Posts Tagged ‘Pittsburgh’
steep, man, steep
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator decided it was time to visit a few of the local establishments in my new neighborhood of Pennsylvania’s Dormont that serve adult beverages, and explore the “scene” as it were. Most of the commercial activity in my new zone is car based, but as you’d hope, there’s a few drinking parlors found in direct proximity of the T light rail station – pictured above – which is, coincidentally, about a 15 minute walk from HQ.
That’s the “Potomac” station for the Red Line T in Dormont. The street it runs on is called “Broadway Avenue.” Apparently, when they established Dormont, the idea that guided the naming of the roads here including the offering of “a town without streets,” so every street is an ‘Avenue’ instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Broadway Avenue is more or less the high point hereabouts. I don’t know if it qualifies as a “ridge” or not, but all of the streets which cross it fall off in altitude and drop down into valleys. It’s not uncommon for the roads here to be set at a 15-20 degree angle. The steepest street in North America is nearby, in the Beechview section, dubbed Canton Avenue.
Having grown up in a subsection of a part of Brooklyn called “Flatlands,” that’s next door to “Flatbush,” this sort of terrain continually blows my mind. When you’re driving and you come to an intersection, you’ll notice gouges in the asphalt left behind by people who tried to conquer this terrain at too high a rate of speed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s two ways for me to get to and from the T, with one being quite a bit easier to surmount than the other. The most direct connection to the transit line would involve usage of the street above, dubbed “Lasalle Avenue.” Quite a few of the roads here use pavers rather than asphalt for the surfacing. When a vehicle is negotiating down Lasalle, you hear a grinding vibration from its tires and the pavers clanking against each other.
This particular evening was quite cold and icy, and there were a couple of spots where I was literally standing still and still slipping down the road due to gravity and the abrogation of friction.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While absorbing a few pints of beer, I also absorbed some local knowledge and lore from a couple of the different bartenders who were pouring the libations. Some of it was horrific, an unsolved and truly macabre murder from the 1980’s which occurred near that T station pictured above, and the Bookshop Killer was also mentioned (said Bookshop Killer has apparently gotten got.) I also got advice on restaurants, other bars, and an admonition to visit some wilderness in somewhat nearby Western Maryland for white water rafting. Y’know I’d like to take pictures of white water rafting, but…
After making my way back to HQ, and with a few belts in me, I decided to try and figure out what color the street lights are.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You can adjust the “color temperature” of your shot during the developing process in Photoshop, but as I’ve discovered over the years – it kind of matters what you had the camera set to when you’re capturing the photo. Particularly so in low light situations. It’s the “nitty gritty” side of digital photography, and it’s nuanced by knowing how digital images work when you “look under the hood.” The street lights in NYC create a luminance that’s best captured at about 3400 kelvin, which conquers the cool blue LED street lights. Pittsburgh still uses old school sodium maps, which produce an orange yellow light.
The camera will thereby attempt to build the image primarily on the red plate since that’s where most of the light’s coloration is found, which creates all sorts of problems as far as generating sensor noise. A bit of experimentation has revealed that my new “night setting” for captures in Pittsburgh should be 2800 Kelvin, which forces the pixel depth to build up on the green and blue plates, along with the red. This reduces the grainy noise issue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In daylight settings, I capture at 5200 Kelvin, if you’re curious. If it’s cloudy out, I’ll use 5800 Kelvin to make sure that the sky has something in it beyond just “blue gray.” I’ll adjust the actual color in Photoshop, which pushes the histogram into looking “normal.”
Digital images, of course are generally in RGB mode. If you’ve got Photoshop on your device, you can actually look at the three plates individually. It’s worth analyzing how the image is actually formed up, and why something you did in the field failed or succeeded during the developing process. Shoot for the edit, I always say.
Anyway, that was my big night out in Dormont, Pennsylvania. Something different tomorrow, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
back to West End Overlook Park
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On December 29th, a humble narrator negotiated his way back to the West End Elliot Overlook Park in the Elliot section of Pittsburgh in the late afternoon. I offered a couple of shots I’d captured up here at dawn last week, but even while I was shooting those I was thinking “I have to come back here at sunset, this “view” is a sunset thing.” Also mentioned last week, sunset in Pittsburgh isn’t a couple of hours long like it is in NYC, with its oceanic skies. Due to the geography here, the setting sun casts the hard shadow of Mount Washington across the confluence of the three rivers and the city’s center midway through its descent.
One got to the spot in West End with plenty of time to spare and set up my gear. I had a nice conversation with some kid from the surrounding neighborhood, who was imbibing the devil’s cabbage and chilling out. He was the first of several folks I interacted with while shooting.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the West End Bridge over the Ohio River, lit up all sexy like in the shot above. I had erroneously called it the McKees Rocks Bridge in a prior post but received a correction in the comments from one of you brilliant people.
