This is part three in Brian Solomon’s look at street railway transport in San Francisco. To see the photos and read the story click the link below: http://www.shirebooks.co.uk/blog/san_francisco_electric_streetcars_history_today/
Tracking the Light Posts New Material Every Day!
Streetcars of America by Brian Solomon and John Gruber is available from Shire Books. See: Streetcars of America.
I’ve been fascinated by Fuji’s mirror-less cameras for a while. Pat Yough has a couple of them. In my previous post, I wrote of my fleeting experience with Pat’s X-T1. The other day, Pat gave me his X-E2 to play with.
Previously, I’d experimented with the X-E2 at the Streamliners at Spencer event last summer in North Carolina. On that occasion, I’d used the camera with a pancake lens and tried to match scenes using a Lumix LX7 as a side by side comparison.
I quickly found that making these type of comparisons obviated the inherent operating advantages of each camera system. This is an important point for me, and one too often ignored by professional camera reviewers.
For me the way a camera handles and its ease of use are crucial functional considerations. I make different types of images with different equipment.
So, what can a Fuji X-E2 do for me?
Picking up any unfamiliar camera and charging into the image-making process has its fair share of challenges. This is acerbated by the inherent complexity of many modern digital cameras. To simply get the camera meter mode and focus point where I’d expect them, requires layers of menu surfing.
It took more than a few minutes to get a handle on the X-E2. On Thursday December 11, 2014, we explored the New Hope & Ivyland’s tourist train operations.
This was a perfect opportunity to put the camera through its paces; I wasn’t pressured by the need to document the operation, since I can come back anytime and photograph it again. Also, poor and changeable weather conditions allowed me to push the X-E2 and see what it can do in lousy light. I also made a few comparisons with my Lumix LX-7.
In other circumstances, I kept the Lumix handy. When push came to shove, I’d grab my familiar camera to ensure that I got results. I don’t want to be fighting with a camera when the action is unfolding. Equipment familiarity is key to consistently making good images.
The photos here have been scaled for internet presentation, but otherwise unaltered.
Stay tuned for some analysis and conclusions!
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
An ideal test of new equipment might include a thorough tutorial, followed by a gradual immersion into the camera’s distinct features in order to be operationally confident prior to making any serious photos.
I didn’t do any of that. It was a sunny day in Philadelphia. Pat Yough and I were following SEPTA’s Route 15 streetcar line (famous for its use of ‘retro’ PCC cars).
“Here’s my X-T1, try that.”
This was initially fitted with an older Fuji 55-200 zoom lens. I made a few photos of a static PCC car, but found the lens slow to focus. In back lit situations it didn’t seem to grab a focus point at all and hunted incessantly.
“This doesn’t like glint,” I said, “What other lenses do you have?”
“Try the 18-55mm kit lens”
This worked vastly better. It focused quickly. And I was soon snapping away.
We drove around Philadelphia, finishing daylight along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor at Prospect Park, Pennsylvania. By the time the sun had set I’d exposed 15 GB of photos!
The X-T1 is a mirror-less camera formatted similar to a SLR but without the ‘reflex’. The viewfinder is digital. The camera has an excellent ergonomic shape—I found it comfortable to hold and easy to use.
On the down side, there’s a lever on the left-hand side of the body beneath the dial to set the ISO, which I kept inadvertently knocking with my thumb. This adjusts the motor-drive and introduces such novel features as ‘autobracket’ and an in-camera filter set.
The details of these features must be programmed by scrolling through fields of menus and making some intelligent selections. All very well, except I didn’t know how to do any of that at first, and suddenly found I was getting bursts of photos everytime I released the shutter.
At one point Pat joined a queue at Tony Luke’s Philly Cheese Steak to procure lunch, while I fiddled with the X-T1’s menu options. This allowed me to finally, tune, and then exit the bracket mode.
Along the Northeast Corridor, I was able to test the camera’s ability to work in low light and stop the action at its higher ISO settings.
The rapid fire motor drive is a real boon when picturing Amtrak’s Acela Express at speed. I was able to wind up the ISO to 6400, which impressed me. At lower ISOs, I was able to pull off some creative pans and photographs that incorporated movement.
