Upcoming Rail Photography Contests

I was unaware that Railfan & Railroad magazine has a contest. Unfortunately entry deadline is extremely soon, last day of September or first day of October, something like that. $200 first prize; don't recall the theme, if any. Sorry for not having more info; I couldn't find any info online. Now I know to look for it next year.







Trains magazine also has a contest (link here, big file, 3.6MB), first prize is a Canon 50D! The theme: "Bridging the Gap." Deadline October 31; for details follow the link.



Finally, the Center for Rail Photography and Art is doing their annual contest again. This year's theme is "Beyond the Locomotive" with the added explanation that "This year’s theme challenges the photographer to understate (or even eliminate) the locomotive in the photograph and emphasize other aspects of the railroad environment." First prize is also a Canon 50D! Deadline December 31; modest entry fee of $10 for non-members of the Center. Link here.

Good luck, everyone!

PS: I forgot all about Day In North America, a competition/compilation where everyone submits their shots taken on one day; the selected shots appear in an issue of Railroads Illustrated. That day was October 3, 2009, so it is too late to make a plan, but if you took a nice shot that day, the information for submission can be found here.

"Great Railroad Photography"

A new publication is coming out. It appears to be a magazine or an occasional publication in magazine form (it says "Premier Issue") but I can't tell the frequency. The initial issue has 8 essays by known names: Ande, Burgess, Crise, Flanary, Lawrence, Lothes, Scanlon, Zimmmerman. The webpage (link here) says 8 essays, 100 pages. It is being done by the people at Carstens and Railfan & Railroad magazine. Looking forward to it!

Tying it Together - Image vs. Viewer

Early in the history of this blog it was suggested to me never to write about my own shots. Overall that is good advice, it is hard to be objective about one's own stuff, and frankly there is too much good stuff out there to write about instead. But sometimes one has a more intimate knowledge of one's own work, and sometimes one just has a point to make and so what, really, it's my blog. So I proceed ...

And besides, one point here will be that opinions vary and people approach shots from different places.

Consider this shot, what I call my "pumpkin" shot (captioned version here). One person whose opinion on rail photography I respect says they really like the shot. Another person whose opinion on rail photography I respect says the shot does not hold together. How can we reconcile these opposing viewpoints?

The shot is straightforward, a train in the background, some pumpkins in the foreground. The train is distant but conspicuous in location and motion and is obviosly the subject. So what ties the pumpkins to the train?

From one perspective, not much. There are no agricultural rows, say, that lead from one to the other. There is no apparent notion of the train serving the farm. Two objects, two worlds, arbitrarily brought together by the photographer. I see such shots from time to time, the photographer has stepped away from shooting the train to shooting the train in its environment, and the second object was present, and the photographer put them together. More to it than a simple wedgie but, really, it "does not hold together."

From another perspective, connections are prevalent. First, the frost on the ground can suggest late fall, and sure enough, a pumpkin suggests late fall. Second, while the compositional elements may not connect strongly, the shot has a pastel flavor throughout that joins, with various pinks throughout. The shot does not have a great deal of contrast, often a bad thing, but perhaps here it adds to a feel of softness, of lack of differentiation, of evenness. Third, the textures are harmonious - an expanse of gently frosted turf, and even the pumpkins nest into the plants, blend in, their forms becoming less distinct as they do in tonality as well. The train and foreground blend together and bond together, not in terms of compositional elements but in color and tonality and texture.

So the shot can be viewed in different ways. How it is viewed depends on what the viewer brings to the shot. Does he love fall, does he love the cripness of a frosty morning, and also the tranquility? If one misses the frost and the color then it is just a train here, some vegetables there.

Does she love agriculture, does she feel a bond to the land, to the farmland? There will be no flow between train and pumpkins, just two different spots on the image separated by dry weeds, unless one has an appreciation, a positive response of some sort, to the foliage. (I myself have a distinct negative reaction to an expanse of corn in particular that makes me less appreciative of the across-the-cornfield view seen in, say, shots from Ohio. They just have a boring foreground to me.)

Images come together, coalesce, in many ways. Commonly they do so in terms of composition, element A leads the eye to element B leads the eye to element C. Sometimes, however, the connections are through other dimensions, through common characteristics, repeated color, complimenatary tonality. Ultimately, however, that connection is made not only by the image but by the viewer, who sees with the eyes but draws connections and appreciates in the mind.

Two Interesting Sites

I'm always looking for web sites with interesting images. Actually, I wish I could spend more time on that, and one goal of this site is to seek, find, and present the gems. Here are two gems I have run across.

Gallery of Steel: International Railway Art Exhibition is "where I capture and share the very best, most artistic, compelling, creative, moving, bold, original, unique, edgy, brilliant (in my opinion) railway-related photographs on Flickr." A person (persons?) after my own heart! A nice range of creativity, most notably in a sizable volume of HDR work, done not for realism but for expression. This is a Flickr-based moderated group of images. There is a regular page here but what is interesting and nicely done is the alternative black-background presentation linked to above. The regular page includes a brief statement of principles from which the above quote is taken.

Beyond the Wedge is less creative than Gallery of Steel in that it does not feature photography that deviates from representational photography to the same extremes. Which doesn't mean it is worse, or better, just different! One thing I notice (because my preferences favor them) is the many shots that involve capturing equipment and other details, plus broader perspectives, with severe and/or non-standard cropping. But that is just one part of a set of images with interesting variety. Also Flickr-based, also moderated.

