viaduct offered egress over the Sunnyside Yards.
An Amtrak unit had just exited the East River tunnels and was making its way along a set of tracks, rolling past the same LaGuardia Community College building seen from Dutch Kills.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queens Plaza’s IND station is where I caught a local train heading back towards HQ. Have I mentioned that I love the new OMNY fare control system that MTA installed during the last few years? Not having to sweat how much cash I’d installed on my Metrocard is not something I miss. You tap your phone to the thing and bang, you’re riding.
One less thing to worry about, huh?
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wrinkles formed
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s an annual fireworks display in Astoria Park, usually right at the end of June. It’s staged for the 4th of July, of course, and there’s a band performance that precedes it. It’s a big draw for the neighborhood.
In 2022, it was presented on June 29th.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, there’s a pretty simple camera recipe for fireworks shots – f8/ISO 200/4-8 seconds shutter speed. You pick something distant to focus on, do a test shot to confirm focus and turn off the autofocus entirely, then set the camera run on auto for the duration. My camera has a built in intervalometer, which allows me to set it to just keep on shooting once I click the shutter button. I had the camera set to create an exposure, wait a second, and then pop out another, and another, and another.
The actual trick to fireworks photography relates to the same issue encountered during “landscape.” What’s in the foreground and how do you embed a sense of “place” in the image?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For these shots, what I was interested in getting were the two bridges – Triborough and Hell Gate – along with the fireworks. The last time I shot the fireworks show here, which was at least ten years ago, I made it a point of being right up along the waterfront so I could include the East River in the shots. Given the mobbed and crowded condition down at that location, I wanted to stay away from that sort of lockup.
I moved around a bit this time as well, which I would have precluded from doing down in the thick of things in the crowd on Shore Blvd.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were 10,000 people – at least – watching the show. It’s a big deal for Astoria, this fireworks show, and especially so after the last few years. People bring their kids, pets, and folding chairs along with coolers of beverages.
In the shot above, I was playing around with a few camera tricks. I used the focus stacking technique to combine multiple fireworks shells into a single shot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The show ended, and I sat down for a half hour at the skateboard park section of the larger Astoria Park, under Triborough Bridge. The crowds dispersed slowly, and I didn’t see any advantage at all in being part of an enormous human herd as it headed back towards 21st and 31st streets along Hoyt Avenue.
Fun night, with a cool neighborhood vibe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One scuttled his lonely path down Broadway back towards HQ and an inevitable late night in front of the computer spent developing these shots. Digital development occurs entirely within photoshop for me. I don’t lean heavily into my shots. I adjust horizons, do a bit of cropping, and correct the color temperature of the capture. I never, ever edit out anything in the shot as it would negate the journalistic integrity of the image. What I saw is what you see.
Something different tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
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keenly resented
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, and several times in fact, the way I pass the long hours of an Amtrak trip is by taking random snapshots of America. That sounds pretentious, but… that’s what they are. A homemade foam collar is affixed to my lens, then I set the camera up at a very high ISO setting and a wide open aperture. I then set the shutter speed to an insanely small sliver of time – 1/2000th or faster. It’s a challenging situation – Amtrak’s windows generally ain’t too clean or free of scratches, and the window glass itself has a reddish brown coloration to it. Saying all that – 8 hour train trip, yo – gotta do something to pass the time.
The video above represents what I saw between Harrisburg and somewhere in the middle of New Jersey. The sun was illuminating my window from about 4 o’clock on, and there’s really no way to combat the fact that your lens is pointed directly at the sun through a dirty and scratched brown window. Anyway… made it back to “home sweet hell.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I stepped off the train into a “NYC swamp ass hot day.” There was also a parade letting out, which was probably “Pride” given all the rainbow gear the paraders were parading around with. I walked a block to the E, returned to Queens at Queens Plaza, and caught a R back to the rolling hills of almond eyed Astoria.
So – That’s that story. This was June 26th, incidentally.
Six image posts are going to continue for a bit, as the particularly prolific photographic spree I’ve been experiencing continues. This post is being written in the second week of July, which is also good news as I’m way ahead of schedule.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I hung around HQ and the neighborhood for a few days after returning from Pittsburgh. June the 29th, however, was a day that the world put out “Mitch Bait.” Given that this is my last summer in NYC, I’m trying to do everything that’s possible for me to do. Visiting people, seeing things, wondering where that smell on the air is coming from. There’s a sentimental resonance in every step I take.