I walked away from my brief time with the X-T1, very impressed by the camera. It can output both a Jpg and RAW files simultaneously and has an impressive dynamic range. It has color profiles designed to emulate some of my favorite Fuji slide films, and has excellent high ISO response and output.
Pity about the slow focusing zoom, but Pat indicated there’s other options for longer lenses, and I hope to explore that at a later date.
All the X-T1 photos displayed here have been scaled for internet presentation, but are otherwise unaltered. I have not sharpened, cropped, or enhanced the files.
NEXT: A look at Fuji’s XE-2
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Today (Dec 19, 2014) Amtrak operated a test train north from Springfield, Massachusetts on Pan Am Southern’s recently rehabilitated Boston & Maine Connecticut River Line in preparation for re-routed Vermonter service (expected to begin at the end of this month).
My father and I went out to document this special move, then went over to the New England Central route to photograph the Vermonter on its present route.
Tracking the Light posts new material EVERY DAY!
Sunday, December 7, 2014.
Tracking the Light presents a few views at this busy location.
Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor is in transition as the old battle-worn AEM-7s are being phased out and the new Siemens ACS-64 ‘City Sprinter’ locomotives gradually assume their duties.
Fellow photographer Pat Yough and I were out to make good use of the sunlight. We’d caught Amtrak 600 the ‘David L. Gunn’ (recently named for Amtrak’s former president 2002-2005) working a Harrisburg-New York Penn Station Keystone on the Main Line and were aiming for another photograph of this unique locomotive.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Back on November 14, 1959, my dad photographed Reading Company T-1 2124 charging through Oak Lane station on Kodachrome.
But where is Oak Lane? Obviously this is in suburban Philadelphia. However, when I consulted a modern day SEPTA rail map, I couldn’t find it.
A puzzle. I called my dad. But he didn’t specifically remember making the photo, nor anything about the station. “I chased a lot of the Reading trips. I don’t know which one that was.”
Perhaps the station had been closed?
Finally, after a bit of research, I concluded that Oak Lane had been renamed Melrose Park. Armed with that knowledge, my brother Sean and I traveled to Melrose Park on SEPTA on Friday December 5, 2014.
Surprisingly, the station isn’t radically different. The old building still serves as a railway station, and the old canopy on the outbound side of the tracks still looks as it did in 1959.
Two big changes were installation of high-level platforms and removal of the center track.
I attempted to emulate the angle and perspective of the 1959 photo as closely as possible. My father was using a Kodak Retina 3C, probably fitted with a 50mm lens, although he also had a 35mm. So using my Lumix LX7, I adjusted the Vario Summilux to about the 45-50mm range. Both photos were made in late-autumn on overcast days.
The other big change is the equipment. Where in 1959, Reading’s class T-1 4-8-4 number 2124 was the star attraction, on December 5, 2014 we had to settle for a 1970s-vintage Silverliner IV multiple unit.
Keep in mind that at the time of the 1959 photo, the steam locomotive was only a dozen years old at the time. Happily, the 2124 is preserved at Steamtown in Scranton.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
Today’s (December 17, 2014) views from Amtrak’s Vermonter en route from Philadelphia to Amherst, Massachusetts. Posted live from the train!
I write from the relative comfort of an Amfleet coach on Amtrak number 56, the Vermonter. Below are some views exposed today with my Lumix LX7.
I thought I’d take the opportunity to use the Amherst Station while I still can.
Amtrak is due to shift the Vermonter to the ‘Knowledge Corridor’ route at the end of this month. This will result in a restoration of Amtrak service to the former Boston & Maine Connecticut River Line, and the first regularly scheduled passenger trains on the line since Amtrak suspended its Montrealer north of Springfield in the mid-1980s
In July 1989, Amtrak’s Washington D.C,- Montreal Montrealer was restored using a Central Vermont (CV) routing via New London, Palmer and Amherst.
Then, beginning in early 1995, shortly after New England Central assumed operations of the old CV, the daytime Vermonter (DC-St. Albans) replaced the nocturnal Montrealer schedule.
However, this new train used a revised routing via Hartford, Springfield and over the former Boston & Albany to Palmer, then up New England Central’s former CV line to East Northfield.
Soon Palmer to East Northfield will be freight only!
Tracking the Light posts new material everyday!
Friday December 5, 2014.
