Ten years ago (August 28, 2012), I made this photo from my standard location overlooking Islandbridge Junction in Dublin of the morning’s down IWT Liner, led by Irish Rail Class 071 number 073.
Working with a zoom lens, I made vertical and horizontal images of the freight as it worked around the bend this was facilitated by my ability to change focal lengths quickly.
My question is: does the ability to change focal lengths rapidly allow for better photos or does it make the photographer lazy?
On our way back from Tokyo in April 1997, my dad and I stopped over in Seattle, Washington.
Although I was in a haze of Jet lag from the long flight, we rented a car and drove around . Near the downtown, we set up to make photos of the waterfront trolley line, which at that time served Seattle. The trolley tracks were parallel to BNSF tracks. While waiting for the trolley, this BNSF switcher and caboose came by.
The switcher, according to published rosters, was a former Great Northern EMD SW1200 built in Spring 1957. So at the time of the photo, the locomotive was 40 years old. I wonder what became of it?
The slides sat in the little green Fujichrome box until this morning, when I opened it up and scanned this image.
After scanning a hi-res TIF image, I imported the file into Adobe Lightroom and made some adjustements to improve color balance, exposure and contrast.
The top image is my scaled by unadjusted scan, the bottom image reflects my adjustments.
I was looking for something else and I found a box of Fujichrome slides: on it was written ‘VRS’. Nothing more.
Inside are a bunch of gems from early 1998. Photographer Mike Gardner and I had made a trip to Rutland, Vermont where we photographed a Vermont Rail System local freight that worked a Clarendon & Pittsford job to a quarry.
This was just a few weeks before I made my first trip to England and Ireland. Months later when I returned from across the Atlantic, this box of slides sat on my desk. I don’t think I ever look at it. None of the slides are labled and they are all in numerical order.
Today, it has special significance to me. Leading the train is Clarendon & Pittsford GP38 number 203.
That’s former Maine Central 255, now Conway Scenic 255. It is the locomotive I see almost every day! Back then it was just another red VRS EMD diesel.
I scanned the slide using a Nikon LS5000 scanner driven by VueScan software. I scanned as a high-res TIF file then imported into Adobe Lightroom for some minor adjustments.
Wednesday (August 24, 2022) I was running errands around North Conway-Conway, New Hampshire. Between stops, I paused for a few minutes at West Side Road to catch the 9:30am Conway train on its return to North Conway.
This featured former Maine Central GP38 252, a locomotive that isn’t often assigned to the Conway run.
Working with my Lumix LX7, I exposed this view as a RAW digital file, then processed the data using Adbe Lightroom to make the most of the image.
I made this photo of the old Union Pacific station at Caliente, Nevada in March 1997. Photographer Mel Patrick and I had been following the Los Angeles & Salt Lake route west from Utah.
Not far from Caliente we’d discovered one of the tires had developed a serious defect. It wasn’t flat, but it was about to be!
We arrived in town too late to visit the local mechanic, so stayed overnight across from the station. Before sunrise, I went over to the railroad and exposed a series of Fujichrome slides of the UP station using my Nikon F3T that I’d fitted with Mel’s 16mm full-frame fisheye.
This unusual lens lent itself to photos like this one.
Almost every train on Conway Scenic Railroad stops at the North Conway Station.
It is extremely unusual train that passes the station without stopping
Yesterday, while serving in the capacity as ‘Manager on Duty,’ I cleared Work Extra 252 into North Conway from Conway, and granted it permission to drop its caboose at the North Yard before continuing West.
I made this selection of photos as vintage GP38 252 worked passed the 1874 station.
On Conway Scenic Railroad, the first public grade crossing east of North Conway is Echo Acres.
Since the whole railroad is arranged on the timetable, trains are either moving east or west regardless of the compass.
I knew that Extra 573 was on the move west of West Side road, and I figured I could beat it to the crossing.
It was hot and hazy, and I made the most of the scene using using my Nikon Z6 with 80-200mm lens, while snapping a slide with my Nikon F3 with 50mm lens.
All the photos below were made digitally with my Nikon Z6.
Z6 with 80-200mm lens set at 200mm f9 1/320 sec.Z6 with 80-200mm lens set at 200mm f9 1/250 sec.Z6 with 80-200mm lens set at 200mm f9 1/320 sec.
I’m in the final phases of my book Union Pacific and its Predecessors.
Among the photos I’ve been sifting through are images I exposed on film between 1990 and 2016.
I made this Fujichrome slide looking west along Union Pacific’s Chicago & North Western east-west mainline west of of Ashton, Illinois on the evening of November 10, 2008.
I was traveling with fellow photographer Marshall Beecher and we caught this Union Pacific train in the final glow of daylight.
