Three freight railroads, plus Amtrak share the tracks at Bellows Falls. Yet on the morning of my visit last week not a wheel was turning.
I worked with the cosmic morning light to make a few photos of the old station building and the railway environment.
Not all great railway photos need trains. And Tracking the Light is more about the process of making railway photos than simply the execution of ‘great train pictures’.
Fog and sun; Those specks in the sky are birds.
For these images I worked with my Lumix LX7 (color digital photos) and a Leica 3a with screw-mount 35mm focal length Nikkor lens (black & white photos exposed on Kodak Tri-X and processed in Ilford Perceptol).
I have my favorites. Can you guess which these are?
The benefits of familiarity; knowing your locations.
Take the Bellows Falls Tunnel on the Connecticut River line. Back in 1988, I’d photographed a southward Boston & Maine (Guilford) freight in the afternoon and noted that late in the day, when the south portal was in shadow, a shaft of light illuminates the train on the north side of the tunnel.
The location and effect were filed away for future reference.
A couple of week ago, on June 18, 2016, Pat Yough and I were following Amtrak’s Exhibition Train on its way south from Claremont, New Hampshire. At Bellows Falls, Vermont the train paused to refuel, and this resulted in the leading locomotive, Amtrak F40PH 406, pulling past the grade crossing near the station.
I noticed it had gone just far enough to bask in the window of sun near the north portal of the tunnel.
This opened up opportunity for photography.
Below are a examples angles exposed from the south portal, a location reached by a narrow street from the center of town. I like the relative abstraction of tracks and engine appearing to float in a sea of darkness.
The classic Vermont setting of the Bellows Falls Tunnel fascinates photographers and model railroaders.A 2006 Volkswagen Rabbit gingerly takes the turn on to the road that leads to the tunnel portal. Exposed using a FujiFilm XT1 digital camera.This could almost pass for an early 1990s view of Amtrak’s Montrealer. (Except that the train was scheduled to come through Bellows Falls in the middle of the night). I like the inky darkness. Exposed manually using a FujiFilm XT1. Careful metering and examination of the histogram will aid in correct exposure of scene such as this one. Most automatic metering systems will tend to try to compensate for the dark tunnel portal which negates the intended effect. Focusing can be tricky too.
