by Steve Eshom on November 30, 2009
What influences your photographs? What is your inspiration?
After the Autumn Leaf Slideshow those were questions that lingered in my mind after seeing some fabulous photographs and presentations. As it ends up I spent parts of the day after the slideshow with Ryan Dadgari and Scott Lothes discussing these very issues. Did I get all the answers and secrets? Not exactly. What I did get from discussing railroad photography was influence and inspiration. Here’s a few words from the discussion that are helping drive some of my photographs.
context
environment
people
story
motion
size
purpose
That Sunday was a time for growth. Thanks guys!
Technorati Tags: train, railroad, railfan, photo, photography, influence, inspiration
by Steve Eshom on November 26, 2009
Yes, its almost time to head into the mountains for a little winter railfanning. This photo is from Robert’s and my December 2008 trip to the Blue Mountains where witnessed 18″ of snowfall in 24 hours. This trip provided some of our best winter railfanning ever and will be hard to top though we’ll try!
Just after this photo was taken Robert and I noted that the train was really moving as it rolled down hill from Nordeen. We stopped just around the corner to grab another photo and as the train’s rear end went by we heard it go into emergency and smelled the unmistakable odor of brake shoes. As the train’s FRED flashed off into the darkness of the snow storm we were not sure what the fate of the train would be.
Our engineer friend Bryan shared many stories with us about how easy it was to get a train out of control headed east out of Kamela. Simply not setting the brakes soon enough was more than plenty to start the recipe for disaster. He had also shared his own personal parameters as to when it is appropriate to plug it and based on us pacing the train on the adjacent road it was right at the max speed. Robert and I both expected the worst.
As we drove down toward Motanic we were happy to find the train stopped a mile or so after going into emergency. The train appeared to be totally intact and on the rails. Whew, disaster averted.
Technorati Tags: train, railroad, railfan, photo, photography, snow, UP, union pacific, K-Line, blue mountains, oregon, kamela, motanic.
by Steve Eshom on November 23, 2009
Reader Paige asked in the comments to my Making the Most of a Cloudy Day post about how to photograph trains on a cloudy day. His question prompted me to put together my thoughts on the topic…
The first thing to understand is what the clouds do. They essentially act as a diffuser for the sun and provide a much more even light over the subject and background. Depending on the thickness of the clouds minor shadows may exist or none may be present which can open up opportunities that wouldn’t normally exist on a sunny day.
The thickness of the clouds also regulates the brightness of the scene. For example some of our dreary Northwest days have very little light thanks to very thick clouds which contain lots of moisture. As a contrast east of the mountains, where more moisture is wrung out of the clouds, a high overcast will exists which lets plenty of light through providing more brightness.
High overcast in eastern Oregon provides reasonably even, diffused light on the subject.
On a cloudy day dramatic light and beautiful skies are not not something that will be in play. These factors usually cause me to focus more intimately on the subject. I’ll zoom more closely to eliminate an even and generic gray sky. I find a cloudy day is a good day to focus on details as the light can be very even which allows the entire scene to be lit at the same brightness.
Thanks to even light everywhere detail photos look fabulous on cloudy days.
On the other hand the clouds can be part of the subject. They provide an excellent top frame and when the clouds are interesting I’ll work to include them to give a sense of the day to the image. Clouds and rain are part of our environment so including them as part of the photo is certainly something that can add impact and help explain something about the subject. When I was a kid the BN suffered a slide on Stevens Pass and a news photographer was on scene to capture the train stopped at the slide. In the photo the rain drops and the gray skies were both visible which just added so much more context to the mud across the tracks.
Clouds can be part of the subject to offer framing or drama.
Behind the camera I tend to make the same exposure decisions I would make on any other day to get the best exposure on the subject. I determine what is more important about the scene and set my aperture, shutter, and ISO to match. Since cloudy days are often darker I find myself using higher ISOs. Generally photos exposed properly at high ISO don’t exhibit the amount of noise you see in a darker image so I don’t hesitate to head up to ISO 800 now and then (ISO 800 is the practical upper limit on my 20D). As with any photograph, I will take a few test photos to make sure my exposure choices are appearing on the back of the camera to be what I’m looking for.
Cloudy days are a good time to practice exposing to the right. I usually expose my images to the point where the brightest part of the scene just starts to get blown out (the red blinking areas on the image when viewing the histogram). This usually offers the best balance of light and dark areas and gives me something to work with in post. On cloudy days using this method will help to draw the maximum brightness out of a scene without over exposing.
Exposing to the right without blowing out highlights too much.
In Lightroom I use the same techniques as I would with any other photo. Since the colors tend to appear more saturated in a cloudy day photo I watch very carefully how much vibrance or how deep the tone curve is I apply. I tend to keep less contrast in a cloudy day photo to help bring out the details that are hiding in the depth of the shadows. Since our train subjects tend to be a bit dark on cloudy days I will also use the local adjustment brush to brush in a bit of brightness or to reduce contrast on the subject. Many times just a touch of brightness on the subject will really make it stand out from the flatness of the rest of the scene. Clouds can also become a bit washed out with exposing to the right so I’ll use the local adjustment brush on them too to bring them back to look natural.
Judicious use of the adjustment brush on cloudy day subjects can bring them out of the darkness. Final output is here.
Those are my thoughts on cloudy days. As with much of photography there isn’t necessarily a formula but I find these guidelines work for me. By all means if something moves you to do something that seems contrary because you think the product will be something special, DO IT! Photography is about creating so step outside of the norms and capture it your way.
Technorati Tags: train, railroad, photo, photography, lightroom, cloudy, weather, technique
by Aaron Hockley on November 22, 2009
A few weeks ago I gave a presentation at Ignite Corvallis offering a fun introduction to railroad photography mixed with innuendo. Thanks to Charles Bonville for recording my talk… here’s my 5 minute talk:
by Steve Eshom on November 20, 2009
I’m stealing the title of this post from Moose Peterson. I’m doing it for a reason though as I want dogcaught readers to think about the most important ingredient before they click over and read Moose’s thoughts on the topic.
My feeling is Moose is right on and there are many I times I wish I didn’t have a day job so I could spend more time where I enjoy being. The realities of life aside, I do find the more time I spend out photographing the more comfortable I get with making just the image I want to see. The times when I head out with just photography on my mind I am more motivated and energized than at any other time. I think I’ll go photograph something tomorrow.
Thanks for the thought provoking moment on a Friday night Moose!
Technorati Tags: train, railroad, railfan, photo, photography, inspiration, moose peterson, technique