At the time I was working with a pair of Canon EOS-3 film cameras.
This morning I scanned the slide using a Nikon LS-5000 digital scanner powered by VueScan software and imported the TIF file into Adobe Lightroom for scaling and color adjustment to be presented here.
Among the challenges of summer photography on a tourist railroad is that train operations tend to be focused during the middle of the day when the light is comparatively harsh.
Generally speaking, the passengers appear to be more focused on eating breakfast during the early morning, so we schedule the trains for later in the morning. The first train boards at 9:15 am.
The other day, we sent out a work Extra more than an hour ahead of the scheduled Conway train in order for the work crew to get ballast and ties loaded onto the train at Conway before the first passenger train arrived. This made good use of time, and provided me with some photographic opportunities.
I made these photos of the Work Extra at Conway before 9am using my Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm lens.
Occasionally I’m asked about the schedules for the work trains. Unfortunately my answers aren’t very helpful. By definition, a ‘Work Extra’ doesn’t have a schedule. These trains typically have to stay out of the way of the regular passenger excursions. They are called ‘as-required’, and move about the railroad as it suits the crews to get their work done. Plans change quickly and so it can be difficult to know when and where the trains will be more than a few hours or minutes in advance.
Recently, Conway Scenic Railroad invested in new employee uniforms.
Yesterday, I made a few portraits of the Valley crew on the platform of the North Conway station, shortly before the train was ready to board for Sawyers River.
These photos were exposed as NEF Raw files using my Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm zoom, and processed in Adobe Lightroom to adjuste highlight and shadow detail, over all color temperature, and sky detail.
The advantage of the Nikon NEF Raw is that it captures an enormous volume of data.
I posted versions of these photos to the company’s social media to help promote the railroad.
The other day at White River Junction, Vermont, I made this photo of the Vermont Rail System yard office and GP38 204 using my Lumix LX7.
I like the classic style railroad building and vintage diesel, but I’m not sure about the pole. Would this photo be better without the pole, or does it lend context and relevance to the image?
Standing at the south end of the platform at White River Junction, Vermont, I envisioned a panoramic image that would show the station and the locomotives parked to either side of the station.
I wanted to convey the sense of Junction, while making use of the nice afternoon sunlight.
Working with my Lumix LX7, I used the ‘panoramic’ function in ‘scene mode’, which allowed me to make a panoramic composite. Moving the camera from right to left while holding the shutter down makes for a sequence of image that are then sewed together in-camera using a preprogramed algorithm .
Lumix LX7 panoramic composite image at White River Junction, Vermont.
Then I set the camera with a 16:9 aspect ratio and made a single frame, which I then cropped manually to give it a panoramic look.
This second method provided better compositional control and is free from the computer generated artifacts associated with composite images, but isn’t as sharp as the composite.
Cropped version of a single 16:9 aspect ratio image aimed at better featuring the locomotives, station, and clouds.
Over the last 45 years, I’ve made countless visits to the Connecticut Trolley Museum at East Windsor.
Last Saturday, Kris and I paid a visit to the museum, in part to experience this classic interpretation of a early twentieth century New England electric railways, and to meet with Daryl Mundis of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society (as described in Sunday’s post).
I made the photos below working with my Lumix LX7.
Lumix RAW files were adjusted in Adobe Lightroom to correct for exposure, contrast, and color temperature.
Yesterday, Kris and I traveled to the Connecticut Trolley Museum at East Windsor, where we met Daryl Mundis who presented me with the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society’s Fred A. and Jane R. Stindt Photography Award for 2020. This is one of five prestiguous Railroad History Awards they are presenting in various categories of achievement.
I feel humble and honored to receive this award.
Kris made several photos of Daryl and me.
Daryl is on the left; that’s me on the right with a few cameras.
Yesterday evening at CP83 in Palmer, Massachusetts in time-honored tradition, Kris and I rolled by Amtrak 448—the Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited
I made these photos with my Lumix LX7. Working from the camera RAW, I made necessary adjustments in Lightroom to control highlight detail, color balance and contrast.
On the evening of August 12, 2015, I made this pair of images of Dublin’s LUAS light rail at the Museum stop on Benburb Street.
I was playing with very close focus for effect. By manually setting the focus in the second image, I selected a focus point on the stone wall, while allowing the tram to dissolve in a sea of blur.
In post processing I corrected the color balance to compensate for the intense yellow-orange tint of the street lights.
A Northern Rail Pacer style railbus crosses an old canal off the River Aire near the Leeds Railway Station on August 11, 2014.
I made this image from the rooftop of the Doubletree Hotel using my Canon EOS7D with an f2.0 100mm prime lens. The wink of sun on an otherwise dull day made for some wonderful light.
