On this day in 2010, John Gruber and I chased a Wisconsin & Southern local toward Cottage Grove, Wisconsin. This was John’s backyard, and I was along for the ride. Over the years, John and I made numerous photographic expeditions along Wisconsin & Southern’s lines radiating from Madison.

I had purchased a new Canon EOS 7D just a few weeks earlier and was still relatively new to digital photography. I was curious to see what I could do with this new tool.

For this view, I fitted my Canon 200mm prime telephoto lens to the digital body. The 7D’s APS-C sensor represented Canon’s latest innovation. It enabled me to work at ISO 400 while retaining a high level of detail, while the sensor’s ‘1.6x crop factor’ gave the 200mm lens approximately the same angle of view as a 320mm lens on a traditional full-frame 35mm film camera.

Using greater telephoto compression, I made the most of the roadside utility lines and the patterns created by the highway itself, incorporating them as compositional elements surrounding the locomotive as it crossed the road. I like the color and classic lines of the EMD SD40-2 working long-hood first. The soft color palette and contrast of this image were partially a function of the Canon sensor and optics.

In fact, I was mimicking a similar composition that I’d made 18 years earlier on Kodachrome using 400mm Tokina lens featuring an NHV GP9 crossing Highway 116 near Littleton on the former Boston & Maine New Hampshire Division route to Groveton/Berlin—but that’s really a story for another day.

This Wisconsin & Southern image was exposed on June 16, 2010; f/5.6, 1/125 second, ISO 400. Although I’ve made modest adjustments to contrast and color balance, this JPEG was created from the original Canon CR2 RAW file.

Tracking the Light Explores Railway Image Making!