SEPTA’s Independence Pass offers great value for the $12 price and more importantly gives you the freedom to jump from train to train and one mode to another without worrying about buying individual tickets.
My brother Sean set out on a wandering tour that included SEPTA’s commuter rail, Broad Street Subway and Market-Frankford rapid transit, and light rail lines.
Part of our quest was to find the elusive Oak Lane station on the former Reading Company lines.
Modern maps won’t show this station, and I had a special interest in finding it, which I’ll explain in tomorrow’s post! Stay tuned!
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Tomorrow; Oak Lane, revisited.
Tracking the Light presents 14 recent images—a work in progress.
Not any old mainline, but The Main Line—the former Pennsylvania Railroad west of Philadelphia. This is hallowed ground in the eyes of PRR enthusiasts.
My brother and I spent several hours examining various locations from Overbook to Bryn Mawr.
We were rewarded by a training special operating in midday with SEPTA AEM-7 2306 and a push-pull train. These trains are typically only used at rush hours, so it was nice to catch one off peak.
The Main Line is a throwback to another time. The line still retains many of its visual cues from year’s gone by, including classic Pennsylvania Railroad position light signal hardware.
Among the challenges to photographing this line is the proliferation of trees along the right of way. While these can make for nice props, they also cast shadows which complicate photography.
From an operations standpoint, I would think that having so many line-side trees would be a serious problem. Not only will these cause wheel-slip in the autumn that will result in difficulties for suburban trains trying to meet tight schedules, but falling branches and trunks will interfere with the catenary.
Would the PRR have tolerated so many trees along its primary east-west trunk?
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Tomorrow exploring Philadelphia by rail!
Tracking the Light remembers the Chicago, Central & Pacific.
On April 23, 1995, Howard Ande and I chased this westward CC&P freight through the Missouri Valley to Council Bluffs, Iowa.
CC&P was a short-lived 1980s-era Illinois Central Gulf spin-off.
This mixed consist of former Illinois Central Gulf Geeps, a former Chessie System unit, and one of the few CC&P painted locomotives seems to sum up the state of affairs.
In my book North American Railroad Family Trees (published by Voyageur Press in 2013) I described Illinois Central’s tree pruning:
Among the most unusual 1980s-de-constructions was the result of Illinois Central Gulf’s compulsive trimming of most of its network outside the former IC principal north-south core. Among the new regional railroads created were: Chicago, Central & Pacific in 1985 on the old IC Chicago-Omaha route; Mississippi-based MidSouth in 1986; and the former Alton network spun off as Chicago, Missouri & Western in 1987. All were short-lived creations, and within a decade had been absorbed by other major carriers. In 1996, IC (having dropped ‘Gulf’ from its name in 1988) bought back the CC&P, MidSouth went to KCS, while C&MW routes were divided between Southern Pacific and Gateway Western (which was later absorbed by KCS). Also created from the ICG network was Paducah & Louisville in 1986, which continues to operate as a independent railroad in 2013.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Tracking the Light Daily Post:
Weso is a contraction implying ‘Western Pacific Southern Pacific’. This is the control point at the western end of the famed ‘paired track’ where SP’s and WP’s single track mainlines were coordinated during World War I to function as directional double track to ease operations.
My long-time photo pal TSH and I camped here in July 1991 and made a promising morning exposing Kodachrome of the parade of trains that passed after sunrise.
This view is of an eastward SP Modoc Line freight on Union Pacific’s former WP line just east of the crossovers at Weso, mile post 537. Weso is near Winnemucca. The parallel SP line is off camera to the left.
Weso, Nevada on July 21, 1991. Exposed on Kodachrome 25 using a Nikon F3T fitted with a f1.8 105mm Nikkon lens, mounted on a Bogen 3021 tripod.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
It was a clear September 1989 morning when I parked near the twin former New York Central tunnels at Breakneck Ridge and followed a hiking trail to this commanding vantage point looking back toward Cold Spring, New York.
I exposed this photo on Kodachrome 25 slide film using my Leica M2 fitted with 50mm f2.0 Summicron firmly mounted on a Bogen 3021 tripod.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
This evening (December 12, 2014) Pat Yough and I attended a talk by guest curator Mike Froio at New Jersey’s Monmouth Museum about the on-going exhibit of railway photography titled All Aboard! Railroads & The Historic Landscapes They Travel.
