Posts Tagged ‘Monongahela River’
‘Effin Pittsburgh, yo
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just as I arrived at a series of ‘Bernie Holes,’ found in the fencing on Pittsburgh’s West End Bridge which overlook the CSX tracks along the Ohio River, a train set appeared. The locomotive engine was CSX #6348, an SD40-2 type built by General Motor’s Electro Motive Division. That’s literally all I can tell you about the thing, as I continue to refuse to ‘nerd out’ about trains.
Really, I just like taking pictures of the things, which I find fairly challenging. Something moving at 20-40 mph that’s bigger than most houses, which just sort of randomly appears… that’s a difficult photo. I guess I’ve been preparing for this sort of scenario with all of those subway posts I used to do back in LIC for a while now.
BTW- How’s that all that going these days, New Yorkers? I’ve seen the news about the Governor sending the National Guard in. Tell me in the comments, I’d love some ‘personal experience’ perspectives on the presence of long barrel military guns being brandished about down below.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot looks back along the West End Bridge span I’d just walked. This isn’t a hard walk at all, I’d mention, but driving over this bridge is actually fairly challenging. Narrow – in the extreme – travel lanes, and you have to be in the correct lane for your destination on the other side, I’d offer. The amount of gouging into and transferred auto paint on the bridge’s concrete sections speaks to the driving challenge. Tight fit, this.
Also, as a note… ‘Bernie Holes’… are gaps found in fencing that would otherwise occlude a desirable point of view. Some of these are surveyor’s holes, which are discernible by the fact that the fencing was cut with a power tool. My old friend Bernie Ente, who introduced me to the Newtown Creek community and acted as a mentor when I first turned up on the creek, had created a series of these apertures all over Western Queens. He made me privy to many of their locations, and long have I thereby referred to them as ‘Bernie Holes,’ although the ones here in Pittsburgh were obviously not created by him. They do use his preferred pry bar and spring powered vise grip methodology, however.
For those of you reading this who were members of ‘Team Bernie’, hello again old friends.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The train lumbered along, and the towboats were changing shifts. This one looks up the Ohio towards the Monongahela River. The plan at this point was to walk eastwards, in order to get back to a T station and home to HQ after my short walk.
Simple pathway, this. After debarking the bridge, I’d walk about a half mile, where the entrance to the Three Rivers Heritage Trail is found. An easy walk is found on the trail, which offers quite photogenic sets of circumstance along the way. This has become one of favorite paths here in Pittsburgh. By ‘easy,’ I mean flat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, something about this abandoned automotive service building, constructed of corrugated steel, intrigued me. The moss on the roof was calling, I guess. Imagine that, this has to be the most hostile environments that a plant might nestle into. Griddle hot in the summer, undertaker’s slab cold in the winter. Nature always wins.
One negotiated his way down a couple of flights of stairs from the West End Bridge, whereupon I needed to find a place to take a tinkle. Another sign of age which I’ve had to deal with – other than the various aches and pains which I bitch about endlessly – is that as soon as I start exercising the kidneys kick into high gear. This is a good thing, obviously, but it gets a bit problematic when you are walking over a bridge or something.
Luckily, right alongside that steel building pictured above is a fairly private area with lots of shrubbery. These plants were watered, thereby, with my personal liquor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After obliging these biological imperatives, one continued along with the photowalk. The view was pretty epic from my pee spot, as it turned out, and I waited around to see if another train might be fixing to cross my lens but there was no such luck.
I hate ‘hanging around’ and waiting for something to occur. It’s a ‘photowalk,’ not a ‘photo stand around and wait,’ after all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One last look back at the West End Bridge, and then to the east did a humble narrator scuttle, which will be described in a subsequent missive.
As a note – I’m still re-listening to the History of Rome podcast mentioned last week, and I’m pretty sure that the story of Marius and Sulla was what was being discussed on this afternoon. It’s a very long podcast, by the way, and highly recommended. Caesar is coming.
Back tomorrow.
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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.
Obsessive & compulsive
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As previously stated, one was involved with an afternoon constitutional walk on a fairly chilly afternoon recently, and my pathway carried me to the West End Bridge here in Pittsburgh. It’s the first bridge to cross the Ohio River, and found just a few hundred yards away from where the admixture of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers form the waterway’s source.
There’s a pedestrian and bike path on either side of the bridge. I was walking on the eastern side of the thing, which faces downtown Pittsburgh and several other points of interest.
This was a short walk, but I was also desirous of and committed to a ‘photowalk,’ wherein the wandering photographer makes it a point of looking up, down, all around along a meandering path.
Serendipity is what one craves, ultimately. Right place, right time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a towing company, which I know nothing about, based on the southern shore of the river. They seem to haul a lot of mineral barges, but I spotted a Towboat with a barge whose design is unfamiliar to me. It was riding high in the water, suggesting an empty hold, but constructed in a rather stout manner with lots of metal fastenings. It also had a ‘lid’ on it, but didn’t appear to be a fuel barge. Gas, maybe? I don’t know, but if you’ve got an idea – leave a comment and share the wealth.
I was using a zoom lens on this walk – my super reliable 28-105mm. The thing has gotten a bit banged up over the last few years, I’d mention, but it’s also tens of thousands of exposures in at this point. The choice of lens was made for convenience’s sake. Wish I had a broader zoom range, but…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is one of the spots I ‘slow walk’ whenever I’m scuttling down this particular route. Love the abandoned blue automotive care building with its patches of moss on the roof, but what really draws me in are the railroad tracks. These belong to CSX, and are fairly well used. Fencing starts just as you get to where you’d want to shoot from, but there’s ‘Bernie Holes’ cut into the chain link which allows for pretty nice views of the tracks.
More on that tomorrow, and also on what I mean when I say ‘Bernie Hole,’ 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.
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.
“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.
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
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.
Squaring up
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another of my constitutional scuttles occurred on one of the rare sunny days which the Pittsburgh Metro area has enjoyed in recent weeks, a scuttle which played out along the Monongahela River. The Mobile Oppression Platform was parked in an adjoining municipal park’s lot, and so off I went.
First steps were when I noticed the Towboat ‘Sierra J’ towing a small fleet of barges, in a westerly direction towards the point where the Monongahela’s transmogrification occurs, after an admixture with the Allegheny, and it becomes the Ohio River.
There’s a lot of flowing water around these parts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Next up and along my way, CSX #6926 came roaring by, hauling a mixed up bunch of car units behind it. There was coal, and automobiles, and a lot of random cargo boxes trailing behind it.
This walk was from the 31st street bridge to the Fort Pitt Bridge, which is somewhere in the area of about 3-4 miles. There and back again, I guess my walk was about 7.5 – 8 miles, thereby, which I kicked out in a little over two and change hours.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular path has become fairly familiar to me, and by now I’m sure to you. Its range is along the Three Rivers Heritage Trail, which follows the Monongahela River and is entirely separated from the travel lanes of vehicle traffic. Only foot and bike traffic are allowed. There’s a couple of fairly noisome gaps on the trail, but it’s nothing terribly over the top or dangerous.
There is an opportunity to gain some altitude along the route, which I did to capture the shot above, depicting the T light Rail crossing the Panhandle Bridge and is framed up by the Liberty Bridge and a concrete factory.
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.
