Posts Tagged ‘New York City’
formidable skull
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 29th, a humble narrator was out and about on a short walk, and Long Island City was on the menu for the evening. I should mention that I’m way ahead of schedule on these posts for a change, and this one is being written on June 7th. Why so far ahead? Well, in the interim of the month of June, I’ve been to Pittsburgh again, and this time around I rented a car. At the time of this writing, I have no idea what wonders I pointed the camera at or whether or not I got anything worth seeing. Saying that… tick, tick, tock said the clock.
As I’ve mentioned, it’s time for me to leave this place, and thereby I’ve been on a holy tear with the camera trying to record one last summer’s worth of photos. Hence – the 6 image posts are going to be continuing for a while.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary, where a bulkhead collapse is underway at the turning basin, alongside 29th street. This was a handheld shooting night for me, as I wanted to travel light and not be burdened down with a lot of gear. No tripods or zoom lenses.
All I had with me were 35mm f1.8 and an 85mm f2 prime lenses. I did have a bit of camera support, I would mention. My pal Hank the Elevator guy got me a chunk of hard rubber that used to be part of an elevator’s brake pad, and another buddy – Sean the Carpenter – cut it and shaped an ARCA Swiss tripod mount into one side of the thing using a miter saw when his boss wasn’t looking. This gives me a nice flush rubber foot for the camera, and allows for shutter speeds normally precluded during handheld sessions.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Camera gear is famously marked up. I once needed a screw for one of my tripods and the folks at the camera store wanted $17. For a screw.
Same screw ordered off of an industrial equipment supply website cost me twenty five cents for two screws, and I still paid a 500% markup. A big part of “photography” is learning how to improvise and make your own task specific equipment. Those air conditioner foam insulation strip collars I’ve made for my lenses allow me to shoot through windows without reflection, and cost me so little to manufacture that they were almost free, for instance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are high;y engineered pieces of equipment that you’re better off just paying whatever they’re asking – tripod heads and that sort of thing really aren’t possible to manufacture at home. Also, given their critical role in holding the camera – you don’t want to experiment or be too budget conscious with that sort of thing lest you watch your camera tumbling down into Newtown Creek.
That chunk of elevator brake pad rubber attached to my camera when I’m just walking around is something that the camera shop would have likely banged me out of $50 for, however. Once, I dropped it shortly after leaving the house and then backtracked about two miles until I found it laying on the sidewalk about a block from HQ. It’s not something that somebody would assign value to, since it’s a chunk of hard black rubber. I assign a lot of value to it, on the other hand, since it absorbs vibration and offers me a friction inducing “camera foot” that doesn’t scratch the surfaces which I bring it into contact with.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I often refer to the two lenses I was carrying on this walk as my “night kit.” For those fo you who aren’t photography enthusiasts – a “bright lens” has a large aperture engineered into it – f1.8 for example. Zoom lenses become fiendishly expensive when the manufacturer incorporates a wide aperture into them – north of $5,000. The engineering is what you’re paying for on that sort of thing, as the optical formula is extremely complicated.
Thereby, the best I can do on my “day kit” involves what I can afford to own. That’s f4 for the 24-105, and my telephoto 70-300 is fairly untrustworthy in the sharpness department at anything under f8.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What trade off’s you have with the bright lenses, though, is a narrower field of focus. Notice how the Empire State Building is blurred out and the construction equipment in the shot above is sharp? That’s the narrower field depth at work. The smaller the aperture, the more is “sharp” whereas the larger the aperture is, less is “sharp.”
I won’t bore you with pixel density or color science. It’s terribly complicated.
“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.
cacodaemonical ghastliness
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 21st and I was out for a short/long walk which ended up being fairly productive. I was heading towards Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary, and along the way I stopped off at “Hole Reliable,” which is found along the fencelines of the Sunnyside Yards.
The reason this hole is so reliable is that it overlooks the Harold Interlocking, a rail junction used by both Long Island Railroad and Amtrak which is the busiest such bit of infrastructure in the entire country. You don’t have to hang around Long before something rolls by.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The powers that be have been busy spending your taxes on improving the Harold Interlocking, which is part of the larger “East Side Access” project that will be bringing LIRR service to Grand Central Station, and there’s a couple of new sidings which have recently been completed and brought into usage – like the one pictured above.