This features some of best known works of black & white photographic giants David Plowden, Jim Shaughnessy, Mel Patrick and Ron Wright as well as more recent work by Mike Froio himself, and his contemporaries including Scott Lothes, John Sanderson, and Travis Dewitz, along with Pennsylvania Railroad poster art from the Bennnett Levin collection.
These are some memorable railway images well worthy of display!
The exhibit remains open until January 4, 2015.
Tracking the Light posts new material everyday!
San Francisco Panorama, September 2009.
For my final Night Photo Challenge image, I thought I’d display this image.
This is not an ordinary ‘night photo’, but there are no PhotoShop computer generated enhancements. Except for cropping, which I did after scanning the slide, the rest of my technique was performed ‘in-camera’.
Making it was considerably more involved than my typical night photos. I used my old Nikon F3T with an old school f2.8 24mm lens mounted on a Gitzo tripod.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Misty Night in the Old Moravian Capital.
Olomouc—known as Olmütz in the day of the old Hapsburg Empire when it was the capital of Moravia—is an ancient city dating back to Roman times. I found it an exceptionally photogenic small city.
In January 2009, Denis McCabe and Tim Doherty visited Olomouc on a week-long photographic trip to central Europe. On the evening of our arrival from Prague, a heavy fog had settled across the city, making its eclectic architecture, Soviet Era trams, and well worn cobblestone street even more evocative.
We spent several hours walking around in the mist.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Delaware-Lackawanna shops, Scranton, Pennsylvania, October 13, 2005.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: I was researching and photographing for my book Working on the Railroad, when I made this image in the rain at Scranton.
The former British Columbia Railroad Alco Century was my primary subject. Here the combination of raw unpleasant weather, harsh sodium lighting, and a scene festooned with junk, litter and tired look side tracks meets all the aesthetical requirements for a great photo. No?
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Dusk at Killucan Cabin, May 3, 2002. This was a favorite place of mine to make photos, and before the cabin was closed, I spent many afternoons and evenings here.
This image was exposed several years before Irish Rail implemented the signalling program that converted the Sligo line to Mini-CTC with remote signaling control and colour-lights. Yet, for me it is evocative of the cabin at the end of its useful life.
The final hints of daylight are symbolic of the cabin’s fate; Soon the light in the sky will fade to darkness and the cabin will close.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
In response to my recent nomination by Phil Brahms and Blair Kooistra for the Facebook Night Photo challenge, I’ve selected five groups of photos that I feel might be interesting to review on Tracking the Light.
I have to admit, I’m not clear on the rules for this challenge. As a result, I’ll follow my standard policy and just wing it. Who needs rules anyway?
Among the difficulties in selecting photos for this challenge has been simply finding them. For the most part I’ve not organized images in regards to the time of day they were exposed. A related problem is the large number of night views that I’ve attempted over the years.
Lastly, what makes for a successful night photo?
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Tracking the Light; Five photos on the old Pennsylvania Railroad.
A Post-Prologue to a Night Photo Challenge . . .
On December 1, 2014, I’d met my latest deadline, and so I finally had a few minutes to make photos before charging headlong into the next project.
My brother Sean lent me back my old Bogen 3021 tripod, a piece of equipment I’d not seen in many years. I’d bought this new in Rochester in March 1989 and dragged it all around North America in the early 1990s. At some point, I upgraded to a newer tripod and gave this one to Sean.
It seemed like overkill to steady my Lumix LX7 on such a heavy tripod, but it did the job.
It was cold, wet and dark, but that worked fine for me. I exposed a few photos at Overbrook, Pennsylvania, and a couple of more at Wynnewood. No GG1 electrics passed me that night. Not for a long time.
Tomorrow, I begin the first of five night photo-challenges as given to me by Blair Kooistra and Phil Brahms via Facebook.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Tracking the Light Mystery Location!
I’m taking a poll: Can you guess where I made this photo of Wisconsin Central F45 6656 on May 4, 1996? Be specific!
By the way, just in case you missed the notice, the previous Tracking the Light mystery photo was exposed at the Bailey Wye in Baltimore, Maryland.
