Posts Tagged ‘New York City’
stayed on
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 4th was a pretty productive day for me. Caught a nice sunset from the Kosciuszcko Bridge, then began a fairly low key walk back to HQ in Astoria. Along the way, lots of things caught my eye.
43rd street offers a fairly “straight shot” for me to get back home, but I seem to prefer 39th street as that’s where my toes point.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You have to get out of Blissville first, however, so a few scary and fairly deserted highway off ramp pedestrian pathways are followed on the way. It’s the deserted thing that makes them scary, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queens Boulevard forms a bit of a prominence, and one of my corny “dad jokes” revolves around announcing to anyone who might be accompanying me on a walk that “it’s all downhill from here” when passing under the elevated tracks of the 7 line subway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The reason 39th street is my preferred path has to do with “hole reliable,” an aperture in the fencing around Sunnyside Yards at the Harold Interlocking which seldom disappoints as far as offering opportunity to photograph trains.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On this particular evening, my timing was stellar, and I managed to get one coming from and one going to.
I never, ever tire of this particular composition. In many ways, “hole reliable” is where I learned how to capture low light photos.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A recent addition to Amtrak’s fence hole offerings allows for an unoccluded view of the “turnaround track” at Sunnyside Yards.
It’s a complicated shot, this one, given how dark it is in this corner of the yards. I had to shoot this at an unbelievably high ISO speed of 128,000.
“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.
watching for
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After a brief epiphany of light, the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself became occluded by atmospheric clouds again, but one kept on shooting the scenes observable along the Newtown Creek, from up on the Kosciuszcko Bridge’s pedestrian walkway.
As a tip – it’s critical to not allow any part of your camera, whether it be lens barrel or tripod leg, to touch the fence of the bridge when you thrust the lens through. The fence is always vibrating due to the traffic passing by on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, and said vibration will transmit into the camera and ruin your shots. The concrete “ground” you and the tripod are standing on is vibrating too, of course, but less severely than the metal fence is.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking down at Queens side Penny Bridge, that’s Review Avenue running alongside Calvary Cemetery on the right and the mirror like Newtown Creek on the left.
As above, so below, the occultists will tell you.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One lingered on the walkway as the gloom spread and the sky dimmed. The lights came on in Manhattan’s largely empty office buildings.
My beloved Creek…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Before switching the setup back over to “night time” handheld mode, I cracked out one final exposure focused in on the Kinder Morgan oil terminal at Greenpoint’s Apollo Street. It used to be the BP Amoco oil terminal until just a few years ago, and before that it was part of the campus of the Mobil/Standard Oil Company’s refinery operations. That’s where the oil spill in Brooklyn was discovered by a passing Coast Guard helicopter in the 1970’s.
A tank farm like Kinder Morgan’s operation stores and distributes various flavors of refined petroleum product. The oil terminal gets filled up and supplied with product by maritime barges, and emptied by semi tanker trucks which make local deliveries to homes and gas stations. Generally speaking, the tank farms which supply the barges are found along the Kill Van Kull waterway in New Jersey. There’s also pipelines which feed product into the facility.
Regarding handheld vs. tripod mode, it is extremely annoying carrying the camera when it’s attached to the tripod. It takes two hands, and it looks like I’m carrying a rifle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve noticed this door before, of course, which sits about thirty to forty feet over the roadway of the BQE. It’s seemingly inaccessible.
I’d like to start a rumor that this is the door to a vault where Andrew Cuomo kept his secret archives.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Behind Cuomo’ s Red Door… that sounds good, huh? Shelly Silver’s sins, Heastie’s haughty pictures, Gianaris’ goof balls… they’re all filed away up there behind the scarlet steel should Cuomo ever find a way to manifest himself again in the flesh. Word has it he’s currently a bodiless consciousness which poltergeists Tish James’ offices.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be hidden behind Cuomo’s Scarlet Steel door, high over the malefic waters of the Newtown Creek?
“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.
seemed older
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 4th, in addition to being “Star Wars Day,” offered me one of those 50/50 chances – atmosphere wise – that there would be an interesting sunset. After dealing with my annoying daily round, I packed up my gear and lazily used a cab to carry me over to the entrance of the Kosciuszcko Bridge’s pedestrian ramp in Blissville.
Ok, it really wasn’t that lazy, I just didn’t want to lose an hour of good light scuttling through boring residential neighborhoods, and was desirous of preserving my energy for the shooting and walking home part of the exercise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was humid and misty, with a tepid breeze. As I’ve mentioned in the past, high clouds and mist usually make for interesting sunsets.
One scuttled up the ramp, which took me high up onto the Kosciuszcko Bridge’s crossing of Newtown Creek between Brooklyn and Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m trying to soak in all of this splendor while I still can, before I move out of NYC at the end of the year. You really do not get to see sights like this anywhere else.
