Posts Tagged ‘Pittsburgh’
Nothing but blue skies
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Homestead Grays Bridge pictured above, spanning the Monongahela River. I don’t have much to say about it other it was lit up all pretty like on a recent Sunday afternoon when I was passing through. The last week has been pretty much overcast or super rainy here in Pittsburgh. Annoyingly so.
At any rate, one managed to get out and about a few times last week when it wasn’t raining or dire.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An errand of a somewhat pedantic nature, actually a series of such errands, found me nearby something I’ve been wanting to take a gander at – Pittsburgh’s South Park. It’s another one of the mega massive public amenities hereabouts. I was in the neighborhood and had an hour or so to spare before needing to head back to HQ, so I picked out a random destination within the 2,000 square acre urban park to aim myself at.
When I pulled the Mobile Oppression Platform into a parking lot, a big pile of deer were roaming about. They stuck around for a few minutes and posed for pictures before scampering off into a wooded section.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s an actual traffic roundabout in the park, something very common in Europe but not so much in the USA. As it turns out, the random spot I chose to pull the car over has an enormous “historicity” to it, but I’ve always been lucky when it comes to stumbling across places with an interesting past.
More on all that tomorrow, at your Newtown Pentacle.
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another archive one today
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Captured the one above back in December, right about the time we moved from NYC to Pittsburgh. This is just east of the Strip District, where a few old mills and railroad warehouses have been converted over to theatrical production. There’s a movie and tv production industry here in Pittsburgh, and operations seem to be centered around this area. I was lucky enough to be driving through at sunset.
Back next week.
“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.
Damn, that’s one heck of a Dam
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The United States Army Corps of Engineers’ Montgomery Locks and Dam is one of the giant honking pieces of infrastructure an inquisitive wanderer might encounter in Pennsylvania’s Beaver County, while scuttling along the Ohio River. This isn’t too far from the currently undefended border of the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the now infamous East Palestine locomotive derailment occurred. Up the Ohio towards Pittsburgh, you’ve got the Shell Cracker Plant mentioned on Monday and just down the river, there’s a nuclear power plant.
USACE has a page at their site which describes their operations on the Ohio in this region, which can be accessed here. To summarize – this monster dam and gate system was built between 1932 and 1936, and it replaced three earlier (late 19th century) wooden locks and dams.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The mechanics of what this facility does involves mechanical lift gates and spillways which regulate the amount of river flowing through them. This outfit works in concert with other lock and dam installations to allow the Corps to maintain the “Pittsburgh Pool” and other navigational areas, but it isn’t intended to control the flooding issues which had previously bedeviled the region. A lot of Federal cash went into not having anything like the disastrous St. Patrick’s Day flood of 1936 happen again, but there’s a completely different set of infrastructure prophylactics in place for that sort of work. This is one of the many things that I’m reading up on at the moment.
See? I’ve learned, and am learning, new things since moving here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the opposite shore, USACE has two lock systems, one for large ships and commercial vessels and another for smaller private or pleasure craft ones. The commercial lock is 600 feet long by 110 wide, and the secondary is 360 feet long by 56 feet wide. It’s costs about $6 million a year to keep this machine running, or so I’m informed.
The Ohio River is just under 1,000 miles long. It starts in Pittsburgh and eventually intersects with the Mississippi River at the southern tip of the State of Illinois. A river of cities, industry, and commerce – and a de facto extension of the Mason Dixon line between north and south – the westward flowing Ohio is also considered to be the most polluted waterway in the United States over the course of its length. It actually edges out Newtown Creek on pollution, but unlike my beloved creek, the Ohio is a source of drinking water for many of the communities found on its banks – parts of Pittsburgh, or West Virginia’s Wheeling for instance. The Ohio is thought to be the sixth oldest river in North America, and several civilizations have depended upon the ancestral waterway for its riches, including our own.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Having followed the aforementioned group of fishermen whom I had noticed leaving a pickup for a trail towards the water, one soon found himself staring into the lift gates and spillways at the heart of the operation. I had prepared for my afternoon with a “full pack” camera bag and I had all of my toys and tools with me. These are all tripod shots with the lens wearing a 10 stop ND filter to slow down the scene and mellow out the visual distraction of water ripples and that sort of thing. Generally speaking, it was pretty bright out and these are 8-10 second captures.
