Black & white
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Bus Meet on Digital Black & White.
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Here’s something different. I had my FujiFilm X-T1 set up to record monochrome with a digitally applied red filter to alter the tonality. Working with a Zeiss 12mm lens, I made this view at Arlington, Massachusetts of two MBTA buses…
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Chessie System Against the Sun; Lightroom instead of Darkroom!
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On a trip to the Pittsburgh area, I made these black & white photos on Tri-X in February 1987 at New Castle, Pennsylvania. While, I like the effects of back lighting on this westward Chessie System train, I was thwarted…
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Exploring Repurposed Railway Vestiges in County Down; 8 new photos.
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Here’s another instance where I was working with two cameras and two very different photographic media. My Lumix LX7 is an easy tool to capture images digitally, while the Leica IIIa I carry requires a bit more work and yields…
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A Crescent at Wisdom Way—Something different.
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Brian Solomon’s Tracking the Light posts new railway photography every day. Working with the Leica IIIa fitted with a 21mm Super Angulon and loaded with Kodak Tri-X, I exposed this vertical grab shot of Pan Am Southern’s eastward loaded autorack…
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Beacon Street, Boston MBTA’s Green Line, May 2017.
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On May 6, 2017, I made a few rainy afternoon photos of Boston’s Green Line streetcars along Beacon Street. These were exposed old school; a Leica IIIa loaded with Ilford HP5, exposure calculated using a hand-held Minolta Mark IV light…
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Foray into Infrared—Part 1.
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The other day, I loaded my old Nikon F3T with Rollei 35mm black & white Infrared film. A few weeks earlier I tested a roll of this emulsion and processed it to determine the ideal chemistry, times and temperature. These…
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Narrow Gauge Monochrome—A Different Approach.
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Five alternative views of Ireland’s Bord na Mona railway. Here I’m trying something different: Working with an old Leica IIIa fitted with an ancient screw-mount Nikkor 35mm lens, I exposed some Fomapan 100 black & white film. Instead of my…
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Why Black & White Photography?
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Some readers might wonder why I persist with traditional black & white photography, when modern digital imaging is easier and doesn’t involve all that messing about with chemistry. The reasons are simple: I like tradition. I’ve always made black &…
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Tram Noir—Olomouc, October 2016.
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A brisk autumnal wind blew through cobblestone streets in Olomouc, Czech Republic. I wandered with camera in hand, making images of trams grinding along in the dark of night. These images were exposed on Fuji Neopan 400 using a…
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Transcending a Century
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Here’s another contemporary black & white view on Dublin’s O’Connell Street. In the window of Ulster Bank is a view from 1916 showing the ruins of Dublin’s General Post Office, destroyed during the 1916 Easter Rising. Old trams grind along…
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Conrail-Gauzy Visions from another era;—the Lost Photo File, Part 2.
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Sometimes by getting it wrong, I got it right. It was Spring 1984 when I made this black & white photo of Conrail’s SEBO-B climbing east through Warren, Massachusetts. Until a couple of day’s ago, this negative was lost…
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Pan Am Southern; retro photos of a retro railroad; old tech in 2016.
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Let’s gaze back in time; 30 plus years ago I was a young enthusiastic photographer with a 35mm Leica rangefinder. I was fascinated by the Boston & Maine, operated by Guilford Transportation Industries (as Pan Am Railways was then known)….
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Berkshire Scenic RDC at Renfrew, Massachusetts—Real black & white.
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Yesterday (Saturday June 4, 2016) I exposed this view of Berkshire Scenic’s RDC using my old 35mm Leica 3A rangefinder. I processed the film this morning and scanned it for internet presentation. Coming up soon, I’ll detail specifically what I…
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Antes Fort, Pennsylvania.
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In March 2001, Mike Gardner and I were poised to photograph a Norfolk Southern coal train destined for Strawberry Ridge, Pennsylvania. As dramatic clouds crossed the sky, I exposed this black & white photograph with my Rolleiflex Model T. A…
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Massachusetts Central, July 10, 2014—Retro Views
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Black & White in the Modern Age. Here are a few views I made with my Rolleiflex Model T of Mass-Central’s former Boston & Albany branch on July 10, 2014. Why black & white? Why film? Why in 2014? There’s…
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DAILY POST: Maine Central at East Deerfield Yard, September 1984.