Also there was a seven to one preference in favor of the 1996 view (top image) at the East Broad Top displayed last week in East Broad Top Narrow Gauge—Variations on a Theme.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Tracking the Light Daily Post: A View from a Favorite Location.
For this photograph, I’ve selected an off-center composition and used strong side-lighting and selective focus to increase the sensation of depth.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Tomorrow: Tracking the Light Mystery Location!
A Tracking the Light silhouette.
On August 15-16, 2009, I’d been camping in California’s Feather River Canyon near the curved Rock Creek trestle. In the early light of dawn, I made a series of photos of this Union Pacific container train crossing the bridge.
This image features the tail-end ‘Distributed Power Unit’ (a radio controlled remote locomotive). After making this photo I followed the train west down the canyon and made more images.
Thankfully Union Pacific paints its bridges an aluminum color which helps visually separate the girders from the inky blackness of the trees beyond. Would this photo work if the bridge were painted black?
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
This is the second of three posts in my three part series covering San Francisco’s Streetcars. Shirebooks recently published my book Streetcars of America co-authored with John Gruber.
Click the link below to see their site:
http://www.shirebooks.co.uk/blog/san_francisco_streetcars_cable_car_pioneer_lone/
Capturing Motion.
Working with a Nikon N90S with 80-200 zoom lens and Fujichrome Provia 100 I made this zoom-pan of a Series 100 train blitzing the station at Shizuoka, Japan.
The trick to making a zoom-pan is use a relatively low shutter speed (1/15 to 1/30th of a second) and use the zoom to keep pace with the train’s motion. This is actually easier to do with a fast moving train. In this case the Series 100 train was traveling at more than 130mph.
This technique takes a bit of practice, so it helps to experiment on a really busy high-speed railway line such as the New Tokaido line. When I made this photo in April 1997, there were about 10-11 trains in each direction every hour over the line.
I made several of these ‘zoom-pans’ on color slide film. I didn’t know how well I’d succeeded until weeks later when I reviewed my slides.
This photo appeared as the title-page spread of my 2001 book Bullet Trains published by MBI. The book took a look at high-speed railway networks around the world.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
The first in my series of illustrated posts on San Francisco’s streetcars can be viewed at http://www.shirebooks.co.uk/blog/San_Francisco_Streetcars_Photography_part_1/
Check it out!
Tracking the Light posts new material everyday.
On June 14, 1993, the world’s largest operating steam and diesel locomotives worked together on the Oregon Trail Special. Brian Jennison and I photographed these massive machines at Quartz on their ascent of Union Pacific Encina Hill east of Baker City, Oregon.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
It may surprise some readers, but the full moon provides the same light color balance as the sun, just at a significantly lower intensity.
This is one of the many differences between the way a human eye interprets a scene and a photographic image.
Where to the eye moonlight—even the full moon, appears dark, a camera can capture a moonlit scene so that it has the same color and illumination ratios as daylight. The difference isn’t with the scene, it is with our perception of it.
Complicating matters are the ways cameras collect light. Back when I used Kodachrome 25, very long time exposures rarely turned out as I hope they would. The film’s ISO rating in very low light was irrelevant.
The primary reason for this condition was a combination of the film’s long reciprocity curve and its very poor sensitivity in extremely low light. Essentially in moonlight, the film lost its effective sensitivity.
Basically this meant that Kodachrome was optimized for daylight situations and its ratio of sensitivity was not proportional in very low light (and effectively lost its ability to record images). So, when I left the shutter open for hours in moonlight, the film was incapable of recording an accurate image.
Even when I’d calculated the theoretical correct exposure. All I’d get back from the lab was a fairly dark slide with a few overexposed specular highlights (bright spots). Not very inspiring.
In the mid-1990s, Mel Patrick encouraged me to experiment with Fuji Provia 100F in moonlight. This was a modern film. Not only was it vastly more sensitive in low light, but it provided a much better color rendition in night situations. While the film still suffered from the reciprocity effect, I found it possible to calculate and compensate for this failing.
Yet, even with this improved film, moonlight exposures still required very long exposures, sometimes up to an hour or more.
Mel had made some outstanding railway landscapes by moonlight, and I tried to emulate his successes.