Alexander McKee, for whom McKees Rocks and both the eponymous bridge and the nearby community of McKeesport are named for, was an early trader based in this region, whom initial research reveals as having displayed a surprisingly modern point of view towards the “First Nation” Native Americans that populated this part of the continent.
At any rate, while I was waiting for the sky and sun to align to my liking, and the local kid whom I was chatting with had departed, I began twisting my tripod head around. “Up, down, all around,” that’s one of my mottoes. A passing couple struck up conversation with me next. They were wearing Steelers gear, and told me that they were “Yinzers” or Pittsburgh “born and bred’s” who had moved out to “the country” a couple of decades ago and were “in town” for a few days to see a theatrical show and attend a sports ball game.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Off in the distance, I spotted the Allegheny Observatory which I had described to you – lords and ladies – a couple of weeks ago. As mentioned in that post, I’m attempting to visit the prominences surrounding the three rivers’ valleys to try and develop a sense of spatial relationship. When you’re driving along on the many, many high speed roads that transect Pittsburgh, it is fairly impossible to do so.
I’ve mentioned that there’s a different “etiquette” as far as driving here, as in with the “Pittsburgh Left,” but there’s also a very different polity at work on the roads. They don’t honk quite as much here, but it’s fairly common for somebody to crawl right up your butt if they think you’re driving too slowly. “Too slowly” in this area means you’re only exceeding the speed limit by 20-30%. Following distance is one of the most important thing to be aware of when driving on a highway. For every ten miles of speed, maintain at least one car length of space between you and the car in front of you. If you needed to jam down on and lock your brakes to screech to a complete stop, the minimum amount of space you’d need to come to a complete stop is one car length per ten miles of speed. Yup – that’s close to a hundred feet at 55 mph, which sounds crazy and unrealistic but isn’t. When I can see the brand of sunglasses you’re wearing in my rear view mirror, that’s way too close. Also…
I’m seriously having to learn a new style of performance driving around here, with the crazy hills and the serpentine curves that bend around prominences or along cliffs. Lots of hidden driveways as well, with blind turns happening at high speed, there’s highway exits that appear out of seemingly nowhere, stop signs on highway entrance ramps… a dynamic driving environment, Pittsburgh is.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
See what I mean about that hard sunset shadow cast by Mount Washington? One hung about at the park overlook, and some woman with a very enthusiastic dog arrived and set herself up nearby to play some sort of steel drum like instrument as the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself disappeared. I was enjoying the jam she was playing and decided that I’d like to stick around until the lights in Pittsburgh came on.
Since I’m a suburban asshole now, I feel like I should refer to this downtown section as “The City” but there’s only one place which I’ll ever use that term for and it’s 400 miles diagonally east and north of here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post is being written at the end of the first week of January, and it was literally this morning that – for the first time in 5 weeks – I actually had a fond “miss that” thought about NYC. It was bagel related. The bagels here are strange and anemic little things.
Thankfully, Pittsburgh actually has decent Pizza. Finding a pizzeria that does slices is a bit of a deal (they do 8” personal pizzas instead), but the local Pizza is actually pretty good. They tend to overdo it with toppings, giving into the tendency in this part of the country to throw every kind of meat you can imagine on top of the thing, but the thick crust is nice. Thankfully, it’s not the abrogation of all that’s right which… Philadelphia… calls Pizza.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot was the one I was waiting around for, and soon after shooting it I decided to get out of dodge and back to HQ in neighboring Dormont. This decision was influenced by the dynamic driving environment mentioned above, as I don’t feel at all confident driving around at night around here and won’t until I get to know these roads and their peculiarities a bit better.
I had a rare moment of spare time, in between “have-to’s” and rainy days, so I decided to try and make the most of an unusually warm week in Pittsburgh over the first few days of 2023. My reward for the efforts of December and November was the few days I had to explore, I’d posit.
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.
a church on Polish Hill
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the 28th of December, one had an errand to run. It’s seems that the ubiquitous ATM machines of a certain NYC based bank which my accounts are with are not so commonly found here in Pittsburgh. That meant that in order to avoid paying a fee when withdrawing some cash, I needed to drive for a bit in order to do so. I will crawl through broken glass to avoid paying ATM fees, as a note. That’s how I ended up in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, nearby the campus of the University of Pittsburgh or “PITT.”