Y’know, I’ve spent something like 15 years watching them do all the construction on this, and it’s kind of cool to see it being used.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nothing new to report from Dutch Kills. Nobody cares, nothing matters, and 29th street continues to subside and sag into the collapsing bulkhead at the water’s edge. Turns out that the reason there’s always a puddle there is that the undermined street has broken a water line pipe. That’s great, as now it’s also a DEP problem – in addition to being an EPA, DEC, DOT, and MTA problem. Eventually, the entire alphabet will be involved.
Sigh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My tree of paradise seems to be embracing the warmer weather, and at the time this photo was taken, had just become clothed in foliage.
I didn’t plan on walking directly home on this particular evening, as I was desirous of getting a few low light shots of the 7 train. Accordingly, over to the Hunters Point Avenue stop did I scuttle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My 7 line plan was to take advantage of how frequently the service arrives – usually in about ten minute intervals – to hop on and hop off at the various stations that I don’t frequent.
As a note, I’m a fan of that new OMNY fare control scheme of theirs. Here’s a tip – the OMNY system lets you use your phone to pay for your fare. The credit card you thereby designate for transit use (I’m on an iPhone, can’t speak to how Google Pay works on Android) should therefore be one where you receive some sort of benefit for using it. Some cards have cash back rewards, others have airline miles that accrue with use, others send a few cents to a charity you support – you get the idea. I’ve tied all of my transit charges into a single card account – LYFT/Uber, Amtrak, Subway and Bus, Ferry. This also makes talking to my accountant about transit spending rather simple.
I have a friend who has all his monthly bills flow through benefits/rewards cards. This way he’s never late with a payment, and manages to get some benefit out of his outlandishly high electric bills.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I traveled on the 7 for a bit, following my plan to hop on and hop off. The shot above is from the 33rd Rawson stop, and it’s a Manhattan bound train rounding the elevated curve nearby the former Swingline Stapler building on Queens Boulevard. One night soon I’m going to doing this sort of night time excursion on every stop of the 7 all the way out to Flushing and back.
Keeps me out of the bars. Back next week with more, 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.
fiendish subjects
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 19th saw me taking a short walk around the Sunnyside Yards and cracking out a bunch of shots of passing trains.
That’s a New Jersey Transit train set on the so called “turnaround” track nearby 43rd street which allows the operator to reorient the thing towards Manhattan as opposed to heading into Queens via the East River tunnels. On another siding of the turnaround track is an Amtrak Acela train set, which was just sort of sitting there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At Honeywell Street, I noticed the train cars on the lower left hand side of the shot above. They’re done up with “New York Central” heraldry. At first I thought I might be accidentally traveling in time, but no. Turns out these are “heritage” passenger car units which are operated by some private outfit.
One of the Facebook groups I’m subscribed to is for train enthusiasts, and the “foamers” filled me in as to what these cars are, who operates them, and so on. Turns out you can ride on these heritage cars if you’ve got money to burn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Also on Honeywell Street bridge (which is found at Queens’ 35th street), one of the many hidden fence holes allowed a view into the Acela maintenance facility at Sunnyside Yards. This is a particularly hard thing to get a shot of, incidentally, and the shot above is heavily cropped in.
I headed back to HQ in Astoria, as the 20th was meant to be a fairly busy day that started early.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 20th I was back at Newtown Creek Alliance HQ in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section for a sit down meeting with a friend who was volunteering business advice to our little non profit that could. It may be a non profit corporation, but it’s still a corporation. When advice and wisdom are on offer from somebody who runs and has run far larger entities is on the table, you would be foolish not to absorb as much of it as you can.
Of course, I had to excuse myself a couple of times to wave the camera around as a strong front of thunderstorms approached.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Creeklands were suffused with a heavy fog, being pushed by the pressure waves of that line of storms. This kind of urban atmosphere is absolute candy for a photographer.
Saying that, after the meeting ended, I needed to “get out of dodge” and start heading home quickly lest I get drenched when the storms arrived and all of that fog suddenly condensed and dropped to the ground. A scuttle of the rapid type ensued.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My plan was to cut through the Newtown Creek Nature Walk at the sewer plant in Greenpoint, then to surmount and cross the creek at the Pulaski Bridge. Luckily, I was carrying an umbrella. Managed to get this one of the Empire State Building framed up all nice before the sky opened and it started pissing down in torrents.
