{"id":17344,"date":"2016-11-26T05:33:12","date_gmt":"2016-11-26T10:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/?p=17344"},"modified":"2016-11-26T10:26:42","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T15:26:42","slug":"great-shot-forever-ruined-i-missed-the-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/great-shot-forever-ruined-i-missed-the-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Shot Forever Ruined\u2014I missed the Focus."},"content":{"rendered":"

Hard lessons. Here we have a scene never to be repeated, and one that I\u2019ve never dared to show before. In June (or early July 1984), I caught a westward Conrail freight passing the Palmer Union Station at sunset on the then double-track Boston & Albany..<\/p>\n

This was toward the end of regular operation of cabooses on road freights. By that time many Conrail symbol freights on the B&A were already using telemetry devices in place of the once common caboose.<\/p>\n

A caboose rolling into the sunset. Great illustration concept. Nice light, decent framing, etc.<\/p>\n

Except the photo is soft. Working with my Leica 3A rangefinder I’d missed the focus.<\/p>\n

\"Viewed
Viewed at a small size on a pixelated back-lit digital screen this old photo is nearly passable. But it fails my basic test for sharpness. Face it, I missed the focus. Like spilled milk, once you’ve missed the focus there’s nothing you can do about it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And so as a result of this visual flaw, the\u00a0potentially iconic image didn’t make\u00a0my cut of presentable images. I filed the negative, then I misplaced it. For more than 32 years it remained unseen. I present it now only as a warning.<\/p>\n

Even as a 17 year-old, nothing annoyed me more in my own photography than missing the focus. Back then there was no autofocus, so when I missed, I couldn’t blame the technology.<\/p>\n

My\u00a0lesson: get the focus right. Once you\u2019ve missed it you can\u2019t fix it. (Although with digital sharpening you can cover your tracks a little).<\/p>\n

Tracking the Light Posts Every Day.<\/span><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hard lessons. Here we have a scene never to be repeated, and one that I\u2019ve never dared to show before. In June (or early July 1984), I caught a westward Conrail freight passing the Palmer Union Station at sunset on the then double-track Boston & Albany.. This was toward the end of regular operation of … Continue reading Great Shot Forever Ruined\u2014I missed the Focus.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17342,"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":true,"_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":[48],"tags":[3938,3940,3939,1952,53,30],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Palmer\u00a9Brian_Solomon_578137.jpg?fit=1794%2C1114","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BVuC-4vK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17344"}],"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=17344"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17355,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17344\/revisions\/17355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}