A few weeks ago I posted a shadow silhouette made from the Belfast-Dublin Enterprise crossing the old Great Northern Railway (of Ireland) Craigmore Viaduct.
LX7 photo from the train.
Last week I had the opportunity to make a photo of the same bridge from the ground, thus making use of the shadow from a completely different angle.
Exposure was the tricky part, since the sun was low on the horizon, but partially blocked by the passing train. I made these photos with my Lumix LX7 without use of filters or post-processing adjustment.
Lumix LX7 ISO80, f8 at 1/1000th second, 60mm setting on the zoom.Lumix LX7 ISO80, f8 at 1/1000th second, 60mm setting on the zoom.
Thanks to Honer Travers and William Malone with whom I was traveling.
A couple of weeks ago I made these Irish Rail silhouettes on Stores Street near Bus Aras.
The black & white photo was exposed on Ilford HP5 with my Nikon F3T fitted with a f1.4 50mm lens, processed in ID11, and scanned with an Epson V500.
By contrast, the colour image was exposed digitally using my Lumix LX-7 with Leica Vario-Summilux lens.
Do you have a preference?
Personally I like the bird in this one, although my placement of the train is less than ideal because it blocks the nearer lamp.This view is closer to what I’d originally envisioned and features both lamps in silhouette.
On August 15-16, 2009, I’d been camping in California’s Feather River Canyon near the curved Rock Creek trestle. In the early light of dawn, I made a series of photos of this Union Pacific container train crossing the bridge.
Exposed on Fujicrome with a Canon EOS 3 with 28mm lens. I gauged my exposure on the sky, intending to make a silhouette of the train and bridge.
This image features the tail-end ‘Distributed Power Unit’ (a radio controlled remote locomotive). After making this photo I followed the train west down the canyon and made more images.
Thankfully Union Pacific paints its bridges an aluminum color which helps visually separate the girders from the inky blackness of the trees beyond. Would this photo work if the bridge were painted black?
West of Rochelle, Illinois, June 15, 2004: the sky was aflame with the evening glow. As the setting sun illuminated prairie-dust and low cloud that had blown in from the west.
I was parked near the Global III intermodal yard south of Union Pacific’s former Chicago & North Western mainline. This is a busy stretch of railroad.
A Union Pacific coal train works east near Rochelle, Illinois. Exposed with a Nikon F3 on Fujichrome slide film. Notice the ditch-lights; I’ve given just enough of an angle so there’s the faint twinkle at the front of the locomotive.
Central Illinois is flat open country which is prefect for making sunset silhouettes: using the big sky as back drop for a train.
Here I’ve taken nearly a broadside position, exposed for the sky while keeping the train in the lower quarter of the frame.
When I worked at Pacific RailNews in the mid-1990s, we favored silhouetted views with lots of sky to use for opening spreads. It was the style to lay headlines and text in the sky.
I’ve always like the simplicity of silhouettes; raw and dramatic with details largely left to the imagination.Tracking the Light posts new material every morning.