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An Unconventional View of the Ready Tracks. I was interested to find this collection of Maine Central locomotives at Boston & Maine’s East Deerfield Yard in September 1984. At the time, Guilford’s gray and orange livery was still a novelty….
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DAILY POST: Springfield Station, March 31, 1984
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From Brian’s Lost Archive. I made this photo when I was a senior in high school. Paul Goewey and I’d planned to meet some friends at Springfield Station, and then drive north to photograph Boston & Maine at Deerfield. While…
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DAILY POST: Quaboag River Sunset, June 1986
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Conrail’s GE C30-7As catch the Glint. In early summer 1986, Conrail was weeks away from converting the Boston & Albany route from a traditional directional double track mainline to a single-track line under the control of CTC-style signals with cab-signal….
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Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited East of Palmer, Massachusetts
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Difference of Decades About four miles east of the center of Palmer (Depot Village) CSX’s former Boston & Albany mainline passes a bucolic setting at the bottom of a broad sweeping field as it heads up the Quaboag River Valley….
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Central Vermont Railway at Stafford Springs, Connecticut
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Spring 1984 I made this image during my senior year of high school. I don’t remember the specific circumstances, but on that day I’d followed Central Vermont Railway’s southward freight from Palmer to Stafford. I made photos of it south…
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Pelham Bay Park, December 1982.
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Amtrak AEM7 Crosses The Hutchinson River in The Bronx Between 1973 and 1985, my paternal grandparents lived at Co-op City in The Bronx, New York City. They had a great view of Amtrak’s former New Haven Railroad line from…
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Tracking the Light in Review
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Light, Camera, Philosophy . . .Action! (Hopefully). About 10 months ago (July 2012), I started Tracking the Light. In the short time span since then I’ve had about 19,000 hits. While small numbers compared with Gangnam Style’s viral You-Tube…
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Polish Steam Working Disused Track-Part 2
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PKP 2-10-0 catches the light in April 2002. As I mentioned in Polish Steam Working Disused Track (Published on March 6, 2013), eleven years ago I rode a enthusiast’s excursion from Wolsztyn to Zagan in south eastern Poland led by…
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Polish Time Machine
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One my favorite images from the April 2002 Polish adventure is this timeless scene of three middle-age men on a horse-drawn wagon crossing the line at Nowa Weis. I caught this on film shortly before sunset with my Rollei. It…
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Chicago & North Western Station, Chicago August 1984
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In August 1984, I made a ten-day adventure of riding Amtrak. I visited Montreal via the Montrealer, then to Washington D.C., where I boarded the Cardinal for Chicago. It was my first visit to America’s ‘Railroad Capital’; I spent three…
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Irish Rail—Cherryville Junction, 6 December 2003
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In 2003, Irish Rail operated its sugar beet trains via Kildare because the normal routing between Waterford and Limerick Junction was closed as result of a bridge collapse at Cahir, County Tipperary. On December 6, 2003, I was in place…
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Contax G2 with Agfa Scala Transparency Film
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I often make interesting images when I’m just playing around. Between 2001 and 2007 I regularly worked with a Contax G2 rangefinder and I typically used it to expose either Fuji color slide film or black & white negatives. One…
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Derelict Steam Locomotive Poland, May 2000
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I made my first trip to Poland in May 2000; while part of my quest was to experience steam in revenue service, among the most compelling images I made were of derelict engines such as this one in Silesia. I…
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Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited catches the glint at Palmer, May 28, 1986.
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On this warm May evening in 1986, I exposed a trailing view of Amtrak’s westward Lake Shore Limited as it hits the Central Vermont diamond at Palmer. The train radiates the glint of the setting sun. Between eastward and westward…
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Installment 6: Black & White revisited; Old Tech for a New Era part 2—Secrets Revealed!
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Technique: Customizing process for optimal tonality with minimal post-process adjustment I promised to reveal secrets! While I won’t tell you which American railroad CEO is a serious railfan, nor will I divulge which North American railway company is on the…
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Installment 5: Black & White revisited; Old Tech for a New Era part 1
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I’ve described myself as a ‘progressive obsoletist,’—an unfamiliar term that I may have invented. Invariably, someone will try to pigeon-hole me, demanding, “what is that?!”—as if the term wasn’t completely self-explanatory. Without a long-winded, half-cynical satirical diatribe, I doubt I could…