Posts Tagged ‘Dormont’
All cars are street cars… just sayin
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Christmas Day is when these shots of the ‘T’ streetcar, speeding through the Borough of Dormont here in the Pittsburgh Metropole, were shot. Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself had met up with neighborhood friends at the local dive bar for a few holiday drinks.
Me? It was actually somewhat bright outside and I couldn’t help but wander about a bit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The T pictured above and below is a Siemens SD-400 model streetcar, which runs on Pennsylvania Trolley Gauge tracks. These are facts I learned by visiting a detailed and nicely researched post found at tramreview.com.
These streetcars replaced a fleet of earlier and ‘proper’ Trolley cars. I’m planning on heading over to the PA. Trolley Museum at some point in the coming months to learn more.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was nice having a little get together with the neighbors on Christmas, and also getting a few belts in during the early afternoon.
Day drinking, amirite?
It ain’t the 7 train, the ‘T,’ but I find it pretty interesting. Still haven’t taken a bus or checked out Pittsburgh’s ‘Bus ways.’
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.
Maritime Monongahela
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily enough, while this wandering mendicant and humble narrator was crossing Pittsburgh’s Smithfield Street Bridge, spanning the Monongahela River, a towboat and barge setup suddenly appeared.
I’ve been missing the act of photographing maritime action lately, so… I got a-clickin with the camera.
That’s the Darlane B Towboat – you can read its ‘specs’ and history here – and she was navigating westerly under the Panhandle Rail Bridge. Joyously, there was also a T streetcar riding on the Panhandle as the boat moved under it. That T was, in turn, heading southwards out of the First Avenue Station and across the ‘Mon’ towards the Station Square stop at the foot of Mount Washington.
Ultimately, that’s where I was heading to, too.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was one of those days where I’m carrying only prime lenses rather than zooms and traveling light with a minimum ‘kit.’ For this one I used the 85mm lens, which was the closest thing to a telephoto that I had with me.
Sated by my peregrinations thereby, I crossed the Smithfield Street Bridge over to the south side of the river where the T Station is found, to catch my ride back to HQ.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The T streetcar was boarded, and one soon found himself back in the Borough of Dormont, some five or so miles away from the center of the city. While walking downhill and back to HQ, one soliloquized that an absolutely spectacular sunset had set itself up. Couldn’t resist cracking out a few shots, thereby, of this celestial display.
Back tomorrow with something different at this – your 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.
A Dormont ‘thigh buster’ scuttle
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The scene above is found about a block and a half from HQ, in the Dormont Borough which directly borders the City of Pittsburgh. Actually, the shot above is in Pittsburgh proper, as the city’s border line is found somewhere’s mid block. I’ve mentioned that HQ is nearby a gorge in the past, that bridge spans part of that landform.
Also mentioned in the past are the presence of hundreds of sets of municipal steps here in Pittsburgh, installed to help the citizenry navigate the area’s challenging terrain.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This bridge is ‘officially’ a set of stairs, or at least it leads to a set of them, which climbs up the other side of the gorge. I’ve walked Moe the Dog back here in the past, and for this particular day’s ’constitutional,’ I decided that I wanted to do some leg work.
According to the phone, when I had gotten to the top of this and its accompanying structure, I had walked something like 11-12 stories worth of stairs in the equivalence of two city blocks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These stairs are set against a wooded hill, where those deer which keep on wandering into my back yard spend their time. Pittsburgh used to have predators, notably Panthers and Wolves, but they’re long gone and the deer population is thereby unfettered by predation. Their main danger to them these days revolves around getting hit by a car.
Good cardio, these stairs.
I forced myself to move up them at a rapid clip while enjoying the feeling of absolute tearing agony in my thighs. I’ll admit to having to take a short break to catch my breath and allow my heart’s ‘beats per minute’ to settle down midway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The top of the stairs exits you onto a tertiary arterial road, one which follows a parabolic curve around the hill. This is a scary spot, as there’s not any sort of sidewalk, and you’ve only got about a hundred feet of view in either direction. A car moving at 35 mph would bring annihilation so you have to choose your crossing moment quickly.
There’s a red light found at the bottom of this hill, where this street interacts with a busy secondary arterial road.. When a burst of passing cars has passed, that’s when you sprint across the double laned street.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the other side of the road is yet another set of stairs which carry you from the aforementioned secondary to a tertiary arterial road, and the top of a ridge. The street sign across the street is blue and white, meaning it’s in the ‘City of Pittsburgh.’ It’s also labeled as being a ‘way’ which indicates that it’s officially an alley. That’s the way they roll here.
