Posts Tagged ‘Monongahela River’
Sliding along on the water
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Doors Open Pittsburgh outfit offered a narrated boat tour of the Allegheny River recently, and I bought myself a ticket. There were originally two boat tours on order for the day, but the other one got cancelled due to mechanical issues with the vessel. The cancelled one was meant to leave the dock at 8 am, with the boat that I actually got to ride on which these photos were captured from leaving dock in the afternoon. There’s three rivers in Pittsburgh, famously – the Monongahela and Allegheny flow into each other and form the Ohio.
If you like to split hairs, and let’s face it – I do – there’s five rivers. The three mentioned above, plus the Youghiogheny over in McKeesport (different government/community than Pittsburgh – sort of a NYC/Newark thing – but water doesn’t respect political boundaries) and there’s a subterranean river which acts as an aquifer that the local governmental water people mention a lot. I don’t know what to call that one, so let’s just go with ‘Styx.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For this outing, I adapted one of my older lenses onto the mirrorless canon camera I’m using these days. A Sigma 18-300 ‘all in one’ zoom, which is a ‘crop sensor’ lens designed specifically for the sort of DSLR I used to use. It’s a ‘full frame’ camera, the mirrorless one I use now, whereas my older camera was a ‘crop sensor.’ The mirrorless unit allows me to use its onboard settings to allow it to act like a crop sensor and I have a hardware adapter which handles mounting one model’s lenses on the other. Whew.
This isn’t an ideal workflow situation for me, but I’ve got piles of great lenses which I haven’t used in a while that I miss. Just last night, I pulled an old favorite out of the bag – my Sigma 18-35 f1.8, and was testing how it behaved on the mirrorless camera body.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Canon, in their infinite wisdom and greed, have decided not to allow third party lens into the mirrorless ‘RF Mount’ ecosystem at this point. This is really annoying, and whereas the lenses they’ve released for the RF mount are truly amazing, most of them cost what you’d pay for an OK used car. The lens I was using on this outing is one of my old ‘go-to’s’ from NYC when I’d have to be prepared for a variety of circumstance.
Saying that, it’s a ‘daylight’ lens, and fairly crappy for handheld use once the sun starts going down. I’m feeling the hankering for doing some night time work again, after all of this sunlit world stuff – as a note. It’s been a while.
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.
Pittsburgh 3 ways
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wamma lamma ding dong, I almost cannot wait to show all of you the posts scheduled for next week here at Newtown Pentacle, which detail one of the cooler experiences I’ve had so far, here in Pittsburgh. For this Friday post, however, it’s just three shots of the pretty city of Pittsburgh with its always dynamic atmosphere boiling in the sky.
Weather is very different here than it was back in NYC, which I’ve found myself starting to refer to as ‘back home’ or ‘the old neighborhood.’ I suppose that was inevitable.
It’s a volatile atmosphere that you’ll encounter here in Pittsburgh, due to the river valleys and the foot hills of the Appalachia Range’s interactions with the sky vault. A couple of weeks ago it was 89 degrees at 4 in the afternoon and then 54 degrees at midnight. You can leave the house in a driving rainstorm and by the time you get where you’re going, it’s blue sky and sunny – all in the space of 20 minutes. The sky’s gyrations aren’t muted by the presence of an ocean, here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We’ve been pretty lucky so far, weather wise. We moved out here during the high winter. Pittsburgh’s winters have a ferocious reputation, but as it turns out the 22/23 winter season here was the warmest and least snowy winter that this City has experienced in decades. That’s called a soft landing, lords and ladies. I fear we won’t get that sort of lucky again, given that this is an El Niño year.
Those dynamic skies, though. Lately, I find myself exposing the shots with the sky in mind. I’m of the belief that Pittsburgh’s iconic ‘Empire State Building’ or ‘Golden Gate Bridge’ is the sky itself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Next week is going to be fairly hardcore, with six image posts returning for an interval. I got to go somewhere that I found visually exciting, and under circumstance where I could ‘do my thing’ without any real interruption for multiple hours. Set up the tripod, compose shots, the whole shebang. Thereby…
…back next week, with what I saw when I got to visit Carrie Furnace.
“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.
Stairway to… heaven?
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Apparently, Pennsylvania’s highway planners reached out to Robert Moses for advice on transit planning ‘back in the day,’ and his unmistakable trademark of running high speed roads along urban waterways is very much in effect here in Pittsburgh. This is from the Golden Triangle side of the Monongahela River, and it’s one of the busier high speed roads you’ll encounter here in the Paris of Appalachia. It ‘carries,’ and ‘connects,’ and ‘leads to.’
There’s pay parking lots below the highway ramps and along the Monongahela River’s banks, which I’m told are colloquially known as the ‘bathtub’ given their propensity for flooding during the spring thaw. A hiking and bike trail forms the actual ‘water’s edge.’
Of course, that’s what I was walking on and what I was heading towards was the bathtub.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were a couple of sections of this flood prone underworld which host collections of tents, occupied by the unhoused and indigent. This population of unfortunates is causing the local landlord class to gnash their teeth, and are being blamed for all sorts of problems in the Downtown area.
The Landlords blame declining real estate valuations in Pittsburgh, affecting their nearby office and commercial properties they own on the tent people, rather than acknowledging that the post Covid trend towards remote work is the causal factor. Additionally, taxes are quite a bit lower in other counties, and businesses can also find a decidedly lower rent for more spacious in office parks found in outlying areas a half hour in any direction.
Instead, punch down and blame the homeless.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I found a set of those famous municipal steps that are found all over Pittsburgh to carry me back up to the street level. Unfortunately, these would ultimately put me on the shoulder of an on ramp to one of those highways in the first shot, which was pretty terrifying. A lapse in traffic allowed me to scuttle quickly across the ramp and onto a nearby sidewalk. Brr.
Back next week, lords and ladies.
“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.
Inclined towards the Mon
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My friend was in town, so how could she not take a ride on an incline when visiting Pittsburgh for the first time? Sheesh. I’m all goofy for funiculars, after all.
That’s the Monongahela River in the background, with the Station Square development in the middle, and the counterpart of the Incline car on the left was the one we were riding in to get down to the waterfront from the prominence of Mount Washington.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We had purchased tickets for a Gateway Clipper boat tour, which offers the Pittsburgh equivalent of what you’d expect on NYC’s Circle Line. While waiting for the boat to leave the dock, I spotted this Tug towing a multitude of mineral barges down the Monongahela to its junction with the Allegheny where they combine and become the Ohio River.
Coal, it looked like.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Off in the distance, right at the junction point of the Ohio, another and far larger tow boat was at anchor. Given the presence of Lock and Dam facilities on both the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, I’d imagine they were waiting on some chronological window at the USACE locks upstream to proceed to wherever their destination was.
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.
I miss my Tonka trucks
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ok, one more from that long walk, an ‘odds and ends’ post. While walking off Pittsburgh’s Liberty Bridge towards the T Light Rail and my ride back to HQ, I noticed that the action at the concrete factory below me had ceased operations for the day and their equipment was sitting there lit up all pretty like by the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself. Couldn’t resist.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wouldn’t it be great to have a crane as your second car? Easy to park, when you think about it, a crane is. If you can’t find a spot, you can make one by hoisting somebody else’s wheels out of the way.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just as I was walking over to the T to get back to HQ, the light began to bounce around inside the steel of the Liberty Bridge which I had just walked over. Fun walk, this one was.
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.
