Posts Tagged ‘photowalk’
strange tributes
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Dutch Kills is a tributary of the fearsome Newtown Creek, a Federal Superfund site some 3.8 miles long that provides a border for the New York City Boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens for the first three miles of its course. The waterway is polluted by industry and open sewers, and there’s a bed of sediment at the bottom composed of coal tar, petroleum derivates, human waste, and everything else that’s ever fallen into the water. This sediment is called “Black Mayonnaise.” The Dutch Kills tributary branches off of the main waterway about 3/4 of a mile from its intersection with the East River, flows entirely within the confines of Long Island City, and is about .7 – .8 of a mile long.
I’m obsessed with that little tree growing out from under a factory along the bulkheads. It’s a Tree of Paradise aka “Princess Tree,” I’m told.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All of those little streaks in the water, along the rotting bulkheads which I focused in on, are fishies. What you can hear at night, from all over this industrial canal, are the slaps and splashes of predator fish picking off these little bug eaters who gather around light sources. You can also hear passing ATV’s and muscle cars with modified exhaust systems, but that’s a different post.
I spent a bit of time hereabouts recently, waving the camera around and investigating what might be hiding in the shadows at Dutch Kills. As long time readers here at Newtown Pentacle will attest, a humble narrator is endlessly fascinated by this section of the greater Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Water fowl, these Canada Geese are dicks. All Canada Geese are dicks, and I’m racist towards them. Specist, actually, I guess. At the very least, I’m extremely prejudiced against them.
Wow, remember when there was a difference between prejudiced and racist, as in there was a level of severity for being an asshole to other people? I was having a conversation with a younger friend of mine about this lately, one which centered on how you bleed pressure out of a closed system. There’s different levels of murder, for instance – manslaughter, homicide, etc.
At any rate, the Canada Geese are ultimately downy piles of meat, and what I was doing at Dutch Kills on this warm night was searching for a carnivore which legends say hunt these waters. Looking for a hunter? Focus in on the prey.
“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.
mighty silence
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long Island City is one of those places where a constancy of tumult and change can be expected. It’s photographically interesting to me, and even though you’ve walked down either this block or that one a hundred times before I guarantee that there’s some feature or weird thing you probably haven’t noticed before. My pal Ms. Heather over in Greenpoint coined the term “street furniture” for finds like the one above.
As is often the case, one had to stand in the street to get this shot. As is also often the case, the minute I decided to step off the curb, traffic volumes on this particular street rose to downtown Manhattan 1960’s levels.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m always on the lookout for evidence of Mad Science or Supervillain lairs in Long Island City. High real estate valuations have priced most of the lesser villains out of LIC in recent years. You have to be a Luthor, or a Cobblepott or Osborne, to be able to afford mad sciencing here these days. Most of the lesser villains have moved their operations north, south, and east. Edward Nigma is out on Staten Island, as are Kraven the Hunter and the Crimson Dynamo. Word has it that Kiteman is now operating out of a split level ranch house in Bayonne. I wonder what villain is operating out of those repurposed shipping containers pictured above, making monsters.
I’d like to live in a world where getting bit by a radioactive spider doesn’t just give you blood poisoning and or cancer.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I always remind people to respect the traffic in LIC, as even the traffic signs aren’t safe hereabouts. I always follow official instructions to the letter, so when the signage above points a certain way, I obey the edict. That’s why I ended up walking into a brick wall.
The brick wall didn’t give me super powers or anything, just scrapes and a bruise.
“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.
once revolved
je m’appelle Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, one has reactivated a formerly inactive and semi retired lens back into service. I won’t bore you with the technical details revolving around the camera, instead I’ll just say that this particular lens never performed terribly well on my old camera and it fell out of active rotation in favor of other devices. Saying that, it’s complimentary to the newer camera I’m now using so there you are.
These shots were gathered while hanging around Astoria, carousing and watching the other Queensicans go about their business. This is a telephoto lens, which allows me to get “up close and personal” from about a block away. Its biggest flaw on the RF system is that it’s a fairly “dark” lens, with a variable aperture.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The “variable aperture” bit means that as you zoom in or out, its internal settings change. It’s f4-6.3 over the range, if you’re curious. One vastly prefers lenses which don’t do this, and the rest of my current kit doesn’t do variable, but that’s where they get you on price. At the moment, I don’t have any financial impetus to upgrade to a better lens for this particular function. Also, maybe it’s just me, but if you’re zoomed out to 300mm you really want to be working the image at narrow apertures to ensure sharpness.
For those of you who aren’t camera nerds – lenses with wide apertures like f1.8-f4 produce images with narrow focal planes but allow a lot of light into the camera. Think about portrait shots with blurry backgrounds for what that looks like. Narrower apertures produce more edge to edge sharpness, but restrict the amount of light entering the camera, necessitating longer exposure times and or higher ISO settings. Photographers, myself included, drool over bright lenses. Lens manufacturers price their wares accordingly, and – generally speaking – the brighter a lens is, the more expensive it is.
