A few weeks ago I posted some vintage Ektachrome slides of MBTA’s Mattapan-Ashmont trolley line that I made with my old Leica 3A when I was 12 years old.
Among these was this view at the Milton station that showed Conrail’s former New Haven Railroad tracks in addition to MBTA’s trolley line.
My 1979 Ektachrome view: I was fascinated by the ‘heavy rail’ tracks on both sides of the trolley line. Here is evidence that Conrail was still serving the former New Haven branch as far as Milton. There’s virtually no evidence of the freight operation today, and it takes a bit of imagination to figure out where the tracks were. Notice that I didn’t allow a PCC to interfere with the scene: this was about the PFE refers!
The trolley line had been adapted to use part of the railroad right of way, and yet it was still necessary to serve freight customers, so tracks from both operations had co-existed for decades.
Milton from approximately the same angle as the 1979 view above. More than just the tracks have changed. I exposed this with my FujiFilm X-T1 digital camera at the end of January 2016.
Today, the freight railroad at Milton is but a memory. (And, if news reports prove correct, the trolley may soon vanish too!). Take nothing for granted.
This is a slightly tighter view of Milton as it now looks. No PFE refers here, nor tracks for them to rest upon. This focal length more closely mimics the 50mm Leica Sumitar lens that I used in 1979.
I made these Now and Then views from approximately the same place looking in the same direction, but nearly 37 years apart.
An of course, I waited for a PCC. On Sunday’s trolleys operate about every 8 minutes in both directions. FujiFilm X-T1 photo.
In yesterday’s post [MBTA PCCs with a Cotton Candy Sky] I described my philosophy and technique with regards to working with a RAW file to maintain a high-level of detail with a textured sky.
With today’s post, I’ve selected a similar image as another example of how I’ve implemented adjustments using the program Lightroom.
The final image is intended as an ‘over the top’ example of how to create a fantasy image from a RAW file. I’m neither endorsing nor condemning photo fantasies, (they appear often enough on the internet), but simply describing one method of producing this result, as well as my interpretation of the scene as I saw it.
Example 1; this is the scaled RAW file, unaltered except for necessary sizing. Notice that the sky is not as blown out as with yesterday’s example. I exposed this image to favor the sky, making it about one half stop darker than the image presented yesterday. I expected to retrieve shadow detail to present a better exposure balance in the final image. Had I exposed for the streetcars, the sky would have been very over exposed, possibly beyond the ability to make correction.
Example 2. As with yesterday’s second example, I’ve digitally introduced a graduated neutral density filter to the sky. This helps darken the sky relative to the lower half of the image while better balancing detail and color in the clouds. I’ve not yet altered the shadow areas so the streetcars still appear too dark and dull.Example 3. Here I’ve lightened the above file by adjusting the ‘shadows’ slider and made nominal global adjustment to the mid-tone areas using the ‘clarity’ slider which gives the image a bit of snap. My goal was to make the streetcars appear more or less as they did when I made the photo. Normally this would be my ‘final’ interpretation. However for the sake of the exercise and to gauge public opinion, I’ve continued with my manipulation of the RAW file (see below).Here’s my fantasy. I’ve over-enhanced the RAW file by pushing the ‘clarity’, ‘saturation’ and ‘vibrance’ sliders to the right. The manipulation is easily accomplished and the result jumps out and grabs you. However, let me be clear: this is a fantasy, the scene never looked this way in real life.
However, if this image helps save the Mattapan-Ashmont trolley from extinction, then I’m all for fantasy!
Recently, the TRAINS Newswire published a story on MBTA’s Mattapan-Ashmont Trolley line warning of the possible demise of the historic PCC cars and possibly of the trolley line itself. (The ‘bus’ word was uttered!)
So, the word is out, if Mattapan-Ashmont Trolley is something you want to see, DON’T Wait.
I recalled an early visit to this line with my father on a May Sunday in 1979. This was back when former Dallas double-ended PCCs dominated operations on the line, and the cars were largely painted red to reflect their operation as an extension of the Red Line.
Today, I find it fascinating to look back on these photos. I couldn’t have anticipated back then that more than 36 years later, old PCCs would still be working the line, albeit with different cars.
This old Type 3 car caught my attention. I’d seen these on the Green Line years earlier and always want to inspect one up close.Since my 1979 visit MBTA eliminated the classic trolley shelter at Mattapan and sent many of the double-ended cars to the scrapper.
However, from strictly a photographic point of view, what is now most interesting to me is that I knew virtually nothing of the ‘rules of photography’ , other than a rudimentary understanding of how to work my father’s Weston Master III light meter and translate the settings it offered to my Leica 3A.
No one had ever told me about three-quarter angles, or where the sun was ‘supposed to be’. Front-lighting, back-lighting, and side-lighting were foreign words. I was blind as to the relative importance of foreground and background, and I didn’t known that ‘good’ photos were only made with Kodachrome, and I knew nothing about the compositional ratios of 2/3s, or any of the other stuff that later influenced my photography.
Here were trolley cars and lots of them. What’s that Green car doing back there I wondered?
Honestly, as record of the scene, my raw unfettered, uninformed approach has a great appeal to me today. Had I known those things, I may have exposed less interesting images.
What you see here are the inspired views of an enthusiastic 12-year old exposed using a Leica with a 50mm Summitar lens on Ektachrome film.
Another view of the snow plow. Too much foreground? Lighting all ‘wrong’, just pitch this one in the bin.If the cars are double-ended, why do they spin them around on a loop. I couldn’t make heads or tails of this.I might not have known what I was doing, but I was visionary. I was fascinated by the ‘heavy rail’ tracks on both sides of the trolley line. Here is evidence that Conrail was still serving the former New Haven branch as far as Milton. There’s virtually no evidence of the freight operation today, and it takes a bit of imagination to figure out where the tracks were. Notice that I didn’t allow a PCC to interfere with the scene: this was about the PFE refers!
