Posts Tagged ‘Pickman’
Focal lengths
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve said it a thousand times – you can’t see anything from a vehicle, especially when you’re the driver. It has to be walking, for me, if you want to notice something interesting about a city. The shots in today’s post were gathered from an automobile’s POV, I’d mention, and your humble narrator is frustrated at his need for transportation and wishes that this whole broken ankle business would just end already. I’m done.
Yesterday, one had a few errands to run, which took me about an hour and a half to accomplish. The rest of the day was mine, and the weather had unexpectedly abandoned its ultra cold and snowy character to reveal blue sky and sunlight. I had the camera bag sitting in the passenger seat and the camera securely perched next to the thing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Would have been a great day for a winter walk, if it wasn’t for all of the hard packed ice clinging to the pavement everywhere. Medical opinion is that I’m coming out of this experience with a bit of PTSD related to the injury, so that ice situation filled me with anxiety and dread. My scuttling is careful and hesitant at the moment, with an uneven gait. Balance issues also seem to be a new entry onto my dance card. Wonderful, say I. Nothing like ‘dangling participles’ which you have to deal with long after a traumatic event occurred to remind you about it – constantly, and especially so around descending flights of steps.
Since I had the car with me, for which I had to worry about parking and such, my position kept on changing and I ranged across the city on a day when nothing particularly interesting was happening. Not five minutes after I left this spot – of course – a CSX freight train ran through, which I missed getting a shot of. If I was on foot… if only… bah!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a pretty frustrating afternoon, actually. One was trying to ‘force it,’ which never works out well. Pittsburgh wasn’t cooperating with my aspirations. The light wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. Salt powder is on the wind, lifting up off of all the roadways whenever a car or truck drove by, lending everything a bit of an orange cast as light filters through it.
Saying all that, I’m practically doing this blog live right now, and the pixels are ‘still wet’ on these shots. One two hour walk would provide for serendipity, but that’s way outside of my capability at the moment.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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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.
Coming and going
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey, lookee – that’s one of Pittsburgh’s ‘T’ light rail units on approach to the Red Line’s ‘Potomac Station’ here in the Borough of Dormont. Neat!
Luckily, I was running an errand across the street when the alarms began to sound, and the signal arms came down. I’m really looking forward to riding on this service again, as a note, once I’m able to climb up the steep hill from HQ to the station. This ankle situation is a constant ‘block’ towards me having any fun at all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The unit pictured above, as in both of the shots, was heading away from Pittsburgh towards a terminal stop in South Hills Village. The T runs at street level, in trenches and on bridges, and even underground as a subway for a few stops. In Dormont, they have a dedicated track and a high platform station, but if you head back towards the city just a couple of T stops, in Beechview, you’ll notice that its rails are set into the asphalt, so the thing runs alongside autos and trucks as a surface vehicle. It’s all very complicated, frankly.
The T operates on a catenary system, which provides it with the motive voltage that it consumes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another ‘T’ arrived at the intersection where I was standing, this one heading into Pittsburgh. Under normal circumstance, at least once a week I’d find myself riding this service to ‘head into town’ and execute a long walk from its northern terminus nearby the sportsball stadium which provides a home for the Pittsburgh Steelers. I’ve got three routes from that point which have proven productive – photography wise – and also provide for ‘good cardio.’ Ultimately, I’m usually heading back to a T stop along the Monongahela River at the end of the effort for my ride home.
At least that’s what I used to do when my ankle didn’t hurt. I miss doing this sort of thing. Massively.
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.
Trafficking
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another day, another Doctor’s appointment. This time around, it was a checkup with my heart guy, which unfortunately was scheduled during what it would turn out to be a snow storm. Pittsburgh has been getting hit, day after day, with lake effect bands of snow that drop an inch or two of the white stuff and air temperatures which have seldom risen out of the 20’s and are hitting single digits at night. Ice, ice, baby.
They do a fairly decent job of plowing and salting hereabouts, but Pittsburgh’s odd terrain – with its steep hills and valleys – has to factor into how you route your journey. Or – it doesn’t, and you slide off of a cliff or a roadway that’s angled at twenty to thirty degrees against the next intersection – some 500 feet in differential altitude from where you started.
Luckily, the Mobile Oppression Platform – a Toyota – offers a transmission setting called ‘Trail’ which activates full ‘all wheel drive’ and reduces the amount of torque going into the wheels, which in turn increases traction. It’s meant for driving on gravel or dirt roads, this mode, but it works fantastically well in ice and snow. I lose a few miles worth of gas mileage in ‘trail’ mode, moving from just above 43 mpg down to about 39 mpg.