A difficulty was finding situations where there was virtually no man made light, since mercury, sodium, and incandescent lights not only tend to be much brighter than moonlight, but cause objectionable color casts and harsh contrast (a topic for another day).
While there are relatively few places in the eastern United States that are completely free from man-made light (even in the wee hours), in the West, clear open skies (and a dearth of population and objectionable light) abound.
I made this image at the summit of Cumbres Pass, Colorado in September 1998. My car and my tent can be seen in the distance. I don’t recall offhand, but my exposure was about 40 minutes at f2.8 using a Nikon F3T with Nikkor 24mm lens. My camera was firmly mounted on a Bogen tripod.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Tomorrow: Big engines in Oregon!
Are you seeing the whole picture? Tracking the Light presents: A Glinty Electric Bus.
Did I notice this scene in my rear view mirror one morning in the 1990s? I think so. Anyway, a memory of a image—something like this was nagging me.
On the morning September 3, 2009, I set up on Hayes Street in San Francisco with my 100-400mm lens. Just after sunrise I exposed a series of images of an electric bus (trolley bus) catching the glint of the rising sun as it crested Alamo Hill.
For me the wires make the photo interesting. Not only do the dual wires power the bus, but they visually tie the scene together.
I like the dramatic lighting and monochromatic effect of the silhouette. I’ve carefully included the pole at the far left to visually anchor the wire network to the ground. This also adds balance.
There’s a famous vista made just to the left of my location. It features a staggered row of gingerbread style Victorians with the San Francisco skyline. It is an iconic setting that appears on post cards, calendars, books and etc. You’d recognize it if you saw it. While the clichéd vista is typically exposed in the afternoon from the park, my view is from the street in the early morning.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
PKP at Brzeszce, Poland on the 18th of August 2006.
Poland is a great place to make railway photos. There’s tremendous variety and something new at every turn.
I made two trips to Poland in 2006, largely to photograph freight trains. Denis McCabe and I were exploring coal lines in Silesia when we found this location where lines cross near Brzeszce. The north-south line was an unusually busy route. We didn’t need to wait long between trains.
For this image, I opted for a cross lit shot. Taking this angle with a medium telephoto from the ‘dark side,’ allowed me to emphasized the front of the locomotive, while including interesting elements such as the long train of coal cars and the overhead Warren-truss bridge in the distance.
The engine driver is illuminated nicely too, which adds a human element often missing from modern railway photos.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Tomorrow: Wires at Sunrise!
Today’s Tracking the Light displays two images exposed about a year apart from the same overhead bridge near Orbisonia, Pennsylvania.
In both instances I’m photographing the first train of the morning working upgrade away from Orbisonia station using a telephoto lens.
Although the location and time of year, and overall scene are similar, I’ve produced two different images, owing to slight differences in my angle and the lighting, as well as the position of the locomotive and its exhaust smoke. In addition I was using different camara-lens combinations.
Subtle changes can result in significantly different photos.
I have my favorite. Which do you like better?
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Should I head to the mainline (Conrail’s water level route) or explore branch lines? Do I stick with Conrail or seek out a short line? These were among the quandaries facing my photographic choices when I had some time off from college.
As a photography student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I had a full schedule of classes, labs, and projects. I was a ‘work-study’ student, which implied I had to spend about 25-30 hours a week toiling for peanuts on top of classes, assignments & etc.
My point is that I had very little free time, and rarely a full day off, and so when I made time to make railway photos, there were tough choices (like mainline versus branchline; Conrail versus those other outfits).
Now and again I’d cheat. (I don’t mean on exams). A bright sunny day? Now who will miss me in class?
Unfortunately on a glorious October day, one RIT’s photo professors and I had the same idea. We were both photographing the Livonia, Avon & Lakeville freight. We crossed paths at Avon, New York. We knew that each of us should be someplace else, and we knew where that was. He said to me, “I won’t say anything . . .”
Often I’d head to the mainline. My time was short and I wanted results, and Conrail rarely disappointed. Sometimes I’d select a known good spot, and work through my exhaustive reading list while waiting for a headlight to appear.
