{"id":16671,"date":"2016-09-13T04:42:14","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T08:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/?p=16671"},"modified":"2016-09-14T04:44:52","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T08:44:52","slug":"irish-rail-gem-from-the-garbage-078-with-cravens-at-balbriggan-aug-1998","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/irish-rail-gem-from-the-garbage-078-with-cravens-at-balbriggan-aug-1998\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish Rail Gem from the Garbage\u2014078 with Cravens at Balbriggan Aug 1998."},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you willingly deleted a railroad photo because of an exposure error? Or perhaps pitched an underexposed color slide? Maybe traded away a photo that you dismissed as substandard. Or maybe even dumped an entire roll into the trash because of a camera flaw?<\/p>\n

I have.<\/em><\/p>\n

Step back to August 1998. That wasn\u2019t yesterday. Denis McCabe and I were photographing on the Northern Line at Balbriggan. Our aim was to catch cement trains on the move.<\/p>\n

It was a mostly sunny afternoon with the occasional puffy cloud in the sky.<\/p>\n

An inbound suburban train approached the platforms with Irish Rail 078 in faded orange paint leading a pair of Cravens and the requisite generator van.<\/p>\n

Just as the train reached the optimal location for my photograph, the sun was suddenly blocked by a cloud. [Most of us familiar with making railway photographs has experienced this phenomena, and it has many names, most of them are unsuitable for reiteration here.]<\/p>\n

Despite this setback, I released the shutter anyway, and exposed this lone 35mm black & white negative.<\/p>\n

\"brian_solomon_663700\"
This is the scaled scan of the otherwise unmodified black & white negative (made positive).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After\u00a0I processed the film a few days later, I made prints from\u00a0the best images on the roll, then\u00a0sleeved all<\/u> of the negatives: good, bad, and otherwise.<\/p>\n

I never considered printing this one. At the time, seeing an 071-class diesel leading Cravens was not unusual. It happened daily. Nor was having a cloud ruin a photo in Ireland especially unusual.<\/p>\n

I scanned the entire roll in November 2015, not for this photo, but for the better shots either side of it. It was only on close examination on the computer that it occurred to me that now, in 2016, this image is both interesting and historic.<\/p>\n

Its\u00a0lighting\/exposure defect is easy enough to compensate for using Lightroom. So I present it to you now. In retrospect it offers a better lesson and a more interesting story than the perfectly lit images of cement trains exposed on the same roll.<\/p>\n

\"Irish
Irish Rail class 071 General Motors diesel number 078 leads a pair of Cravens plus gen-van at Balbriggan in August 1998. Exposed on 35mm black & white film using a Nikon F2 (on a long-term loan from Brian Jennison) and Nikkor 24mm lens with yellow filter. Film processed in ID11, and image adjusted for exposure and contrast in Lightroom.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A
A further refinement using Lightroom.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"One
One more variation with greater contrast.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!<\/span><\/h3>\n

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Have you willingly deleted a railroad photo because of an exposure error? Or perhaps pitched an underexposed color slide? Maybe traded away a photo that you dismissed as substandard. Or maybe even dumped an entire roll into the trash because of a camera flaw? I have. Step back to August 1998. That wasn\u2019t yesterday. Denis … Continue reading Irish Rail Gem from the Garbage\u2014078 with Cravens at Balbriggan Aug 1998.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[10,48],"tags":[3807,3806,3808,3814,3805,2712,21,2697],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Cover\u00a9Brian_Solomon_663700.jpg?fit=2812%2C1421","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BVuC-4kT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16671"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16671"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16693,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16671\/revisions\/16693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}