Along the path above, somebody has placed plastic religious sculptures, depicting what I’m seeing as the Catholic Saint Francis. What do you think? This Francis or what? Help a guy out, youse ‘Catlicks,’ in the comments section? Whaddya say?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My goal was to get to the top of these stairs without dying, huffing and puffing, and then continue on a relatively flat path for a mile or two. I’d broken a sweat on all of these rises and runs, which was one accomplishment I was hoping for. I’d also gotten my heart rate elevated for an extended period, and positively blasted my thighs out with all these steep steps. It felt pretty good, I’ll admit.
In case you’re wondering, on this walk I was listening to music rather than an audiobook. Early Butthole Surfers, if you’re really curious.
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.
Getting around
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ok, this is the last post which will be focused on discussing the experimentation with that new wide angle lens (16mm) I’ve recently acquired, which I walked around with in Pittsburgh on a recent autumn afternoon and evening. Pictured above and below is the T light rail, which was utilized to get ‘to and fro’ on this particular day.
The point of these shots were about testing the thing’s capability, seeing where it sings and where it fails. I learned quite a bit about the lens, and have continued its usage rather than returning it for refund.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The next few days, after these shots were captured, were quite rainy. That was fine with me, as I had quite a bit of research to complete for an upcoming day trip, one I’ve been anxious to experience since arriving here in Pittsburgh. It has been just about one year now since I closed the cover on Newtown Creek, but there’s a connection to that malign ribbon of urban neglect snaking along the undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens back in NYC, which I’ve long wished to witness. Those posts, exploring the day trip dealie, start up at the end this week, and I hope you’ll come with…
Overall, I’m intrigued by the new lens and what it’s going to let me do. It performed pretty well in low light, I’ll offer. It’s also a weird new tool which I haven’t shot with enough for it to be called ‘predictable.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This time last year, one was moving at a thousand miles an hour preparing to leave NYC, and execute the move to Pittsburgh. A humble narrator was also trying to do everything, see everyone, and always be conscious of the fact that ‘everytime was the last time.’ There’s a lot of people whom I just said ‘goodbye’ to, as it’s unlikely I’ll ever see or hear from them again. That’s the New York way, when somebody leaves.
This year, I’ve been in a very very different place, figuratively and literally. I’ve also got that snazzy new 16 mm lens, so there’s that, too.
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.
Stairmaster
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
HQ is located in a suburb of Pittsburgh called “The Borough of Dormont,” which is – I’m told – a square mile in size. One of Dormont’s conceits when it was chartered is that there would be no ‘mean streets’ here, as every single roadway is instead labeled as an Avenue. It’s silly, but there you are. HQ is found at the bottom of a steep hill, where three of those avenues all dead end at a forested gorge. I’m still investigating my local vicinity, incidentally. The shot above is from about a block from HQ.
Recently, while walking Moe the Dog down one of those dead end streets, I stumbled upon a badly maintained, and heavily grown over, set of municipal steps. Pittsburgh has hundreds of examples of this sort of infrastructure snaking about in the hills and valleys, by products of the era before automobiles. It occurred to me that these steps would be handy, in terms of bleeding out some of Moe’s excessive puppy energies, but as is my habit – I’d need to check them out first before bringing him along – just in case. ‘Next time I’m walking to the T light rail’ said I, and now you’re all caught up.
This is the setup for this post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Novelty, on this particular day, was experienced by a humble narrator, which revolved around a trick recently learned about how Amazon.com works which ended up with me using some new gear.
Amazon recently had one of their ‘Prime Day’ promotions, which offer deep discounts on otherwise ‘never on sale’ items, like Canon lenses. The Prime Day thing revolves around the fact that sale prices pop up and then disappear, which is how Amazon gets you to spend time on their site shopping for other crap you don’t want, while you are forced into reloading specific product pages over and over. The trick I learned is to set up a wish list, populated with these specific items which you want to keep an eye on the pricing of. The wish list updates itself when something on the product page changes , and you can instantly see if an item on the list gets discounted.
That’s how I ended up with two new prime lenses I’ve been wanting, which I got for roughly 35% off of the normal price, with free shipping.
This particular walk was going to be an all day sort of thing, during which I’d be waving the new lenses around and seeing what they could do. That’s the flight of municipal steps nearby HQ, by the way, which was the start of the endeavor occurred.
That’s the circumstance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The municipal steps are in worse condition than they look, and they look pretty bad. The concrete planks you walk on are jiggly, the iron rails and foundation are rusted and often disconnected from the superstructure. In some spots, there’s no railing at all. The steps are set into a hillside at a comfortable angle, and scuttling up them from one street corner to the next transverses about six to seven stories of vertical space. They’re not treacherous, but seem fairly disused and forgotten, which is something endearing to me. I’ve since returned here with Moe, who enjoys bunny hopping up them.
