by Steve Eshom on May 28, 2010
UP 3985 passes under I-84 east of Meacham, Oregon on June 13, 1993
Most of you that have been around me for a while know I’m pretty organized. My vehicle is always clean with no trash on the floor, my gear is always in order, and I can always find my timetables. If you were to ask me about any of my 20K + images I could find them in an instant thanks to good keywords and organization in Lightroom.
If this was your impression of me you were mostly right.
Last weekend while cleaning one our closets I found the box that I kept my old slide trays in. It was time to be rid of the trays, projector, and screen as neither had been used since September 1994. How do I know that date so precisely? Well, inside one of the trays was a 57 Kodalux developed slides with SEP 94 stamped on them.
From what I can recall I loaded the slides in trays to show right after I got them back from developing. Just like anyone else I wanted to see how I’d done (ahem, 2 weeks later, I really like digital). For whatever reason I never took the next step and unloaded them from the tray and put them in the archival sleeves that the rest of my slide collection is in. It also seems I never made any notes on them in my notebook either at capture time or later on when I reviewed them.
What a mess! At least what a mess for me.
Did I miss these slides? Well, apparently not. When I found them, I did recall taking them and many of the details about them (save for some of the dates, thanks Mom & Dad!). I think in my mind I’d written them off because I recall a roll of film being accidentally ruined around 2000. I never expected to come across them. I’m happy I did.
After scanning, adding to Lightroom, and key wording I tucked the stray slides into the archival sleeves for safe keeping. Now that everything is in order again you can go back to thinking I’m really organized.
by Aaron Hockley on May 10, 2010
Like Steve, I ended up down at Portland’s Union Station last weekend for National Train Day. Having been to events such as this with large crowds of the public, I knew I probably wasn’t going to get any prize-winning calendar shots. I’ve recently started playing around more with HDR photography so I decided to take a few photos that might let me explore this technique. This worked well for a couple photos, such as this one of an ex-UP caboose:
I was also able to pull out a decent amount of shadow detail around the Oregon Pacific 1202:
Things didn’t go so smoothly for the 4449. The running boards of the locomotive where nice and shiny which reflected the colors of the crowd next to her. These reflections weren’t too bad in the original image, but after processing the photo and tone mapping, the reflections turned into random noticeable splotches on the side of the locomotive:
You win some, you lose some. Hopefully I’m smart enough to learn as I continue to work on technique.
I’m testing a new embedding method with the images in this post. I see a couple issues so I’ll need to get those resolved.
by Aaron Hockley on February 19, 2010
Even though I purchased Photomatix a few months ago, I hadn’t really spent much time with HDR photography. Tonight I had some time and found what I figured would be a great subject for my first attempt at tone mapping. I made this photo of the Black Hills Central Railroad on one of its tourist excursions between Keystone and Hill City, South Dakota.
I’m a bit biased, but I figure it’s not bad for a first try at tone mapping…
by Steve Eshom on December 19, 2007
This year I was not motivated to fight the crowds to see the 700 arrive in Vancouver or ride behind the Daylight at the Holiday Express. Why, I can’t say, maybe I’m steamed out? I did want to make sure my youngest daughter was able to get her Daylight fix so I got over my lack of motivation and headed for Oaks Park. On the way we ran into the 700 simmering away at East Portland and stopped to enjoy it. We moved on to Oaks arriving around 9:20. We spent some time wandering around the Daylight taking in the sights, sounds, and smells as the volunteers readied for the 10:00 departure.
On our way out I spent some time wandering through the concessions tent and eventually settled on some items that I just had to have. While my purchase of these items isn’t individually going to build a home for the steam engines it certainly was another incremental contribution to the larger cause. Based on what I saw of ridership and the people milling around the tent lots of incremental contributions were being made!
I’m very happy to see these Christmas runs continue. It seems they have generated interest in the community and I feel it is this community interest and support that will ensure a future home for the steam we all enjoy. Despite my ambivalence this year it seems the rest of the community is on board and supporting the ORHF’s cause. Do you?
“Excuse me, what does it burn?”. Just like he has many times before Doyle McCormack carefully explains not only what the Daylight burns but the history and operation of steam locomotives. As president of the ORHF Doyle is always working to raise awareness of the ORHF’s mission.
Technorati Tags: 4449, 700, daylight, oregon rail heritage foundation, orhf, portland, preservation, railroad, steam, trains
