Posts Tagged ‘Pickman’
hung about
More experimentation with my new lens, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My pal, Jiminy the Parrot, is a ham. He’s also a great and cooperative subject when I’m trying to crack out some shots. Jiminy also hosts a wealth of fine detail in the green suit he always seems to be wearing, which makes him an excellent subject as far as testing out how a lens might perform as as far as rendering detail and color. It seems every piece of glass that you stick on your camera sees the world in its own way, and learning the way that my new Sigma 50-100 thinks and visualizes things is integral to the decision about whether or not it is a permanent addition to my kit.
At the moment, I’m loving the thing although it is damned heavy and there has been a bit of a learning curve as to how to best employ it. The lens itself weighs nearly four pounds, which is the equivalent of at least a couple of parrots. Add in the camera, and I’m waving about 5-6 pounds of gear around for hours at a pop. Doesn’t sound like much, but over the course of an average day – it adds up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned last week, the Sigma “art” series lenses have a real predilection towards rendering colors in a hyper saturated manner which can be somewhat reminiscent of the four color world of comic books. This fits my visual sensibility, but for those of you out there who prefer muted color and heavy saturated blacks in your shots, this might be a deal breaker. That’s Astoria’s Broadway in the shot above, just east of Steinway Street, if you’re curious. The lens isn’t “all the way” open, instead it’s at f2.8. I could have doubled the ISO and narrowed the lens down to f5.6 to create a bit more of an “infinite” hyper focal range, but wanted to see what a shallower depth of field would do.
Going back to the “heavy” issue, I had been carrying the thing around all day and noticed that a slight fatigue tremor was present in my right arm. The good news, of course, is that I can use the extra exercise. The bad news is that my right arm is going to tone up to accommodate the extra carry while my left hangs there uselessly and will end up looking like a little tyrannosaur limb in comparison. Guess I’ll have to just carry around a gallon of milk or something with the left as I wander about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The virtue of this device, of course, is in the wide open side of it for usage in low light situations. The shot above is handheld and captured at ISO 800 at f1.8. It’s also Broadway in Astoria, and depicts the corner that HQ is found on. Since the night shots are what I’m interesting in pursuing this fall and winter, rather than brightly lit daytime shots of Jiminy the Parrot, the shot above is pretty promising as far as what this piece of glass is capable of.
Weather permitting, I’m planning on making a late night pot of coffee pretty soon and putting on one of my orange safety vests in preparation for an “all nighter” wandering around the industrial zones and concrete devastations surrounding that legendary exemplar of Municpal neglect known as the Newtown Creek.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
so special
A busy week arrives.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator has been somewhat less than fully engaged with my normal round for the last couple of weeks, simply in the name of enjoying the last couple of weeks of August. Uncharacteristic of me, periodic downtime is nevertheless a “necessary.” One believes that all true wisdom can be gleaned from 1970’s “prog rock” lyrics and as the band “Yes” proferred in their anthem “Roundabout” – don’t surround your self with yourself, move on back to square.
Ruts can be depressing, as are the daily demands of the world.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This week, I’ve got a fairly major Newtown Creek event going on (not a public event, unfortunately) which has been increasingly all consuming, that will play out on Wednesday evening. Suffice to say, it takes place on a boat, and that one has been tremulously watching the quite changeable weather reports that have accompanied the path of Hurricane Hermine up the eastern seaboard.
As soon as the event has passed, which will be after Wednesday evening, I’ve got a few new offerings for the general public as far as walking tours and so on that I’ll tell y’all about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The aquatic excursion will be a Newtown Creek event, onboard and co hosted by the Fireboat John J. Harvey, which I’ve been describing to invitees as a “Community Conversation about Newtown Creek with the Newtown Creek Community.” The event will bring together community representatives, business leaders, environmentalists, and government employees with the goal of discussing the future. I’m proud too say that one of the goals of the trip – to engage neighborhood people and organizations from the eastern section of the Creek (Maspeth, East Williamsburg, Bushwick) seems to have been accomplished. The event has been underwritten – in the name of full disclosure – by Connective Strategies and the Newtown Creek Group, who represent the “potentially responsible parties” named in the Superfund declaration.
Cross your fingers, as this should be a rather productive conversation. We are nearing the interval in which the post superfund future of Newtown Creek will be decided upon, and it’s one of my goals to ensure that everybody’s voice and concerns be addressed. As I’ve told multiple people – there’s a path which I think is the right one, but it’s not up to me to tell Maspeth what it needs. That’s what City Hall does, and unlike the Mayor I happen to believe in Democracy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As an aside, the probable serial killer whom I’ve christened the “Queens Cobbler” seems to have returned to the area, and resumed their nefarious work – as evidenced by a sudden dearth of “single shoe” occurrences.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
rational position
I really need a vacation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Part of the fun involved with buying a new lens is testing it out. Doesn’t matter how good or bad the device is, there’s “sweet spots” and contradictory failings which the itinerant wanderer needs to be familiar with if the thing is part of the daily carry. The B&H folks have a fairly generous return and exchange policy, and in my experience, the window in which you can hand them back the lens is a crucial interval for the investment. Accordingly, one has been shooting everything, and everywhere.
