Top Chef Duels -- surprisingly not-terrible! --is on Bravo tonight (we'll talk about it soon)Any sign of Batman? (photo by Mitch Waxman; click to enlarge)by KenI was thinking I might write about Bravo's Top Chef Duels this evening, in time for tonight's new episode, having finally looked at a couple of episodes and discovered that it's surprisingly not-terrible. We got to watch how a couple of chefs, going head to head, approach the given challenges -- starting with a pair set by the episode's contenders -- and execute them, which is kind of fun as long as we don't pretend it adds up to anything more.Meanwhile, though, there's this blogost of Mitch Waxman's, from his Newtown Pentacle blog, that I really wanted to share. Mitch has been the subject of a number of posts here (here, for example; and most recently here, photographing Astoria at twilight). On the blog Mitch chronicles his wanderings, camera gear at the ready, around (most often) his Queens home base of Astoria and related territories plus the Brooklyn and Queens basin of his beloved befouled Newtown Creek (he's the official historian of the Newtown Creek Alliance), in and around which he does frequent tours for Brooklyn Brainery and Atlas Obscura, among others.One reason for keeping up with Mitch's blog is information about his tours as they upcome. But a larger reason is the gloomy charm of his urban wanderings, always accompanied by those spectacular pictures of his.This story of Mitch's, from a suitable-for-Halloween-season blogpost called "conscious or subconscious," found our narrator doing some night shooting in the Court Square area of Long Island City, which he notes he has learned from the new TV series Gotham is the Gotham City home base of -- you guessed it, Batman! While "popping off a few exposures" in Bat-territory, he writes, "one suddenly experienced a tap on the shoulder."
A fellow was standing next to me, just a little too close for comfort, and watching as I played around with camera settings and assumed the series of odd postures which have proven themselves efficacious when attempting to gather low light shots without deploying a tripod. He said “Can I ask you a question?” as he slipped his hand into his knapsack. A child of New York in the 1980’s, and a Batman fan, I immediately began working out defensive solutions in my mind. There were five. Two would just put space between me and him, one would have busted his pelvis, and the other two would have put me in front of a judge for attempted homicide. The sixth solution was to wait, and find out what the question was.He slowly pulled his hand out of the carry all, and there was something large – and heavy – held in his grasp. “Here we go again” I thought.As his hand, grasping a large object which was black in coloration and clearly metallic, exited the bag – one was prepared to grab his wrist with my right hand and pull his arm and a probable weapon down toward the sidewalk and away from me. My left arm was primed to deliver a sharp elbow to his throat while I was simultaneously preparing to deliver a hip check that any NHL player would have approved of (this is one of the two solutions in which I end up in front of a judge). That’s when the fellow asked his question – “can you help me learn how to take better shots at night” as his hand finally emerged from the knap sack and produced a consumer level Nikon with an f3.5 zoom lens on it. Thereupon, a short lesson in aperture, ISO, and shutter speed ensued.Gotham, indeed.
Ah, the surprises of the night here in Gotham City. (On the Newtown Pentacle site, watch for the link to sign up for an e-mail subscription, which gets you an e-notification of each post that goes up. I almost always click through, and am almost always delighted.)Long Island City at night (photo by Mitch Waxman; click to enlarge)#