Telephoto lenses with wide apertures are ludicrously expensive, which is why you generally see them employed by Paparazzi, Sports, or Wedding photographers. I take pictures of junk yards and tugboats, so…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Where that narrow aperture really bites you in the tuchas is at night, or in any situation which isn’t “outside during the day.” The rest of my lens kit is very capable in low light conditions, and even at f1.8 I’ve been hitting tack sharp infinity focus with them. The 70-300 I’ve brought out of retirement isn’t really in the same league as these more modern lenses, and its color rendering requires a bit of adjustment and attention that the newer ones don’t need. Saying that, it’s already paid for, so win.
Speaking of winning… what are you doing on August 7th? I’ll be conducting a WALKING TOUR OF LONG ISLAND CITY with my pal Geoff Cobb. Details and ticketing available here. Come with?
“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.
silently gliding
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luyster Creek, lords and ladies. Also, a different day than the one I mentioned last week. I don’t get over to this side of the Queensiverse, the “Forbidden Northern Coast,” all that often these days. One thing Covid has made me absolutely long for is ownership of an automobile. At some point in the next year or two, I’m going to be purchasing a motor vehicle. The gyrations one endures getting around on foot during this period of time have been extreme. I make a big deal of walking just about everywhere, but under normal circumstance if my foot starts to hurt I’d just hop on a train or bus and come back home. Not an option due to mathematical probability of infection exposure, which reduces me down to taking the occasional cab here and there – but that gets pretty expensive, pretty fast.
As it turned out on this particular visit to Astoria’s loneliest and saddest waterway, a buddy of mine from the community board who wanted to check the place out picked me up in his car and we rode over.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the factors which is playing into my continuing thought process regarding personal transportation is what I’d be trading away – dealing with alternate side parking, the cost of insurance and maintenance – ugh. Alternatively, it makes day trips in a roughly 100 mile circle around… let’s use the Triborough Bridge as a center point reference… to photogenic subject matter possible. So, then the question about what kind of vehicle – Jeep, Van, SUV for instance – would be best for that sort of endeavor. Something I could conceivably sleep in? I don’t know. I can’t afford a car, currently, so I’m just fantasizing out loud about it. Still, would’ve been nice over the Pandemic to pack up girl and dog and go somewhere. Dog’s gone, girl’s still here.
I tell you this, walking multiple miles every other day doesn’t get easier when you get older, and I definitely start to feel a bit tired after walking from Astoria to Greenpoint and back.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lottery winner Mitch would get one of those snazzy RV’s that are rolling around these days, the kind with satellite tv and water heaters. Regular Mitch would be lucky to be able to afford an aged mule pulling a third hand Romani wagon.
Man, it would be cool to own a mule though. I’d get her one of those straw hats and rig a tripod onto the saddle. Last time I mentioned Luyster Creek, and its generous apportionment of Poison Ivy, the fact that goats eat poison ivy (which I’ve also recently learned) came up. Further, the best of all the facts was offered, which is that you can rent goats in NYC who will graze away your poison ivy on a per diem rate.
Who needs a car if you’ve got your own mule and a set of rent-a-goats?
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, February 8th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
seething around
Maspeth Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One recently found himself scuttling about in industrial Maspeth, and waiting for the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself to dip behind Manhattan. Having a bit of time to kill, a fairly generalized “wander” was instituted, and I soon found myself hanging around a certain railroad intersection hoping to catch a shot or two of a passing freight train. Whereas I’m often quite lucky when it comes to maritime transport, I seem to be possessed of zero ability to predict when a train might be coming. C’est la vie, ay?
At any rate, Rust Street is still there, although it might be called 56 drive at the location where this photo was captured.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The wandering on this particular outing was intentionally wide ranging. One tends to get hooked into walking certain routes due to their efficiencies. That causes me to see and photograph the same things, over and over. Now… part of the “Mitch Method” does involve finding a composition and then visiting it repeatedly during different climatological conditions, times of the day, and seasons of the year seeking an iconic variation of the shot. That’s where the photographic “intentionality” I talk about comes into the equation, but I’ll also rattle on and on about “serendipity” as well. You want the latter, go wandering without a plan whereas for the former – plan. Let Queens show you what she wants you to see if serendipity is on the menu.
I did have a plan on this outing, incidentally, but I also had a couple of hours to kill before sunset. This is one of the best times of the year in NYC for morning and afternoon light, given the relative angle of God’s burning thermonuclear eye to the Metropolis. Take advantage, I say.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Industrial Maspeth hugs the northern shore of Newtown Creek, and is punctured through in several places by freight train tracks. It’s a central node on the distribution network for foodstuffs, construction equipment and supplies, and there’s a lot of light industrial activity as well. There’s a substantial footprint hereabouts enjoyed by the waste handling industry – both private carters and municipal DSNY operations are extant. Overall, the neighborhoods surrounding both sides of Newtown Creek host businesses that represent about 17,000 blue collar jobs. I’d be guessing if I tried to break that down into Brooklyn versus Queens, as if that actually mattered.
More tomorrow at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, October 12th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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 