Tag Archives: #Nickel Plate Road

photography

Summer Evening at Silver Creek—July 24, 1987.

Working west of Buffalo, New York, my old pal TSH and I paused at Silver Creek between the parallel mainlines operated by Conrail and Norfolk Southern. We were on one of our epic Summer photo journeys.

I made this photo on Professional Kodachrome 25 (PKM) using my recently-purchased Leica M2 rangefinder fitted with f2.0 50mm Summicron lens.

A Conrail freight was rolling eastward along the old New York Central Waterlevel Route.

I was standing under the awning of the disused former Nickel Plate Road freight station that was situated between the two highly polished mains.

Silver Creek, NY on July 24, 1987.

Recently, I rediscovered this 33-year old slide in a collection of other photos from the same trip.

Notice how the missing floor boards mimic the pattern of the code line poles partially obscured by the bushes, and also the window pattern on the freight station.

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Tips and Technique

Norfolk Southern Train 145 on the Street

Working with ripe professional Kodachrome 25 (PKM), I made a series of photos of Norfolk Southern trains traversing the former Nickel Plate Road street trackage on 19th Street in Erie, Pennsylvania.

This was part of a great adventure with my pal TSH in the summer of 1988 that brought us to many fascinating places on the railroad.

Kodachrome was wonderful film, and PKM was among my favorite emulsions, but when used a little on the ripe side (too fresh) it shifted cyan (blue/green).

I scanned this slide the other day using a Nikon Coolscan5000 digital scanner then imported the high-res TIF scan into Adobe Lightroom for adjustment.

Working with the sliders in the program, I made a host of small corrections to color, contrast, and exposure that improve the overall appearance of the photo while minimizing the effects of the cyan color cast.

I’ve included a scaled version of the unaltered scan; my adjusted scan, and one of the Lightroom work windows that shows some of the adjustments that I made during post processing.

Lightroom work window showing control sliders.
Unaltered scan of the original Kodachrome slide.
Corrected scan.

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