On October 13, 2003, I exposed this color slide of Canadian Pacific SD40-2 at Binghamton, NY using my Contax G2 rangefinder fitted with a 16mm Zeiss Hologon.
This was a flat field super wideangle lens that corrected for barrel distortion and other lens artifacts typically associated with very wide lenses. However, it was important to kept the film plane level or other types of distortion would alter the shapes of the subjects photographed.
In 1991, Southern Pacific was still routing through freight over its West Valley route between Tehama and Davis, California.
Photographer Brian Jennison and I were on our way to photograph streamlined steam locomotive 4449 at Redding on August 31, 1991 (featured yesterday on TTL), when we intercepted a westward SP freight working its way along the West Valley route.
Although we were a little tight on time for the steam locomotive, we decided to make the most of this fortuitous find, and photographed the freight twice, once just south (timetable west) of Willows, California and again 15 minutes later near Delavan.
This was one of just a few SP trains that I photographed on the West Valley route that was sold off a couple of years later to a short line start-up called California Northern. I revisited this territory in 2003 and again in 2005, to photograph and travel on California Northern’s local freight.
Photos were exposed on black & white film with a Leica M2 fitted with 50mm Summicron, and cropped slightly for effect.
Although 31 years after I made this image, the subject matter resonates with me more than ever, in my opinion, I released the shutter just a moment too soon. I wish I’d centered the locomotive between the signals. Looking timetable East at Delavan, California. I also made a color slide at this location when the freight got closer.
In August 1991, I made this image on Southern Pacific’s dime.
For three days I was commissioned by Southern Pacific to photograph the famous 4449 with Daylight train working excursions between Redding and Mount Shasta.
Fellow photographer Brian Jennison and I had traveled up from the Bay Area and had three days of glorious California sun.
Most of my photos of 4449 were exposed on Kodachrome 25 using my Nikon F3T, and these have been published in magazines, books, postcards and calendars over years. However, I was also working with black & white film, probably Ilford FP4, which I exposed using my old Leica M2 with 50mm Summicron.
My notes from the day show that I’d set the camera at f4.5 1/250. I’d used a yellow filter and processed the film in Edwall FG7 to give the photo a period appearance. My intent was to replicate the look of 1940s-era publicity of photos of SP’s Daylight.
The few B&W photos I made that day have never been published.
Over the last few days I’ve been reviewing thousands of my photos of Union Pacific trains for consideration in a book that I’m completing on the railroad. Consider the photo below:
Six years ago, I was poised at Woodford, California along the former Southern Pacific in the Tehachapis to photograph an ascending Union Pacific freight heading toward Tehachapi Summit.
Leading was a clean SD70ACe with UP’s bold wings painted on the front.
I made a sequence of images as the train passed. This one caught my eye because it really shows the sharp angles of this powerful diesel-electric at work.
The contrast between the sunlit locomotive nose and the inky shadows along the side the locomotive combined with a little telephoto compression helped make for a more dramatic image.
Exposed using a FujiFilm XT1 with a Fujinon X-series 18-135mm lens.
Conway Scenic Railroad’s afternoon train returning from Conway is one of the best to photograph during the summer.
Two days in a row this week, I caught this train as it approached its station stop at the North Conway Station.
Conway Scenic Railroad’s afteroon train climbing toward North Conway station on Wednesday August 3, 2022.This the same consist as the above train, just 24 hours later. Exposed August 4, 2022.
Yesterday, I wandered around the station at North Conway seeking detail images of the property to post to social media to help promote Conway Scenic Railroad.
The ‘station’ being more than just the building, but the whole property where the railroad conducts its business.
Six years ago, I made this trailing view of an Amtrak Pacific Surfliner bound for Los Angeles Union Station at Simi Valley, California.
The on-platform infomational signs were scrolling an ominous message about a Metrolink train that had been cancelled because of a mechanical issue. That’s a modern way of saying; ‘the train failed enroute and your going to be late’.
On Sunday, July 31, 2022, I used my Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm Z-series zoom to focus on the details of Conway Scenic Railroad’s 7470 and its crew,
Locomotive engineer Wayne Duffett was at the throttle of the 101-year old Canadian-built 0-6-0.
I worked with the Nikon NEF RAW files in Lightroom to get the maximum amount of detail in shadows and highlights while maintaining good contrast overall.
When I started producing Tracking the Light a decade ago, my thought was to offer very detailed essays focused on photographic technique, processes, and how to make the most of specific pieces of equipment.
My format has since morphed into something less detailed and more visual.
I often carry my Lumix LX7 digital camera because it is compact, lightweight and yet has the ability to make exceptionally sharp photos that I can use in books and magazines.