Other times, when the sun was out, I’d take a more aggressive approach and select my locations purely based on photographic merit and move from place to place as suited the action and the light.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
An eastward KCS train 29 works its way upgrade through a tunnel and kudzu covered cutting. It was the dead of winter so the vines had died. I wonder what it’s like here in July? This is the former Mid South, nee Illinois Central east-west route, now part of the KCS-Norfolk Southern Meridian Speedway joint-venture.
In January 1996, I was the guest of Gerald Hook. He’d invited me to Baton Rouge to give a presentation on how a magazine was produced to the Southeast Louisiana Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. At the time I was Editor of Pacific RailNews and had a bit of insight into these matters.
Gerald gave me a tour of area railroads. On January 21, 1996, we drove from Baton Rouge to Vicksburg, Mississippi to meet with Danny Johnson, who led our expedition.
It was a great day to explore railroads! Thanks guys!
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
PKP Station Chojnów.
On the morning of April 29, 2002, I was changing trains with John Gruber and M. Ross Valentine at Chojnów, Poland. We were on our way from Żagań (Zagan) to Dresden, Germany. (see earlier post: PKP Class SU45 at Sunrise, Chojnów, Poland, April 29, 2002.)
The old station at Chojnow was once a fine facility but had seen better days. The tracks, although highly polished, were tired looking and overgrown with grass, the station building was in need of fresh paint, while the platforms were crumbing and everything was covered in layers of graffiti and grime.
In other words, it made for a fascinating place to make some photos with the rising sun while waiting for a minor cross-border express train. A long electric freight had just entered the passing siding to clear the mainline.
In the mid-2000s, PKP reminded me a lot of Penn-Central in the1970s.
In my travels around Poland, I’d photographed many stations and lines in various states of functional decay; a tenuous state. When a railway reaches such a condition, it will either vanish altogether, or find itself ripe for investment. In either case, it will be forever changed.
Sunrise at Chojnów, Poland on April 29, 2002; exposed on Fujichrome with a Nikon N90S fitted with a Nikkor f2.0 135mm DC ‘defocus’ telephoto.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Oh the Wonderful Wires!
In the 1980s, I often bemoaned the ‘telegraph wires’ as I called the code lines that lined most mainlines.
It seemed like more often than not, railroads placed these multiple-tier code lines on the south side of their mainlines. This inevitably interfered with my photography and plenty of otherwise good photographic locations were fouled by the rows of poles and the wires between them.
In early 1989, when Conrail was cutting down the old code lines east of Buffalo. I thought, Hurray! Good riddance!
However, I quickly realized how wrong I’d been. In fact I’d been photographing the wires for years.
Yes, the code lines made for a visual challenge. And, undoubtedly these sometimes got in the way. But they were part of the railroad. Traditionally, they were key to its operations and often serving as a crucial part of the signaling system. They had been there since the steam era. After all, the railroad was more than just locomotives rolling along at speed.
It occurred to me how I’d often improved my photographs by working with the wires. The visual elements and patterns added by the army of time-worn polls connected by rows of cables made for more compelling images.
After the code lines were gone, the brush started to grow. And that’s now a much worse photo-hazard than the wires ever were.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
They are easy to use. It’s like stepping back in time. Sort of.
Panasonic’s new camera comes with a fantastic lens and sensor combination, but what if clarity seems too sterile? Perhaps, you want to get the effects (and defects) characteristic of old film cameras? No problem!
The LX100 has a button on top of the camera called ‘filters,’ which alters the color, contrast, exposure and sometimes the focus of digital files to emulate a variety of effects that were once characteristic of older camera-film combinations.
The advantage of the ‘filters’ feature is that the effects are done ‘in-camera’ without the need to fiddle around with photo-shop or other post-processing software. The button opens a menu and you simply select the desired filter. This shows you the treatment on screen and in the viewfinder.
In my early days of photography, I experimented with a variety of older cameras, and sampled various film types. My skills weren’t yet developed and my results were a bit random. The LX100’s filter mode allows me to step back to those early experimental times when any photographic result seemed like success.
The best part of filters is that you can easily switch from one mode to the next and back to normal again quickly. Below are some of the filter results. I’ve given these comparative names in ‘quotes’ that I felt were more appropriate than Panasonic’s, but put the camera-filter name in [brackets] for reference. Just so you know. Ok?
Do you have any favorites?