I don’t know if I’m going to miss this dystopian shithole or not, as it’s all I’ve ever known. See that photo right above? That looks normal to me. Everything about it is messed up, starting with the Cops leaving their car parked in a bus stop.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whatever…
One of the things that I haven’t done in a whole lot of years is attend the fireworks display at Astoria Park. It’s a short cross Astoria walk to get there for me, right up 31st street and over to Hoyt Avenue and then scuttle to the water. 31st Street, with its elevated subway tracks, seldom disappoints. There’s always something to take a shot of.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I had been thinking about where I wanted to set up the camera on a tripod. I knew with certainty that the East River waterfront along Shore Blvd. would be mobbed, and I also wanted to get a shot with both bridges in it – the Hells Gate Bridge and the Triborough Bridge. I wanted a bit of water in the shot, but not too much. I’d have to contend with crowds, passerby who wanted to talk about cameras (this happens all the time), and any number of unknown things. When I got to the spot I had visualized, later on, there was a guy setting up a theatrical flying rope rig up in a tree which he was swinging around on, and doing gymnastics. You never know.
Photographing fireworks is fairly simple. You put your camera on a stable thing like a tripod. You set it to ISO 200, F8, and 4-8 seconds depending on ambient conditions. There’s variations on this, but that’s the basic exposure triangle. I usually record fireworks with the camera set for 3400K color temperature.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots were captured on the way to Astoria Park.
Along the way, I encountered this Manitou (a French manufacturer of a range of heavy equipment) vehicle parked on the street. It caught my eye, this thing. Given my interest in the belief systems of various parties, the first thing I thought when I read the logo was related to the religious views of the Algonquian peoples. Odd choice, thereby, in corporate branding if you ask me.
You could probably take out a lot of zombies with that thing, I bet…
Tomorrow- fireworks!
“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.
occasionally tearing
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another trip to Pittsburgh came to an end, and there stood a humble narrator at about 7 in the morning, waiting for his train to come.
Amtrak owned the train, of course. Boarding the thing was meant to happen at 7:30 a.m., with an expected arrival at Moynihan Penn Station in NYC at 4:52 p.m. I had a Primanti Brothers sandwich wrapped up tightly in one of my three bags, but my caffeine consumption was limited due to circumstance, so I was in a dreamlike state.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The grandiose old train station in Pittsburgh, as in the one associated with the Pennsylvania Railroad, has been converted over to a residential building. What passes for a train station there in modernity is reminiscent of a Soviet orthodontist’s office with a barely functional drop off and pick up parking lot.
You enter the station through an automatic supermarket style door, and then ride an escalator up to the actual station where the tracks are.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Despite the fact that you are absolutely going to be getting on the train, all the people formed up into an anxiously stressed out queue. I found myself standing in between two sections of an Amish family, and asked the Dad to hold my place in line for me. He seemed puzzled by the request, but acceded.
On the non active track, there was something I wanted a shot of.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lovingly cared for Ohio Central passenger car was on display. I’m told that this is possibly a private car, operated by some corporate outfit that hitches itself onto Amtrak’s rolling stock for expensive private trips. Can’t say if this true or not, but it sounds right given its great condition.
I got back in line with the Amish Family (or maybe Mennonite, I can’t discern what the differences between the two groups are), and the conductor assigned me to a certain car. Amtrak groups travelers who are going to common destinations. I was going “all the way” and was thereby assigned to the very last car on the train. I got a window seat. Hooray.
– photos by Mitch Waxman
As is my habit, I set the camera up for shooting out of the window as the Amtrak rolled along. Embedded above is a YouTube video of the various things which shot past us while heading east, all of which are entirely random. Amtrak schedules in a few stops along the route. There’s usually a crew change at these longer “dwells” in the stations, and they also switch out the locomotive engines (Diesel for CoGen “Hybrid,” or Electric, depending on where you are) at some of these stops. You get about 15 minutes to “smoke ‘em if you got ‘em,” or stretch your legs if you don’t partake. A lot of people were vaping.
The images in the video above were captured between Pittsburgh and the Capitol of Pennsylvania – Harrisburg.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Harrisburg’s Amtrak station is pictured above. One is merely whelmed, not over or under whelmed, by this station.
I got lucky in terms of my seat mate on this trip, just as I did on the ride out to Pittsburgh. Another Nice kid in his 20’s, but this guy lived in the extremely rural “Pennsyltucky” area in the virtual center of the State of Pennsylvania, nearby Lancaster. Lancaster is “Pennsylvania Dutch” country, where the Amish and other sects like the Mennonites live in archaic fashion. The kid wasn’t “Dutch,” but was a farmer who amplified his agricultural income by working as a welder, and he also had a sideline selling firewood. Inevitably, national politics came up, and it was nice to hear somebody from conservative America – “the other side, as it were” – say “man, we really gotta turn down the volume on this shit before the shooting starts.” A humble narrator concurs.
More tomorrow, and back home to NYC, in tomorrow’s Newtown Pentacle.
“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 