Thank god.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A solid deck of clouds had risen out of New Jersey just as I reached the spot I’d decided to shoot from. Regardless, I was committed to the labor and set up the camera for “landscape” modality.
I got busy, a clickin and a whirring.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A sudden break in the cloud cover appeared, and a series of adjustments to composition and camera settings was thereby triggered.
Nimble, quick, ready to jump a candlestick – that’s me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bam! All of a sudden, NYC was painted in apocalyptic hue. This is the sort of thing which I left Our Lady of the Pentacle at home all by herself for to get out and capture.
More tomorrow – 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.
can tell
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
April 27th’s short walk continued, and I was heading back towards Astoria on Jackson Avenue, when fortuitous atmospherics conspired with a 7 train leaving Court Square Station on the elevated tracks to capture my attention.
You gotta show up. Ain’t gonna see boo staying at home.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m going to miss all this. Every step and every block is absolutely awash for me with details. Battle Axe Gleason’s folly, adorned with NY Terracotta Works finery, sits over the long ago of Jack’s Creek and the…
Every single brick tells a story. Once I’ve retreated into the west like one of Tolkien’s Elves, this is going to be someone else’s story to tell. I fear no one will do that. C’est la vie.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
April 28th found me in Brooklyn at Newtown Creek Alliance HQ. Can never resist cracking out a few exposures of the Sewer Plant in Greenpoint from this uncommon point of view.
NCA hosts public hours at HQ on Friday evenings, if you want to check the place out. Click here if you’d like to visit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 1st saw me wandering around Long Island City and the Sunnyside Yards again, exploiting the encyclopedia of fence holes at the 183 square acre rail coach yard that I know about to get a few shots of Amtrak’s rolling stock being serviced below.
A coach yard is a maintenance and holding facility, not a station. You have to go into Manhattan to catch an Amtrak. With Long Island Railroad, you’ve at least got Woodside.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One scuttled through the dimly lit and somewhat terrifying streets feeding into Queens Plaza on my way home. This is not a fun pedestrian experience. There’s some nice graffiti, though.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queens Plaza remains one of the absolute worst places in the entire country to be on foot. Your senses are overwhelmed by subway noise and vehicle traffic. Did you know that your field of vision actually narrows when the ambient level of noise passes through a certain threshold? I guess the brain can only process so much raw data at any given moment.
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.
were well
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
April 26th brought one of those “I told you so” moments to Astoria. For literally ten years, I’ve been sounding the alarms about the ridiculous amount of dead wiring overhead – and the horrendous condition of often century old utility poles which carry them. Assemblymember Brian Barnwell heard my cry and his office tried shaking the tree at the NYS Utility commission, but just like every other part of New York State – that patronage mill called “Albany” saw no political gain in even conducting an inspection of the situation here in Queens.
A line of thunderstorms crashed through Astoria earlier in the evening, and shortly after the wind and rain stopped, the FDNY arrived on Astoria’s Broadway and began arranging caution tape.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To no one’s surprise, the storm had caused a series of live wires to crack down onto the puddle choked street and yet another Astoria hullabaloo was underway. The 46th street Subway Station was right in the middle of this municipal chaos, as a note.
You ever get the sense that the people who run this City and State would make terrible roommates?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the 27th, after having completed all of my “have to’s” it was decided to take a fairly short walk. Recent habit has seen me circumnavigating the 183 square acres of the Sunnyside Yards on these short walks. I’ll leave Astoria and walk over to Skillman Avenue, which will be followed to its terminus at Hunters Point Avenue and 21st street, whereupon I’ll head over to Jackson Avenue and then follow it through Queens Plaza where it transmogrifies into Northern Blvd. at 31st street and scuttle back to HQ.
Along the way, there’s lots and lots of fence holes to poke the camera lens into, and observe what wonders there might be hidden within the colossal rairlroad coach yard. That’s the IRT Flushing 7 line train exiting Queens Plaza heading for points east.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All winter and spring, I’ve been seeing the Long Island Railroad’s newest acquisitions being put through their paces. I don’t know if these trains have entered “revenue service” yet or if they’re still being tested out.
I’ve had a horrible realization recently… good lord, have I been rail fanning? Has it really come to this?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The 7 line exits Court Square Station on an elevated track, and this right of way descends down into the Hunters Point Station. Occasionally, on this particular route, I’ll actually hop on the 7 and take it back to Sunnyside or Woodside and walk home from there.
I stand on the assertion that the 7 is the most photogenic of all the subway lines.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At Hunters Point Avenue, you’ve got an absolutely incredible eastward looking view of the Sunnyside Yards. That Long Island Railroad train was heading into Manhattan, and the entrance to the East River Tunnels is nearby.
Wonders, I tell you, wonders.
“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 