More 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.
hidden pneumatics
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 15th was a busy day for me, with a Newtown Creek Alliance event in the morning that I helped out on and an astronomical anomaly in the evening. The approaching lunar eclipse saw me planning and plotting, but as it turned out – the weather had other ideas.
I managed to get set up and execute a test shot before a solid sheet of clouds obscured the body. Said test shot is above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned several times, Newtown Creek Alliance HQ is found atop a television production studio in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section. Downstairs, they’ve been shooting “The Equalizer” tv show, but I still haven’t gotten to meet Queen Latifa.
Upstairs, however, is the Kingsland Wildflower roof, which I enjoy access to. A couple of phone calls to my peeps to arrange, and I’m up top with fairly unparalleled and unique views. The plan, which was extremely well thought out, was to get the blood/eclipsed moon hovering over the sewer plant. C’est la vie.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I had actually rented a Zip Car on this evening, given that I’m again a licensed driver according to New York State. The investment in the rental was to ensure that I could quickly dart around and “get” the shot from a variety of locations but with the moon occluded by clouds…
What? I was just going to go home? You kidding? Who am I?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We have waterfront access at HQ, so I headed down to the bulkheads after locking the doors up on the roof. The tripod was deployed and I waved the camera around a bit.
It’s a very weird sensation hanging around the Newtown Creek waterfront at night and all alone. This is normally one of the busiest places in the entire City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator was quite frustrated by the whole weather thing, and it seemed that whenever I was ready to shoot – nothing was happening. You can’t control serendipity, however.
I was also annoyed that I had dropped $100 I don’t have on renting a vehicle which I didn’t make terribly good usage of. Truth be told, I spent two hours just driving around and enjoying the mobility of a car. It’s been a long time, and I used to absolutely love driving. Turns out that I still do.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I didn’t get caught out for drunk driving or any sort of violations, before you ask. I just stupidly missed the window for renewal of the document, and then it became a “thing” to do so. I avoid dealing with “things” assiduously until I have to, but since the plan for the next year involves moving out of NYC to “America” – you need to have a car in America, so I had to deal with the “thing.” I had to essentially attend a Driver’s Education class and take a road test, so sweet memories of High School were in the air for me earlier this year.
Insult to injury section: just as I broke down the camera from its tripod mount and was heading towards the gates, a tug approached the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge and the span opened for it. Missed it.
Serendipity, it affects us all.
“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.
jaded sensibilities
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On May 15th, a humble narrator was helping out a couple of my buddies from Newtown Creek Alliance on a walking tour of the eastern side of the creek – in East Williamsburgh, Maspeth, and Ridgewood.
Pictured is the end of all hope at Newtown Creek’s English Kills tributary in the East Williamsburgh area. This is some 3.8 miles from the East River.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Water conditions back here are as bad as they get on Newtown Creek, and that’s really saying something. There’s lots of oil sheens, the water has virtually zero oxygen in it, and the only source of fresh water coming into this area other than the infinitesimal influences of the tidal cycle emerge from one of the largest open sewers in NYC, found at the head of the canal.
It smells like rotting ham and wet reptiles back here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the north side of English Kills is one of Waste Management’s transfer stations, one which is connected to the Bushwick Branch Long Island Railroad freight tracks. This is the same rail you see behind Flushing Avenue in Maspeth, and which leads to the Fresh Pond Yard found to the north east.
That’s the garbage train pictured above. Normally, when I show you this sort of thing, it’s nearby the Review Avenue Waste Management facility which is in Long Island City’s Blissville section.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nearby the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge, this derelict tanker truck caught my eye. It’s sitting alongside the Manhattan Polybag site, which is currently abandoned and being worked on/remediated for toxic materials that were being released into the water. The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation is in charge of this one.
Nothing but happiness and joy at the fabulous Newtown Creek, I always say. Happiness and joy…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another tributary of Newtown Creek on the eastern side of its course is called “The East Branch.” It splits like a letter “Y” at the Grand Street Bridge. One section of it terminates at Metropolitan Avenue nearby Scott Avenue in Ridgewood, and it’s there that you’ll find the fourth largest open sewer in NYC.
Happiness and joy…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The other section of the East Branch forms a short barge sized canal, which is visible from the Western Beef supermarket’s parking lot. There’s a nice view there, pictured above, of the Grand Street Bridge.
Get your shots of this centuried span while you can, the City is in the earliest phases of replacing the thing.
“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 