!['Cheap 400 speed print film' [High Key].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Amtrak_39_HIGH_KEY_P1090498.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
!['Whoops, I sent my print film in with a slide mailer' [Cross processing]](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Amtrak_39_CROSS_PROCESS_P1090507.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
!['Underexposed Ektachrome 200' [Expressive].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Amtrak_39_EXPRESSIVE_P1090496.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
!['Fogged color print film' [Impressive Art].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Amtrak_39_IMPRESSIVE_ART_P1090505.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
!['Underexposed Kodacolor 400' [Low Key].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Amtrak_39_LOW_KEY_P1090499.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
![Black & white that I processed with exhausted fixer. [Sepia].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Amtrak_39_SEPIA_P1090500.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
![Black & white printed with exhausted Dektol developer. [Monochrome].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Amtrak_39_MONOCHROME_P1090501.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
![Overexposed, overprocessed Tri-X that I processed in the sink. [Rough Monochrome].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Amtrak_39_ROUGH_MONOCHROME_P1090503.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
![Instamatic attempt with color print film. [Toy Effect]](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Amtrak_39_TOY_EFFECT_P1090508.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
!['Light leak.' "Oh no! I think I opened the back of the camera". [Sunshine].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Amtrak_39_SUNSHINE_P1090511.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
!['This is my friend's cheap HO layout' (What a fool, he's tried to model Palmer!). [Miniature Effect].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Vermonter_CabCar_CP83_MINIATURE_EFFECT_P1090537.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
!['Bargain film, only 6 months past the expiration date!' [Old days].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Vermonter_CabCar_CP83_vert_OLDDAYS_P1090521.jpg?resize=474%2C709)
!['Kodak sent me a note with my slides, it said they had a "unique laboratory occurrence" and I got a free roll of 24 exposure K64.' [Bleach Bypass].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Vermonter_CabCar_CP83_BLEACH_BYPASS_P1090536.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
!['Drugstore processed black & white' [Silky monochrome].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Vermonter_CabCar_CP83_SILKY_MONOCHROME_P1090530.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
!['I think there's something wrong with my light meter. This was some Ilford HP5 the I processed last week and the negatives were a bit 'thin'. [Dynamic Monochrome].](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Vermonter_CabCar_CP83_DYNAMIC_MONOCHROME_P1090528.jpg?resize=474%2C317)
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Brian’s Review, Part 2.
It isn’t fair to judge a new camera after only a few hours of working with it. I find that it takes a while to get used to any new equipment.
In April 1990, I was given the loan of a Nikon F3 SLR. After a month of putting it through its paces, I knew I had to have one. Yet, I wasn’t fully comfortable with the camera for at least 6 months.
As mentioned in the previous post, last week Eric Rosenthal loaned me a brand new LX100. So I brought it out for some tests.
I found this to be a very powerful tool. It looks and feels much like a traditional rangefinder, yet has many electronic features.
While making a basic photo with the LX100 is straight forward, the camera’s multitude of buttons, dials and layers of menus needed to access the camera’s various modes, color profiles, filters, and features, plus video and panoramic options isn’t intuitive. In fact it’s intimidating.
To really give the LX100 a fair treatment, I’d need several weeks to properly figure it out and become comfortable with its operation.
However, I was able to make a variety of interesting photographs of which a few are presented here. Other than scaling the Jpgs, I’ve not altered the images in post processing in regards to color, contrast, gamma, or other visual effects.
So is the LX100 a good camera for railway photography?
If you desire the ability to manually control a digital camera, and prefer traditional dials over toggle switches, along with a built in view finder in addition to a rear screen, the LX100 is a great option.
The camera reacts quickly. It has a ‘burst’ feature that allows you to take three images in rapid succession. It can make RAW and JPG file simultaneously. The lens is fantastic and the sensor is amazing, so the images are exceptionally sharp.
On the downside, it uses a fixed lens that is limited to a 24-75mm range (in traditional 35mm film camera terms). Its menu navigation is counter-intuitive. For a small camera it is pretty heavy. And, it’s relatively expensive, B&H Photo in New York advertises it for nearly $900, which is three-times what I paid for my LX7 a few months ago.
Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
Please share Tracking the Light!
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/
Tomorrow: sharpness and clarity too much? No problem! The LX100 has an easy solution for that too.