It’s worth the spend, if you’d ask me. Nobody does.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular appointment necessitated about a 25 minute drive from HQ. I was heading for the neighborhood of Bloomfield, which was founded on a prominence that’s part of a plateau over the Allegheny River. The shot above makes it look like there was a lot of traffic, but we were stacked up at a stop light. Snow was falling pretty steadily.
As mentioned yesterday, due to the weather and factoring in my recovery for the broken ankle, one is being super careful while moving around. I’m literally not myself at the moment. Walking slowly and with a limp, when I encounter a patch of compacted snow or ice it becomes a major obstacle to my continued happiness. Yup, the car and I are married right now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After arriving in Bloomfield, characteristically far too early for my appointment, one secured a metered parking spot and had a very short walk of about three blocks ‘there and back.’ Given my current ‘state,’ this was exhausting. When I left HQ, one of my goals for the day was to ‘come back with some photos of “something.” I knew I wasn’t going to be ‘making art’ shooting through the windshield of a car, but…
After my long hibernation, any and all ‘lead time’ on photos has been erased and I’m practically doing Pentacle live right now. Normally, I’m at least a couple of weeks ahead of myself, but…
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.
Selah, yo
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When your humble narrator is motoring about by himself, here in Pennsylvania’s Pittsburgh, the camera is usually sitting on the front passenger seat – just in case something interesting happens. More often than not, nothing interesting is going on, but a new habit I’ve been cultivating is to stick the camera out of the car’s moon roof and crack out a shot or two when I’m stuck at red lights. The film making crowd would call this the gathering ‘B-Roll’ footage.
To me, street intersections are yet another one of the scenarios which doesn’t normally get photographed, and is thereby worthy of a bit of notice. This is West Liberty Avenue, an arterial roadway, at the corner of Macneilly Road in the Dormont section. I was heading straight on West Liberty for a few miles, passing through the tony Mount Lebanon suburb and towards Bethel Park for my ankle ‘PT.’
The ride took forever, as school was letting out, and obeisance along the scholastic sections of this road to a 15mph speed limit is the law here in the Commonwealth.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one’s from the South Side Flats area, nearby that brewery I often mention that has the CSX tracks running along it. That’s Mount Washington in the background, and there’s all sorts of motor vehicle/rail/light rail infrastructure on that slope.
The procedure with these shots is to twist the camera’s screen out to a ninety degree angle and then awkwardly aim the thing out the roof hole of the car. You have to account for the camera not being stabilized by squishing it against your face, but that’s just an adjustment to get used to. Everything else is autofocus and zoom.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The hard part is keeping your car out of the shot, but a purposeful inclusion is offered above. I’ve been astonished by the numbers associated with train collisions recently. In 2023, for instance, there were 2,192 collisions with moving trains in this country which caused 247 fatalities and 766 injuries. I’m not quite sure how drivers didn’t know a train was coming in a circumstance like the one above, but not all intersections between the track and road are gussied up with signal arms and bells. Also, half of U.S. population are dumb asses, so…
At any rate, Happy New Year, and I’ll be back tomorrow with something different 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.
Snowburgh
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given the clime, here in Pittsburgh, there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity to get out and walk about. I’m still quite limited in the ambulatory department, post broken ankle, but I’m not just cleared for physical activity – the Docs are actually encouraging it now.
Saying that, no way are you going to see me trying to navigate ice and snow if I don’t have to at the moment. Luckily, Our Lady of the Pentacle’s ambitions caused one to find himself in the parking lot of a local thrift store which offers a view of something I’ve been intrigued by for a while – these abandoned homes nearby the Route 51/Saw Mill Run corridor nearby the Mount Oliver section.
I’ve written about these houses on Timberland Avenue before, and was lucky enough to receive an assist on the research from long time reader ‘Lucienve.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saw Mill Run itself is a somewhat natural waterway which mainly seems to function as a drainage ditch for the business and residential structures along its route. A primary arterial road, which takes its colloquial name from the waterway, hosts a variety of businesses – many of which are automotive in nature. Car lots, mechanics, that sort of thing.
Heading in a generally eastwards direction away from Pittsburgh, Route 51 ultimately gets you to the nearby community of Uniontown. I’ve driven that way a few times, when heading towards Maryland and the very interesting Appalachian city of Cumberland.
As a note: For my ‘bicycle people’ friends – check out Cumberland, which you can reach by trail from either Pittsburgh or Washington D.C.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back at HQ, it’s been pretty much snowing all week. We got several bands of ‘lake effect’ snow recently. It’s been a real hassle with the ankle and everything, I’d mention. The weather forecast seems to be a bit more on my side in this last week of 2024, so cross your fingers…
Have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, and a Kwazy Kwanzaa.
“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 