That’s the literal crowning glory of their campus, called the “Cathedral of Learning.” I know very little about it, but the Wikipedia link attached to the name can explain it all to you, lords and ladies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Since I was sort of in the neighborhood, I satisfied my curiosity regarding an impressive religious building that I had spotted from the flatlands of the Strip District on prior outings to this area.
That’s the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, a 1905 structure that hosts a presumptively Polish Roman Catholic congregation. The prominence it is set onto is called Polish Hill.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One thing I can report, after my very limited experience here in the Pittsburgh area, is that the neighbors are quite friendly. Several times have I been approached while taking pictures of this or that, expecting the old refrain of “what are you doing, or you can’t do that, or are you in Al Qaeda” that I’ve often encountered. Instead, there’s a real pride in the neighborhood bubbling out of the locals, as in the case of an older gentleman who walked over to me while I was cracking out a few exposures. Before ten minutes rolled by, he told me his whole life’s story before he had to skedaddle off to meet a girlfriend. Dude had to be 80. You go, son, you go!
Most of the chats have been the usual ones – they have a camera that they don’t know how to use and do I know what it’s worth – that sort of thing. The second I open my mouth to speak, and they hear the accent, they’ll ask “where are you from.” When I tell them I just moved to Pittsburgh from New York, they look at me all puzzled and say “Why?”
This has happened several times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One circled around the church in the automobile, easily finding spots to park in when an interesting point of view appeared. This one is looking north towards the Allegheny River from up on Polish Hill.
A lot of my time at the moment is being spent trying to a) finish the moving process and get established here, and b) learn the jigsaw puzzle of the neighborhoods and roads which form Allegheny County.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s an abandoned looking parochial school just up the hill from Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is one of the very few places I’ve seen graffiti. I don’t know if it’s municipal will or civic pride, but I find it striking how little of that sort of thing I’m seeing. Maybe it’s just how over the top NYC is with graffiti. I’m not talking about the nice “street art” murals kind of graffiti, mind you, I’m talking about “punks” “tagging” stuff.
It’s been very interesting living in a place where the government doesn’t seek to “monetize” you quite as much as the NYC one does. Robot cameras aren’t sitting on the traffic lights, there’s abundant free or fairly cheap parking for motor vehicles, especially so nearby mass transit centers, and when you need to go somewhere only a few miles away you can do so without passing through a crucible of purposely induced traffic jams. You can also go from one section of the metroplex to another without having to shell out an hour’s wages in tolls.
Again, it ain’t necessarily sunshine and handjobs out here, but it’s nice not having an army of professional assholes thinking up new ways to get the buckaroos out of your pocket so they can fund some numbnut’s political ambitions.
Say… how’s d’at fer da most Brooklynz t’ing I’s said inna last few weekz?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I really, really want to get inside this building. I’m positive that I’ll figure out a way to do so, and my desire to photograph whatever glories it contains should be obvious to longtime readers. I like photographing Catholic Churches (Greek ones too!). This is, of course, something I’m going to figure out a way to social engineer some official permission for. I’ve never been one of those guys who walks into a church and just starts shooting without asking. That’s rude.
I mean, I’ve done it, but it was rude. Like I said, this part of the country has manners, and is polite. They also don’t curse as much, if you can ‘effin believe that.
“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 day in the neighborhood
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off, when you’re driving through Pittsburgh and you want to stop and get out of your car, you can find a metered parking spot pretty easily. As in, you drive somewhere and there one is. They use an electronic system here, one where you go to a nearby kiosk, enter your license plate information, and then pay your due. They also use coin meters here and there, but there you go. It’s mostly the kiosk version downtown, by my very limited observation. As a former New Yorker, this is a startling innovation to me.
When you leave an abusive relationship, normal courteousness seems revelatory to you.
Coming back from the Allegheny Observatory, I stopped off at the river it’s named for, and set up the tripod to take advantage of the late afternoon lighting. That’s downtown Pittsburgh pictured above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I found myself a slightly elevated location to shoot from where I wouldn’t have to worry too much about watching my back. This allowed me to concentrate on what I was doing. The entire time I was shooting, I was hearing the words and songs of Fred Rogers, as in Mr. Rogers. “I like you just the way you are,” “everybody is special,” and so on. I wasn’t going crazy, instead I was at the Mr. Rogers memorial!
I should mention that I love Fred Rogers, and if you’re Generation X as I am, you probably do as well. That guy…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the American culture, we venerate warriors and businessmen and killers and sports heroes, generally. It’s not often that someone rises to the top of the heap for being kind to children. Rogers was a Pittsburgh native, and his show was produced at the local PBS station – WQED. A friend of mine who’s lived here for a few decades described seeing Mr. Rogers regularly at a local supermarket in the Squirrel Hill section where they both lived, and often overheard him talking to kids – “you seem very smart… I bet you know how to spell Broccoli, don’t you?” was the gist of how he described those encounters to me.
