Tag Archives: #Chicago

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

Looking back at Chicago Union Station—Five Years Ago.

On the evening of November 20, 2018, I stood at the back of the former Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Budd Vista Silver Buckle—then named Silver Splendor–which was positioned at the rear of Amtrak train 48 the eastward Lake Shore Limited. As we glided away from Chicago Union Station, I made a series of digital photos using my FujiFilm XT1 fitted with a Zeiss 12mm Touit.

There’s something magical about rolling along at speed through complex urbanity under the veil of darkness, pierced by electric lights and a prevailing sodium vapor glow.

Silver Splendor was on its way east to Conway Scenic where it would be renamed Rhonda Lee. I became very familiar with this Budd dome when I joined the ranks of Conway Scenic full time in 2019. Hard to believe these photos were made just five years ago!

FujiFilm XT-1 with 12mm Zeiss Touit; ISO 2500, f2.8 1/9 sec.

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photography, Tips and Technique

Clearing Yard Silhouette.

Clearing Yard sunset

On July 1, 1995, I spent the day with Sean Graham-White who had organized a visit at Belt Railway of Chicago’s sprawling Clearing Yard on the southside of Chicago in order to research a detailed article for Pacific RailNews.

At the time, I was associate editor of the magazine and living in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Toward the end of the day, I made this silhouette looking west using my Nikon F3T with 200mm f4.0 Nikkor telephoto. Kodachrome 200, was a grainy film that allowed me to use a faster shutter speed. Notice the plane on approach to Chicago’s Midway Airport.

The inspiration for this image was a photo exposed about 29 years earlier by John Gruber that had appeared on the cover of Trains Magazine.

I made a three-pass scan of this image last night using our recently refurbished Nikon LS-5000 slide scanner controlled by VueScan software.

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Tips and Technique

Digital Dawn—November 8, 2008

On November 8, 2008, Chris Guss lent me his Canon 50D and we explored the greater Chicago rail scene making photos.

It was one of my earliest experiments with digital photography.

I made this photo of Chicago Metra commuter trains tied up at Kenonsha, Wisconsin.

About a year later I finally acquired my first digital camera.

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photography

Classic Chrome: Clearing Yard—July 1995.

In July 1995, Sean Graham-White organized for him us to research a story about the Belt Railway of Chicago’s expansive Clearing Yard. We spent two days with the aid of an assistant train master photographing and taking detailed notes.

At the time I was an Associate Editor of Pacific RailNews, and the story appeared in the magazine later that year.

Among the dozens of color slides I exposed was this view showing a collection of antique Electro-Motive diesels.

It was a hot, humid summer’s afternoon, and the light was something less than ideal for Kodachrome.

I’ve scanned and digitally processed this slide to make the most of the image.

This included considerable color correction and contrast adjustment.

Below is the scaled, but unadjusted scan; the Adobe Lightroom work window showing the degree of some adjustments to the original scan, and my final adjusted output.

Unadjusted Kodachrome slide scan. Note heavy cyan-color cast.

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photography, Rail transit marathon

December 31, 1994—Chicago.

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I made this view at the CTA’s Clark-Lake Station on the rarely photographed Chicago subway.

The Loop is often pictured, but not the lines underground.

My brother and I had spent the day exploring Chicago and it was nice to get out of the cold.

I used an FLW color-correction filter to compensate for the green cast produced by the artificial lighting underground.

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