Tag Archives: Spruce Creek

photography

Misty Morning at Spruce Creek, Pennsylvania, April 1, 1988.

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Kodachrome 25 slide exposed using a Leica M2 with 50mm Summicron.

It was Conrail’s 12thbirthday! And that was many years ago.

My old pal TSH and I were exploring the former Pennsylvania Railroad Middle Division and visited Spruce Creek where we photographed this eastward freight.

The old heavy-weight sleeping car converted for Penn-Central/Conrail maintenance of way (work equipment) makes the photograph fascinating. I’d never seen cars like this in revenue service and simply having relics like it on the move connected me to an earlier era.

Seeing this Kodachrome 25 slide makes me yearn for the days when we’d be trackside on Conrail and never know what might pass. It seemed a like endless adventure and every train brought something new and unexpected.

The weather? Not great, but I’d stand there now without complaint.

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Spruce Creek, Pennsylvania.

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Conrail westbound freight on September 23, 1997.

Looking back, I’ve found that 1997 was an extraordinarily busy year for me photographically. I spent a lot of time traveling and exposed more than 500 rolls of slide film. That’s a lot of slides

This image was made on one of several of my week-long trips to Pennsylvania. On this day I’d followed the old Pennsylvania Railroad Middle Division. The railroad was busy and there were lots of opportunity to make photos.

I exposed this vertical view of a westward Conrail freight near the Spruce Creek tunnels using my N90S with an f1.8 105mm lens.

Exposed at 9:42am on September 23, 1997 on Fujichrome Provia 100F color slide film using an Nikon N90S fitted with a manual focus Nikkon f1.8 105mm lens set at f2 at 1/250th of a second. Scanned with a Epson 600 scanner with contrast and color balance adjusted in post processing.
Exposed at 9:42am on September 23, 1997 on Fujichrome Provia 100F color slide film using an Nikon N90S fitted with a manual focus Nikkor f1.8 105mm lens set at f2 at 1/250th of a second. Scanned with a Epson 600 scanner with contrast and color balance adjusted in post processing.

Here’s some suggestions for better photos on dull days: try to work from locations with elevation and crop the sky (as much as possible). Also, if you pan a little, it helps to set the train/locomotive apart from the background and has the effect of improving depth and minimizing the effect of low contrast lighting.

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