During my travels, I’ve found that several loosely-defined phases influence how I approach railroad photography.
These may be described as:
- Research
- Discovery (or Survey)
- Intensive Investigation
- Initial Execution
- Refinement
- Revisitations
These phases may span days, weeks, years, or even a lifetime. Sometimes I skip a step, and often the phases overlap. However, they frequently alter the way I see a railroad or interpret a place.
In late 1989, I made my survey trips to California’s Donner Pass. The photographs I made during that initial exploration were very different from the images I created during later phases of my work there. Yet those early photographs laid the groundwork for the more refined images that followed.
Complicating this process is when the Discovery phase coincides with the onset of significant change to the subject. This can be frustrating, since a railroad may be at its most interesting to me before my understanding of it—and my photography—have had an opportunity to mature and reach a stage of refinement.
My phases are easiest to describe when discussing my BIG projects—the detailed, intesive visual studies. The phases are more complicated to understand when I rush into a situation where it is necessary to skip, combine, or reverse the order of phases.
There have also been countless occasions during my travels when all of the phases were necessarily-compressed into a single brief experience, such as a one-time chase of freight through unfamiliar territory.
Tracking the Light explores railroad photography!