When I’ve got a few extra bucks in my pocket, somewhere down the line, I’m planning on replacing my current set of old school screw on filters with the more modern magnetic snap on kind. So much easier to deal with, the magnet ones. You screw the receiver onto the lens and then just “click” the filter onto it. The screw on kind are dust collectors extraordinaire, are quite “fiddly,” and it is very, very easy to scratch your expensive lens with the exposed metal edge of the screw fitting on the thing. Yeah, I know, camera nerd stuff… sorry.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The weather was definitely on my side for once, with temperatures in the low 50’s and a bright sky. It’s been a pretty warm winter here, but that’s also seen a lot of super cloudy days with dismal lighting. Back in NYC, this sort of atmospheric season would see me riding a lot of Subways out to distant stations and “shooting trains.” The subway system presents a series of horrific challenges, photography wise. Mastering that environment, which you’ll soon learn the rules of, is a fantastic exercise for learning how to work a camera.
One of the other things I’ve learned here in Pittsburgh is that when the skies are good, you take advantage of that. Pittsburgh is one of the cloudiest regions in the entire country, with something like 200 days of the year (on average) being cloudy or overcast. This is apparently caused by the shape of the terrain, which causes most storms to fly around or over Pittsburgh. Other surrounding communities less than an hour’s drive away will get walloped by snow or thunderstorms whereas in Pittsburgh itself you just get clouds and drizzle. Not a meteorologist, can’t tell you why, but it has something to do with being located in what’s considered “the foothills of the Appalachian Range.”
Where I was standing had signage indicating that this was a park, and in tune with that the thing that’s surprised this transplanted New Yorker just about everywhere I’ve visited – there was a Porta Potty available to the public to take care of business if the need arose. To a former New Yorker, this is acknowledgment of human biology is nepenthe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator enjoyed a short chat with a young fellow working as a contractor for the Feds doing maintenance on the dam and its spillways. He described what sounded like an incredibly dangerous job freeing debris and mud from occluding the gate system, one which pays less an hour than a job working a cash register back in NYC. I headed back up the hill to the Mobile Oppression Platform, whereupon my gear was packed away and the camera settings returned to my ‘catch as catch can’ handheld settings, and away from the landscape and filter setup.
Tomorrow, 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.
A place called Industry
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I admit it, it was the Shell Cracker Plant that drew me in, but it was seeing the nuclear plant’s cooling towers which made me happy while visiting Pennsylvania’s Beaver County. I’m semi confident in stating my outright and admitted guess that they’re a part of the Beaver Valley County Power Station. Guessing, as said, but there you are. First time in these parts. I think that I was in a place called Shippingport, after visiting another hamlet dubbed Industry.
I drove about the waterfront of the Ohio River for a little bit after getting a few shots of the Shell facility, doing my ‘lookie loo scoutie’ thing. A humble narrator probably looked pretty ‘sus’ to the locals while tooling along in the Mobile Oppression Platform and sticking the camera lens out the window every now and again, but there you go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There was a mill with a lot of people doing some sort of work within. Seemed like a metals business, from the overall shape of the place, but since I’m still trying to just understand where things are hereabouts… I wasn’t going to hang around and ask the hard hats what they were getting up to. There was something else nearby, which I had spotted while scrutinizing a Google map of the area, that I wanted to check out.
I had to drive through a residential town area to get there, but that wasn’t a problem. Really nice and neat little community, kind of lovely water front place with some houses that enjoyed Ohio River frontage property, dogs in yards, that sort of thing, and all framed up with the Nuclear Plant in the background. Seemed like a pretty nice place. I’d show you what it looked like, but I don’t take pictures of people’s houses for this blog because that would just get weird fast.
Factories, bridges, that sort of thing is ok by me. Houses? How’d you feel seeing some weirdo in a black raincoat pull up in a car that looks like a Star Wars Stormtrooper’s helmet right in front of your door, and start waving a camera around? Lock and load, right?