I can tell you this, the sigma 50-100 is one hell of a portrait lens, but I’ve had unequal results in certain circumstances. My effort at the moment is to discover where and when those failings occur, rendering them predictable.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the places this lens absolutely sings is in the dark. The shot above is “wide open” and was captured while I was waiting for the train at 59th street recently. I’ve been saying it for a while, but the subway system is an absolutely fantastic photography workshop. Worst case scenario lighting, with a reflective subject moving at speed through darkness.
I don’t often “open the hood” on the process I use to produce shots for Newtown Pentacle, but since a bunch of you asked after yesterday’s post…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shots above were captured at f2.2, with the lens dialed out to 94mm at ISO 5000. I’ve got a few other “bright lenses” but the sigma 50-100 really does a beautiful job drinking in the lurid shimmerings of pale light, and it literally outshines the other specimens in my “dark” kit. You can discern the lens’s aperture blades in the hot spots surrounding the R train’s headlights, incidentally.
Shots like these subway images are dependent, in my experience on shooting posture. There are US Army sniper rifle manuals out there which discuss shooting postures, and the body posture process which riflemen use to steady and focus their fire on targets is quite appropriate for the capture of light through a lens, IMHO.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From a different commute, the shot above was captured at Queens Plaza, and also depicts an R line train entering the station. There’s a bright, almost cartoony quality to the way that sigma’s “art” series lenses renders primary colors which required some adjusting on the saturation slider when I was working on the shot in Photoshop’s “camera raw” window.
For those not in the know, RAW format is essentially an uncompressed digital negative which allows a great deal of fine tuning to the captured shot as the file contains ALL of the information which the sensor saw, whereas JPEG is an image which is compressed and all the decisions have been made for you by the camera. Those decisions include color temperature, depth of shadows/highlights and so on. Every RAW shot can therefore receive a bit of a tweak, and I always shoot in that format.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the things I engage in when testing a lens is trying to push it to fail. Architectural detail does not work well with a wide open lens, due to the shallow depth of field. Even an infinity focus will produce unacceptable “bokeh” in this context, or at least it’s unacceptable to my eye. I want to see every rivet.
Saying that, the two shots of the Manhattan Bridge in today’s post were shot at f2.2 on a sunny afternoon.
I think I’m going to keep this lens.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
rat bitten
Manhattan just stinks, yo.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, I did two things which I had been looking forward to for a bit. The first was the purchase of a new lens to fit into the camera, one whose specific occupation and design revolves around low light and night time photography (the shots in today’s post were captured with the thing), and the other was narrating a Working Harbor Committee “Newark Bay” excursion. Having the former with me, and having completed the mission for the latter, one headed for the Subway to make a hasty retreat back to the rolling hills of almond eyed Astoria .
My path carried me through the stinking warrens of the financial district.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For many years did a humble narrator live on this island called Manhattan, which one used to refer to as “Home sweet Hell.” At night, the garbage collects on the concrete in front of office building and apartment block alike. The vermin rise from the sewers, drawn by the scent of festering food and moldering coffee grounds. Sidewalks narrow, and oddly colored rivulets of khaki colored liquid ooze into the gutters through rodent chewed apertures in the bags of filth. Sidewalk pavement and roadway asphalt both seem to be covered in a layer of rancid cooking grease, which gets tracked around by a thousand pairs of shoes an hour. It was a hot night, humid.
And they say Newtown Creek smells…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was heading for the Fulton Street stop for the 5 line. The 5, an express, is the preferred method for me to escape the municipal and financial center of the greatest city the world has ever known. The line traverses the spine of the island, and allows for a connection to a Queens bound train in just a few stops. The less time spent on this island, especially the southern third of it, the better.
That’s where I spotted this mountain blocking the cross walk and spilling into the street.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has many friends who call Manhattan home – and as confessed earlier – I used to do so myself. My cliff dwelling pals tend to get hot under the collar when a humble narrator begins to discuss his disdain for the unsustainable civilization of Manhattan. My points are all “matter of fact,” and I usually advocate for something like “Brexit” but involving Queens, Staten Island, and Brooklyn breaking away from the center and forming a new political entity which is a bit less vampiric than the one we’ve had since 1898 – which is centered around a Beaux Arts building that we unfortunately keep Bill De Blasio in that stands (partially) on what was once a colonial era garbage dump known as the “Collect Pond.”
“Consume, consume, consume, flush, throw it out, let it be somebody else’s problem” – that should be the Borough Motto over in the City.
