Photobycate Weblog

Miles of Wires

A favorite urban object of mine to photograph is the ever-present thick black wires or fiber optic cables running along up above the avenues and boulevards of Astoria; stretching across the streets and connecting homes to cable TV and land line telephones. Over the years I’ve amassed quite a collection due to the fact that every time I walk with my camera I can’t help but take a few shots.

Using the sky as a huge canvass I paint my images with the tangled, bunched, twisted, curled, looped or frayed wire. I have them moving horizontally or vertically through dramatic deep blue or grey cloud layered skies. I follow them as they slice through trees and wrap around poles.  I capture them ornamented with old worn gym sneakers or deflated wind torn Mylar balloons; snagged on the wires like flies in a spider web, or starlings grasping the wires tight with their sharp tiny talons.

Looking up I survey the sky creating abstract images in my mind as I decide on a grouping of wires or just one fine line running through the landscape.  Sometimes choosing a house or building as a background fronted by a wild crisscrossing of these licorice black wires.

One of the first wire images I took was of plastic sheeting caught in the dry claw of a tree branch which was snagged on a group of wires,  furiously billowing and blowing, the edges wind-whipped and shredded. The minute I spotted this I thought of witches flying through the air on black brooms and I had to include it in this blog.

Below is a sample of these artistically rendered images new and old from my walks along the urban streets of my hometown of Astoria Queens.

June 4, 2012 - Posted by Cate Franklyn | Photography | fiber optic cable, poles, telephone, wires