Weird. Fast.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The United States Army Corps of Engineers’ Montgomery Locks and Dam, that’s what’s pictured above, and it’s found on the Ohio River. As I pulled up to this view, a group of fisherman type guys were piling out of a pickup and they filed down a hill to get to some opportune spot below. One followed their pathway, after finding a place to park the car. It’s Federal property, so I’m technically an owner with something like a 1/363,000,000th share of the thing. You too.
Parking in this sort of area isn’t about the difficulty of finding a spot to stick the car, instead it’s trying to find a spot where you know it’s legal or socially ok to do so. In some areas of Pittsburgh, it’s considered an affront to park in front of somebody’s abode if you don’t have any particular business with them or a direct neighbor. Google up “the parking chairs of Pittsburgh” if you want to know more about this sociological wrinkle.
I’ll tell you all about this dam 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.
Plastic Beaver
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One came upon the fact that there’s a town called “Industry” about a half hour’s drive from where one dwells, and it’s found in Western Pennsylvania’s Beaver County. Most of Beaver County, which also offers a fairly invisible but lively border with the State of Ohio, is considered to be a part of what I’ve read several references to as “Greater Metropolitan Pittsburgh,” which is a geographic and cultural “something” that I’m still trying to encapsulate in my thoughts.
Since I like to take a look at things myself and in person, a quick drive to the area was undertaken, after scanning Google maps satellite views of the area and looking for any public waterfront areas or parks. Didn’t see much of that, and instead I found myself standing in the parking lot of a closed restaurant along the Ohio River staring at a plastics factory.
The Ohio River snakes through this part of Pennsylvania, flowing from its “Mile Zero” point at the conjuncture of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers in Downtown Pittsburgh, which is about thirty to forty miles away. I spotted a location to get some shots of the ‘Shell Polymers Monaca’ facility using Google maps, as is my habit. The plant is colloquially referred to as the “Shell ethylene cracker plant,” or at least that’s how the local news TV reporters refer to it whenever there’s a report about flaring or odors or discharges. Hey, if it’s good enough for CBS… As it happens, such an event had occurred the night before my visit and workers were still spraying water on a couple of pieces of equipment which were observed as glowing orange hot in videos captured by area residents. There’s lots of controversy surrounding this joint.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After all those years on Newtown Creek, you can probably imagine what I was thinking while shooting these.
Pennsylvania’s terrain offers prodigious amounts of shale oil and actual “Natural Gas.” This plant’s design allows it to convert and refine gas into other commercial chemicals, notably ethylene. Ethylene is apparently the polymer feed stock used for plastic bottles and other disposable containers. The Shell plant’s construction costs put food on a whole lot of tables for a long time, and it continues to be a regional economic engine that is just getting started. According to reports, which should be read with a grain of salt due to corporate and regulatory propaganda, an economic nimbus is starting to emerge in the surrounding communities due to monetary osmosis. Jobs, jobs, jobs.
The chemical this Shell plant is designed to manufacture, using a feedstock of Natural Gas that’s pumped in via pipeline, is a kind of plastic that’s used primarily for soda bottles. This factory is expected to manufacture some 1.6 million metric tons of the stuff a year – when it’s fully online. Regulatory authorities in Pennsylvania have licensed Shell to release 2.2 million tons of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere annually as a byproduct of their operations on the Ohio River in Beaver. The plant has been having growing pains, with frequent flares and reports of other disturbances. Shell says they’re still working on the system.
Saying that, and mentioning the Newtown Creek perspective once again, this is… y’know what? I’m new here in Pennsylvania, and my opinion on this newest of petrochemical mills is meaningless.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the life lessons I’ve learned on Newtown Creek is summed up by one of my frequently offered adages – It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is. The post apocalyptic conditions left behind when the steel industry picked up stakes back in the 70’s and 80’s in this region means that a lot of things make sense to the people here which conflict with other views of the world. Fracking, plastics factories, etc. Jobs.
Saying that, please use reusable bottles and cans as much as possible. It’s already too late, but you might as well try to not be an asshole about it. Also, pick up after the dog.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 