by Steve Eshom on February 1, 2012
Sunday evening a Google+ photo walk, organized by three local photographers, was held in Portland. Aaron and I joined in the festivities though railroad photographs were not the primary focus of this walk. The walkers were made up of a variety of photographers from around the area including some from north of Everett. The walk started at Union Station and proceeded towards the river, the Eastbank Esplanade, and eventually the Hair of the Dog Brewery on the east side. Hey, photographers of all sorts love beer, not just railfans!
Sunday the weather grew increasingly wetter and by the time the walk started around 4:30pm the rain was steady. Despite the dampness quite a crowd showed up and impressed the organizers who thought many would not attended. I had a couple of rail related images I wanted to capture and right out of the gate I set up for a couple of them. As we moved along it grew dark and the wet streets started to reflect light from various street lights, headlights, signs, and buildings. There was a lot of shiny goodness going on!
When I arrived at the Skidmore Fountain MAX stop I saw a wonderful photo brewing. Street lights lit the area brightly and the reflections from the cobblestone textured streets were spectacular. I set up my tripod and waited for a MAX train to arrive. The result? This colorful image of a westbound blue line train departing Skidmore Fountain. As we walked we talked about how if any of us got 1 or 2 really good shots from the walk, we’d be happy. After I saw this shot on the computer, I was happy.
If you are interested in other’s results from the walk you can view everyone’s contributed images from the photowalk, including mine and Aaron’s here.
by Steve Eshom on January 28, 2012
When you drive up the Columbia River Gorge on the highway it is really tough to tell sometimes that you are passing through a pretty major mountain range. The mountains are certainly there but they tower above so high that it isn’t really obvious what is going on. If you drive I-84 and look across at Washington the mountains are not as abrupt or as steep as on the Oregon side so you have the illusion that you are passing through a gentle valley. That’s far from the truth.
I love to find places where the river is fairly narrow and you can easily photograph across it. Moffett Creek below Bonneville dam is one of the places where that is possible. With fresh snow on the mountains and the rocky terrain I knew I wanted to visit here and capture a Union Pacific train crossing the bridge. UP set me up with two trains for this so I took advantage.
What is hard to see in this image is how tall the mountain in the background really is. The river is around 40′ above sea level and Wauneka Point tops out at over 2800′ (according to mytopo.com)! This image is actually a panorama shot vertically at 51mm and from what I can tell I’m only showing about 1/3 of the mountain. Impressive to be in the Cascades.
by Steve Eshom on January 25, 2012
Most of the snow from the January 15th snow storm fell west of Bingen. The result was I spent the day west of Bingen too! Snow in the gorge has been pretty sparse lately so I wanted to take advantage. Most of the morning I hung out around North Bonneville photographing Amtrak, several BNSF westbounds, and two eastbound UP trains. The gorge is pretty narrow and cluttered with trees around North Bonneville. I knew I wanted a wider view to demonstrate what the snow looked like so after lunch I drove to Dog Mountain to wait for an eastbound.
Since it was Monday maintenance was out in full force so I took a quick trip to Underwood during a lull to see what the White Salmon River looks like after the Condit Dam breach. I’ve read many people’s complaints about how the breach has ruined one of the best salmon fishing locations in the Gorge. I will agree that the river is choked with muck but since the October 26, 2010 breach we really haven’t had any high water. Once we have a few heavy rains it appears a river channel will reappear there. Now, what will happen with the back water areas? Good question. I’m sure mother nature will show us.
I arrived back a Dog Mountain about the same time and eastbound stack train was going through Stevenson. Perfect. I climbed the hill and gathered in the photo I was looking for.
by Steve Eshom on January 18, 2012
Aaron and I will be making some behind the scenes changes to dogcaught.com over the next week. The result is you may experience some outages or unusual responses. Don’t worry everything will be as it was and we’ll get back to our normal content.
As a teaser here’s a photo I took on Monday while I visited the Columbia River Gorge. We received a bit of snow down to the river level on Sunday so I ran out Monday to take advantage. This image is the DPU of a west bound grain train crossing Cascade Dr. in North Bonneville, Wa.
by Steve Eshom on January 4, 2012
Since we are starting a new year a common question comes to mind. Where will you go in 2012?
My plans are still up in the air but I do have some things which are coming together railfanning wise. Here’s my plans so far.
- Watch for snow in the Columbia River Gorge. Last year was a bust hopefully this year will be positive.
- MLK holiday railfanning somewhere in the area.
- Montana at spring break. I’m looking forward to another visit to Central Montana, this time while the snow is still around.
- GorgeRail in May. I’ve signed up to be a presenter, so make sure you can find your way there.
- Hot Rails/Gaynor Campout in July or August. I’ve passed on a couple of trips to Stevens Pass lately so this will get me back up there again.
- Autumn Leaf in October. I think I enjoy fall best in the Northwest so this should be a good time as always.
I have a few weeks of vacation to use this year so I’m sure there will be more. Maybe Northern California? Maybe Canada? We’ll see out things play out.
Where will you go in 2012? Leave a comment and let us all know.
