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Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

High Altitude Steam!

In the mid-1990s, I made a project out of photographing heritage steam on the former Denver & Rio Grande Western.

In September 1998, while working on my my book Narrow Gauge Steam Locomotives (MBI 1999), I made this trailing view of Cumbres & Toltec class K36 2-8-2 No. 484 ascending toward Cumbres Pass at the Tanglefoot Curve on the eastside of the pass—some of the highest altitude trackage in the United States.

This works for me on several levels. The most basic level is that it shows the locomotive working hard in its element. It follows variation on classic format; three-quarter sun, drive-rods down, etc.

While a preserved locomotive, it is on old home rails and yet I haven’t tried to disguise this image as a photo exposed 30 or more years earlier. Instead, I included ‘Cumbres & Toltec’ in speed lettering on the tender.

Tanglefoot Curve is a snaky-twist in the line that allows the railroad to maintain an even gradient; without over-emphasizing this unusual trackage, I’ve shown the rails on various levels.

Tuesday March 10th, I’m giving my next class on Railroad Photography at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. The topic of this class is Steam Locomotives. For tickets see: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/railroad-photography-the-steam-locomotive-with-brian-solomon-tickets-1984093349619?aff=oddtdtcreator.

Tracking the Light Explores Locomotive Photography!

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

Cumbres Pass on Chrome-Scan Comparison

As I write this I am in the final stages of preparing my latest book on steam locomotives for Kalmbach Media.

This is tentatively titled, “Steam by the Numbers” and examines the development and application of steam locomotives in America organized by wheel arrangement.

While many of the illustrations for the text are historical photographs, I have scoured my collection for appropriate photos that I feel provide dynamic illustrations of steam locomotives at work.

Among these is a photo that I made nearly 25 years ago showing doubleheaded former Rio Grande three-foot gauge 2-8-2s at Cumbres Pass, Colorado.

I’d scanned originally this slide in 2010. However, on critical examination of the scan, I found that it wasn’t up to my current standards. Scanning, like so many aspects of photography is an art, and requires patience and experience.

Rather than suffer with a substandard image, or cut the photo from the book, instead I located the original slide and re-scanned it.

I didn’t record the details of my original scan. However with my recent re-scan, I used a Nikon LS-5000 (Coolscan) slide scanner powered by VueScan 9.8.04 software.

I used the ‘fine’ setting and set the scanner to 4000 dots per inch, while using the ‘Auto Levels’ color profile setting. I then imported the scan into Lightroom for postprocessing, which included lightening shadow areas, warming the color balance, and introducing some sharpening.

Below are examples of the original scan and the improved re-scan.

This greatly enlarged section of the original scan shows that the image suffered from a loss of sharpness, blocked shadows, and a cyan edge-effect.
This is the my most recent scan including my post-processing improvements. This is a cleaner, sharper scan with better color and better overall exposure that is better suited to publication.
Englarged section of the improved scan. This more clearly shows detail in the photograph to the point of revealing the grain structure of the film. Altough it isn’t perfect, it is much better than my flawed scan from 2010.

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