The first new lens isn’t terribly exciting news – it’s a ‘nifty fifty’ F1.8 50mm lens, with the Canon RF mount. I’ve got the EF mount version (which is the non mirrorless camera version), and have for years, but you need to use an adapter for it on my Canon R6 camera – which is a pain.
The other new lens, which today’s post was shot with, is an F2.8 16mm wide angle dealie. Neither one is ‘perfect,’ I would mention. They aren’t ‘L’ series, which is Canon’s professional grade – a super expensive family of lenses, or ‘glass.’ Some of these L lenses are the same price as a good used car, and are built for pro sports or wedding photographers.
That’s the conflict.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The 16mm definitely has a bit of a fish eye distortion thing going on, with chromatic aberrations and vignetting quite visible at the corners of the frame. Aperture wise, it’s built as an F2.8, but like many ‘bright lenses,’ narrowing it to F4 is a wise move. Every lens has a ‘sweet spot’ setting. The point of shooting a lot with any new lens is to experimentally twist the settings about until you find a rational compromise between them while discovering its particular quirks. I didn’t see much improvement in the 16mm’s performance with apertures narrower than F4, so I’m calling that as the sweet spot. Aperture equates to ‘depth of field,’ fall off, and overall sharpness.
The 16mm is pretty good on color, as well. Different refractory coatings on the various lens families will often create hue or color shifts that you have to watch out. My Sigma lenses, for instance, perform better on the ‘hot’ color spectrums of yellow and red than on blues. The Canon ones tend to create over saturated blues, but simply rock and roll when the subject is pale human skin (dark skin, on the other hand…).
That’s the exposition.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This set of municipal stairs in Dormont ends after a single block, during which you’ve moved upwards something in the neighborhood of 70-80 feet. Maybe more, perhaps less, I don’t measure (at the end of this long walk, the Health app on my phone reported that I had walked 21 flights of stairs, and just under 12 miles, in toto for that day). My reckoning, and what it felt like, was not unlike walking to the sixth or seventh floor of a building.
The burn really set in after I surmounted the stairs and was then scuttling up a hill on the sidewalk instead, which had to be set against the hill at a 15-20 degree angle. Whoof – but, good cardio – it really got the ticker pumping, I tell’s ya, but I did have to stop a couple of times to catch my breath. The stairs got a thumbs up from me, on the other hand. Our Lady of the Pentacle approved them, subsequently, for Moe’s usage.
Moe finds them exquisite, as he can haul me up them at great rates of speed.
Right in the center of the shot, where those two houses are, is where the stairs return you to the street Avenue. The change in altitude between the stairs, and the spot where this shot was cracked out, is something like four car lengths long (16mm wide angle, so it looks longer than it was due to ‘fisheye’) and about twenty feet in altitude. Pittsburgh is crazy.
The new lenses are what I used for several of the shots that will be popping up here over the next couple of days, by the way. The virtue of these new ‘pieces of glass’ is that they are incredibly light and easy to carry. Any three of these prime lenses still weigh far less than any of my zoom lenses. The pro “L Series” 28-105mm F4 zoom which is my ‘go-to’, in comparison, weighs something like three and half pounds.
Long time readers will recall that during the pandemic I was often going out for night walks with just two prime lenses – a 24mm and a 50mm mounted on my old Canon 7D street camera, and subsequently a 35mm and an 85mm on my newer Canon R6 mirrorless unit. The kit of primes I’m carrying around now are 16mm f2.8, 35mm f1.8, 50mm f1.8, and an 85mm f2 – one lens on the camera, three in the bag.
A minimal kit that’s easy to carry, and versatile for day and night shooting. I’ve got one of two other things in the camera bag – wire release, rocket blower, lens cloth, a spare battery – that’s it.
My ‘full kit’ fills a 32 liter backpack, and weighs about 15-20 pounds when the tripod is attached to the bag. I’ve got the entire arsenal in there. It depends on what I intend doing during the day, which bag I carry.
That’s the resolution.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the top of the hill, whose roadways dead end nearby HQ at its bottom, here in the Pittsburgh suburb of Dormont, one encounters the T light rail tracks, and stations, which ride on the top of a ridge road that is called Broadway Avenue. Service on the light rail is fairly frequent, and I wasn’t there ten minutes before a Pittsburgh bound train set came along. We are about 5 miles away from the center of the city here in Dormont. It’s about a 25- 30 minute ride to the end of the line on Pittsburgh’s North Side, which is across the street from where the Steelers’ sports ball stadium is found.
Tomorrow, continuance of testing for these new lenses continues. All of today’s shots were captured with the new 16mm. The thing has real potential, night time shooting wise. Looking forward to seeing what I can make it do.
Back tomorrow with more – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
That’s the promise.
“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 