The monument to Mr. Rogers is wired for sound, and plays a repeating reel of him singing, and his various sayings. Fantastic!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I had set myself up for “landscape” mode with the camera, shooting “low and slow” as I describe it. This is when I feel “creative” while shooting, rather than just being a shutter monkey. The problem you encounter with this setup – which involves a filter and a series of settings designed to reduce the amount of light moving through the lens – is when something is entering the frame and suddenly you want to capture it, without it going all motion blurry.
That’s the Fort Pitt Bridge and the entrance to the Fort Pitt tunnel which pierces Mount Washington pictured above.
Luckily, I’ve learned to be prepared for this change of circumstance when the camera is in landscape mode by the University of Newtown Creek, and I can be shooting “fast” images within about 20 seconds of rapid dial twisting and settings adjustments and without having to remove the filter or otherwise alter the operation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I saw both the freight train and the tugboat coming together from opposite sides of the frame, and managed to pop off this shot.
It was time to head back home to Dormont. I packed up the gear, hopped back in the wheels, and made a decision that I was going to rely solely on my own sense of direction to get back to HQ rather than use any sort of navigation software. I’m going to come back to this spot at dawn sometime soon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On my way, I hit a small patch of rush hour traffic wherein the vehicle and I were only traveling at about 20 mph through downtown Pittsburgh. Heh. Traffic… what was that I was saying about abusive relationships?
I got stuck at a few traffic lights during this interval, but I popped open the moon roof on the car and took advantage of that on the way.
More next week, from the Paris of Appalachia, 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.
allegheny observatory
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
According to every authority I could find, the highest point in Pittsburgh is 1,223 feet above sea level and it’s at the Allegheny Observatory, on Pittsburgh’s north side. Saying that, there’s supposedly another spot up here that’s higher – 1,370 feet at Brashear Reservoir, but I didn’t know that when I came to the observatory. Next time, I guess.
Having accomplished all of my have-to’s during the prior day, I set off in the car to experience this prominence. It was about a twenty minute drive from our new HQ location in Dormont to get there.
One of the nice things about Pittsburgh is that if something is only 15 miles away, you don’t have to prepare for three to five hours of travel time due to the chronic bullshit of MTA, nor to compensate for the average traffic speed in NYC of 4.1 mph.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Operated and owned by the University of Pittsburgh, this 1912 building is the second observatory to stand here, with the first one having been erected in 1859. The institution supported itself historically by supplying telegraph transmitted chronology information to the Pennsylvania Rail Road and other national level carriers, a service which became known as “Allegheny Time” which the far flung network of rail would use to synchronize their clocks three times a day.
Additionally, the first descriptions of sunspots were accomplished here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are three telescopic domes in this building, and it’s still a working observatory. For a full description of the building’s history and the technical specifications of its equipment, click this link.
The neighborhood which hosts the observatory is called Perry North, and the actual building is housed within Riverview Park. Perry North has a terrific number of late 19th and early 20th century homes, many of which look like mansions – to the eyes of this bloke from Brooklyn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Complaining about how phone based navigational software works is going to be an entirely new topic to bitch about here, and despite there being a properly graded secondary arterial road which goes directly to Riverview Park from one of the primary interstate routes that run through Pittsburgh, the “Waze” people instead set me upon a path that involved driving through residential local streets which were set against the terrain at 20+ degree angles, ones which also demanded switch back turns where the car would need to negotiate 90-120 degree turns in alarmingly short distances and at speed.
This is truly annoying. I don’t mind a challenging drive every now and then, but it can’t be “the more efficient route“ if you’re making a 120 degree left turn while the car is sitting at a 25 degree angle with its nose up in the air. Grrr. I fear that Waze will drive me off a cliff.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were deer running around up here at the Observatory. There’s also a dog park, and I chatted with a guy who was setting up a long skateboard getting ready to slalom the mile and half back down to the relatively flat land at the bottom of the prominence.
The views of the city from up there were all fairly occluded by trees, which was a bit disappointing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My day was just getting started, I would mention. I hadn’t discovered much time to wave the camera about quite yet, what with the unpacking of a few essentials in the boxes we drove out personally, and setting up the house with furniture and such. These shots are from the 5th of December. I’d be heading back to NYC on the 8th to deal with some “ending” business and deal with the movers, so the 5th was all I’d be getting this particular interval as far as exploring.
On my way home to the new HQ in Dormont, however, I had to stop and get a few shots from a certain place. It was, after all, a wonderful day in the neighborhood.
“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 