Stop for a moment and gauge the passage of time and your relative perception of it.

I made this photograph about 1980. I’d been fascinated by the New Haven Railroad, and what I saw here I viewed then as a relic of times long gone.

The old railroads such as the New Haven were those that my dad had photographed back in the days of sunny Kodachrome.

At the time, I made this view of old New Haven cars at New Haven, Connecticut, I was 13. Conrail was then only 4 years old (formed on April 1, 1976), yet for me even its predecessor, Penn-Central was already a foggy memory.

Looking back now, to me it doesn’t seem so long ago that Conrail vanished (Its operations ended in 1999). And yet, for point of comparison Conrail been gone almost four years longer (17 years) than I’d been alive at the time I made the photo.

What is interesting? What seems old?

In a high-school math class, I once remarked to my teacher, Mr. Ed Lucas, “Time and your perception of time are in inverse proportions to each other. The more time you experience, the faster it seems to go by.”

He replied, “That’s awfully profound for someone your age!”

Before Christmas, I related this story over dinner. However, I was stunned to learn a little more than a week later that Ed Lucas passed away on New Years eve.

It doesn’t seem so long since I sat in his class, and yet in another way it also seems like the dawn of time (or my perception of time)!

Tracking the Light Looks Back.

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