The other day, Conway Scenic Railroad’s Buildings & Grounds crew coated the North Conway, New Hampshire station lobby floor with a glossy polyurethane protective finish. I made a few photos for the company’s social media.
Digital photo exposed with a Nikon Z7-II with 24-70mm lens.
The resulting images reminded me a photo that I made at Washington Union Station back in May 2022. In that image, I preserved Daniel Burnham’s classical architecture using a Zeiss Hologon flat-field super-wideangle lens fitted to my Contax G2 rangefinder.
In both photos I used the same visual technique: to maximize the effect of a reflective floor, I placed the horizon relatively high in the frame, while keeping the camera close to the floor.
On a session of the West Springfield Train Watchers, I made this view of four BIG Conrail diesels at the west end of the yard.
It was the evening of July 19, 1983.
I traveled there with Bob Buck in his green Ford van.
As dusk settled, I set up my Leica 3A on a tripod, carefully keeping the yard lights at the edge of the frame. I opened the shutter using the ‘T’ setting and illuminated the train with a Metz strobe to compensate for the inky shadows of the summer evening.
I was keen on making the most of the Conrail C30-7s and SD45-2s leading the evening westbound. These were rare locomotives and worthy of my attention at the time. On the recommendation of my friend and fellow photographer Doug Moore, I’d wrapped the head of the strobe in a white garbage bag to soften and diffuse the light.
Looking back this photo, what strikes me is the relative sophistication my composition. Yet, for years this image sat dormant because of its poor technical qualities. I over processed the film, leading to coarse grain and excessive contrast.
Conrail C30-7s and SD45-2s at West Springfield, Massachusetts on July 19, 1983.
I asked Kris why my early photos benefit from great composition despite their poor technical quality. She suggested that this was because I was making photo for joy of the subject without too much concern for technique.
Over the years my overall techique improved, but as my technical qualities were refined my compositions grew less innovative. Eventually my improved techniques resulted in superior images, but I still look back at my early efforts trying to see what I saw.
On a September 1994 trip with Tom and Mike Danneman, I made this unusual portrait oriented (vertical) image on Kodachrome 25 of a Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range manifest freight approach the yard at Proctor, Minnesota.
It was dull and raining lightly. To make for a more engaging photo I included portions of the bridge on which was I standing over the tracks. This makes a frame for the primary subject and ads depth, while distracting viewers likely to complain by directing their interest to the out of focus bridge members and away from the featureless sky.
This was a trick I learned in the early 1990s when executing commercial product photography to avoid overly complicated re-shoots by distracting fault-finding art directors.
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
Cropped for the horizontal-demanding internet below;
My preferred camera-lens combination in 1997 was a Nikon N90s with Nikkor 80-200 zoom lens.
This versatile set up gave me great flexibility. At the time I was still exposing both Fujichrome and Kodachrome slide film, but was leaning more and more toward Fujichrome.
Ironically, in retrospect I found that camera flexibility doesn’t necessarily produce the best photos. I think this is because the zoom lens allowed me to quickly adjust the focal length and perspective, I didn’t spend the time to properly scrutinize the scene for the best possible image. This not a fault with the equipment, but in how I was using it.
This photo of JR trains crossing an overpass in Tokyo reminds me when I felt the N90S, 80-200mm lens and Fujichrome Provia gave me limitless photographic potential. Maybe it still does?