Yesterday, I made these images with the LX7 of Conway Scenic steam locomotive 7470. I used some photos for the company Facebook page and hope to use them in advertising.
Although these photos were scaled, what you see here are the in-Camera JPGs without significant alteration to color, contrast, exposure or sharpness.
If I were working with a different digital camera system, how might that have changed my results?
Yesterday, I also exposed some Ektachrome of 7470 using my 30-year old Nikon F3 with f1.8 105mm lens.
The musical duo Eastwood Station was visiting Conway Scenic Railroad again last week.
In addition to their public performances, I arranged for them to travel on the 0930 train to Conway (boarding at 9:15am), in order to film them for a music video.
I made these photos using my Nikon Z6 to help publicize their appearances at North Conway and on the trains.
At the bottom of this post I’ve attached a short video clip of the duo and CSRR conductor Jeff. Hopefully the technology will cooperate and you’ll be able to hear them sing!
Six years ago (July 29, 2016), I made this view of a Metrolink passenger train from the footbridge at the Fullerton, California station using my FujiFilm XT1.
This file is a scaled view of the in-camera JPG exposed with Fuji’s ‘Velvia’ color profile, designed to digitally emulate the colors of its popular slide film.
Fullerton is a neat place to watch and photograph trains. The busy triple-track line hosts a continual parade of BNSF freights and both Amtrak and Metrolink passenger trains. The setting features several old railroad stations, lots of modern signaling and lovely palm trees.
Earlier in the week, Conway Scenic operated a ballast train with GP35 216 to Crawford Notch and then worked its way east through the famous Gateway cut and over the Girders bridge.
There was cosmic lighting, with low clouds scraping over the tops of the mountains with shafts of sunlight reaching the ground.
To gain necessary elevation, I climbed up into the Gateway cut, following in the footsteps of generations of previous photographers.
On July 27, 2015, my Finnish friends and I made a brief foray across the border into Sweden. Among our destinations was the yard and station at Lulea, where I photographed a number of electric trains, including this Rc6 on a sleeping car set that will run overnight to Stockholm.
I made this photo using my FujiFilm XT1 digital camera that has an adjustible rear-panel display that allowed me to hold the camera very close to the ground.
A low angle is a technique for making a locomotive appear larger than life and was often used by early 20th century action photographers to capture steam locomotives in action.
On my July 2015 visit to Finland, my host Markku Pulkkinen did an excellent job of finding interesting railway subjects.
Early in the morning on July 26, 2015, we set up on the outskirts of Oulu to catch VR T5220, a freight forwarding iron ore mined in Russia to a Finnish plant. The freight wagons were Russian, the locomotive is a VR Group class Sr2 electric of Swiss design.
I had just purchased my first Adobe Lightroom for my then-new Apple MacBook Pro and was beginning to learn how to use this tool to make the most of my Fuji RAW files.
This was a revelation as the programs sliders made it easy to make adjustments to shadow and highlight detail, as well as color temperature and color balance corrections, which help make for much better photos when used judiciously.
I’m now working with a more advanced version of Lightroom with this I created two JPGs created from the Fuji RAW file. The top was scaled without any adjustements; the bottom reflects adjustments to color temperature, saturation, plus highlight and shadow area changes. Notice the difference in the detail to the sky.
No changes to the Fuji RAW file except for scaling.Adjusted with Adobe Lightroom to better present the data captured by the Fuji RAW file.
Seven years ago I was visiting my friend Markku Pulkkinen in Oulu, Finland.
On the evening of July 25th, we stopped in at the VR station to witness the arrival of sleeping car train IC266 that paused on its way to Helsinki.
In the lead were a pair of 1970s era Sr1 electrics that were built in the Soviet Union and still carried their ‘USSR’ builder’s tags (notably in English, rather than Russian or Finnish).
I exposed these detail views using my new FujiFilm XT1 digital camera.
The Fuji’s built-in color profiles did a wonderful job of capturing the rich colors of the evening sun at northerly latitudes.
Yesterday morning (July 23, 2022), Kris and I timed our visit to Allens Siding Road to perfectly coincide with the operation of Conway Scenic Railroad steam locomotive 7470 on the 915am Conway train.
I’d scoped this location out the day before (featured in yesterday’s post) just make sure it was the best place to picture the steam locomotive working.
We arrived a minute before the eastbound train passed. (Conway Scenic timetable 34 predicates all movements on a east-west axis. Conway being the further station East and Hazens being the furthest west, without consideration for the compass).
After the eastward train passed, we had about a 20 minute wait for the return.
Engineer Wayne Duffett made a good show climbing the grade west from the Swift River Bridge.
All photos were exposed using my Nikon Z6 with a 24-70mm Z-series zoom and adjusted for contrast and color balance using Adobe Lightroom.