I would hazard a guess that within six hours of the above shot being captured, the entire mountain of trash pictured above was actually being sorted somewhere along Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There was a fellow at the center of the midden, peeking into bags and removing items of value like recyclable deposit bottles and bits of copper wire. Got to hand it to the “canners” for their industry and hustle, you really do. The streets are literally paved with gold in America, or at least there’s money lying around in the stinking streets.
What many don’t know is that canners have their own territorial “routes” in the City, and that violating another canner’s turf can result in a physical confrontation. I discovered that there’s also an organized crime aspect to this industry, or at least there used to be over on the West Side, back when I lived in Manhattan about fifteen years ago. Mystery trucks would show up at predetermined times and locations, paying cash at three to four cents per bottle, as opposed to the little chits that you get from the recycling machines at supermarkets which you need to redeem within. The canners are happy to settle for the lesser number, as they don’t have to waste hours feeding the machines which take one can at a time, or deal with the manager of a supermarket for whom they are less than a priority.
Something very similar to this collection spot has been observed in Sunnyside, incidentally, on 43rd street beneath the Long Island Railroad Tracks. There’s a Spaniard with a van… but, of course, the scale of business that the canners of Queens operate at for an entire week would be dwarfed by a single night’s worth of collections for these financial district guys.
Wall Street versus Main Street, I guess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In addition to the rats and canners scurrying about, the sewer grates hereabouts also crawl with roaches and water bugs migrating in and out of Manhattan’s underworld. Those little black “drain flies” are also abundant in the air. The smell, which I attempted to define earlier, could be best described as “yellow.”
As an aside, I’ve always found it interesting that in English there are so few words, comparatively, for descriptions of smells. There thousands of visual adjectives, plenty for sounds, lots for the touch and feel category, but relatively few for smells. Accordingly, I ascribe colors to the descriptions of smells, and after dark – Manhattan smells yellow. I have spoken.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The worst part of lower Manhattan, to me at least, is that for the people who work hereabouts – this all must seem normal. Unfortunately, most of the people who spend their professional lives in this area can be best described as financial titans, realtors, politicians, and an army of government bureaucrats. Spending their time in this stinking, shadowy warren of imposing buildings and narrow sidewalks – which only occasionally allow a glimpse of the sky or a breeze – has made them think that this is what the entire city should look like and that they’ve somehow failed the rest of us until it does.
It’s why when they visit Queens or Brooklyn, their first instinct is to demolish some property and erect large buildings on it. Those large buildings can then be used for affordable housing people who “don’t fit” in Manhattan. These people can then support themselves by collecting cans, or whatever, as long as it’s somebody else’s problem.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
unused tool
Really, how free are the birds, actually?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Air traffic is something we all notice, occasionally indulge in, and which we are surrounded by. Newtown Pentacle HQ is in Astoria, Queens and LaGuardia Airport is literally on the other side of the neighborhood so I guess that I see a bit more in the way of passing passenger jets than most do. Luckily, the flight path approaches seem to be rotated so that no one neighborhood, other than East Elmhurst, gets the honor of being a daily pathway for the airborne masses and the host of pathogens they carry in their skinvelopes.
Saying that though, one worries about zombies. If the undead contagion arrives in NYC, and NY1 is reporting that hordes of revenants have begun to tear into the local population, it will have likely arrived in the City at one of our three airports. I can only hope it would start at Newark or JFK, so I’d have some time to board up the windows and reinforce the doors with odd pieces of furniture. My bet is that the neighborhood of Jamaica, Queens would make short work of the revenants, as they seem to be very well armed out there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Those of us who aren’t members of the Saudi Royal family, the Political Elites, or relative paupers like the Walls Street guys wouldn’t have the option of using private helicopters to escape the hordes of flesh eaters, and would need to shelter in place instead. It would be wise to blockade the bridges, of course, as the last thing we’d need in Western Queens would be for the Manhattan people to start trying to take shelter hereabouts. We get enough of that “let them eat cake” crap as it is from the population of that island.
Actually, the smart thing to do would be to lead the zombies out of Queens and towards Manhattan. Then, we blockade the bridges. Let the City people deal with it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, the fleeing masses of upper class folks would soon spread the zombie plague to Fire Island, Montauk, the Hamptons, and Martha’s Vineyard. Nobody ever really comes back from Suffolk County, so… not so much of problem for us in Western Queens. There’s no way that the hordes of undead assassins would be able to penetrate the crowded highways back into the City, they’d get stuck in a body jam on the LIE.
Additionally, nobody beats the Van Wyck, ever.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Personally, Our Lady of the Pentacle and I would be fine. We’ve got around three cans of tomato soup in the cupboard, and a few cans of Goya chick peas as well. That’s enough food to wait out the apocalypse, isn’t it?
On a non sarcastic note, today is National Dog Day, so go love your puppy.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 