Two website, recommended for you viewing pleasure! Always accessible through my links at lower right. I'll keep looking for more.

Steve Crise and Cut-off Elements

A natural instinct for any photographer is to include the subject in the frame. This extends to supporting elements also. To many eyes something that is cut-ff is something that isn't right.

But it need not be so. Let's take a look at some shots by Steve Crise (webpage here, railroad stuff here). Yes, it is my second look at Steve's stuff, and there are LOTS of other photogs with great stuff, but the topic came to mind and it turned out he has some shots worth discussing. I go where my mind takes me! (And besides, as long as it has been since the last post, I really need to follow my thoughts while they are active and get some things written.)

Consider this signal shot (annotated version here). Why not include the entire signal? Well, for one, then the shot becomes a shot of a signal, an in-your-face signal to boot, with a background, rather than a scene with a signal in it. Cutting off the top serves to de-emphasize it somewhat in favor of the background (as does the corner placement of the signal head). The dueling sets of foreground and background lights are also in better balance.

Now, take a look at this shot featuring multiple cut-offs (annotated version here): crossing sign in the corner but also the boxcar, and signal post, at the bottom. The cut-off of the crossing sign is somewhat understandable, along the same lines as above: feature it more prominently and it becomes the story instead of contributing to the story. Here, keeping it in means that the shot has some depth rather than being essentially flat, and gives some context for the unusual signal.

But what of the cut-off undercarriage and trucks? Well, they are conventional but the don't need to be included. This shot is about a crossing, done with a signficant degree of abstraction, but hardly abstract. (I love semi-abstracts!) To the knowlegeable viewer, the undercarriage and trucks are inferred; we know they are present. In their place we have a stronger sense of color, a stronger focus on the details of the boxcar (excellent placement of the signal pole between black and yellow, by the way!) and more abstraction. Box car with verticals and horizontals (ribs in the door) in the lower half and curves and diagonals (in bracket, in signal face, in the fragment of the "X") up top. Here, the cut-off serves not so much to balance the image as it does to increase the degree of abstraction so that there is greater focus on the basic forms of lines and curves.

I can enhance the point by comparing with a more conventional shot at the very same location (annotated version here). In this shot the crossing sign is again cut off, to a lesser degree, but the other elements are not, other than the trailing end of the engine. So the look is more "conventional" in framing, much like the first shot, and has no abstraction. Rather, it is a "tight" look at a scene.

It isn't clear here why the cut-off was chosen, although one may surmise from the small distance between nose and left edge, the cutting-off of the back end of the engine (which does place the signal box in a good location close to the right edge), and the signal cut-off, which reduces the sky, that Steve simply wanted a cramped look, perhaps to increase the size of and attention to various details of the scene. Also, the sign is rather ugly, poorly lit (and thus oddly colored?). It doesn't work for me, so I'm not a fan of this one. But it isn't the fault of the cut-off sign.

Let's finish with another successful shot. This shot takes an ordinary (but attractive!) train and signal scene, one we have all shot a zillion times, and adds a second signal in the foreground (annotated version here). The signal head is trimmed just a bit on the side but the bottom half of the post is not shown.

So what does it add? Well, it adds a bit of framing and considerably extra depth. The two signal heads, blurred and focused, form a line with the nose of the train. The in-your-face signal - sure it is blurred but a sharp one would still be a red light in a black disk on a silver pole - tells a strong story as one associates the red with "stop" (never mind that the signal does not face the train). In this case I don't think the side cut-off matters so much, perhaps it mainly serves to place the pole against the edge rather than leaving a gap, while the bottom cut-off allows the signal's scale to be larger, a stronger presence. Many shots would be overpowered with such a close-in element but here the background, with both the scale of the mountains and the detail of the boarding crewman, holds its own.

These shots are examples of only some dimensions and styles of cut-off shots. I have seen lots of other varieties, but most seem to share the same motivation, to eliminate either extraneous detail, or extraneous lack of detail (as when cutting off part of a compositional element also eliminates a great deal of dead space) in order to focus the composition on what the photographer sees as important.

Variations on the Basic Pan

I usually don't care for pans; to me they seem like roster shots with shallow DoF, just an engine and a blurred background, just a different kind of blur. Diesels especially, even with the implied motion there isn't much life in those sorts of shots. But I have seen pans that bring more to the table; here are a few. The key is that the background show some context or offer some contrast, some juxtaposition to the subject.

Mike Bjork's trolley shot above (captioned version here, RP shots here) does a bit of both. I like rain shots when they give the image a bit of shimmer and the wetness on the pavement does that here. The context is a busy intersection, and the contrast is in color, the right purple of the trolley versus the reds of the store lighting and the streaks of various other lights in other colors, a bit of yellow, a bit of green, a bit of white. Very nice (and not only because I am a big fan of rich color)!

Mitch Goldman, well known for his pans (and other great shots, RP shots here) has been developing his zoom pan technique recently. What I love about this one (captioned version here) is the context. It can be tricky to do an "electrified pan" because one can end up with just a mess of blurred wires and catenary structure. Mitch solves the problem here by doing a zoom pan at a station. By doing the nose-on shot he has room to include trackside elements; by shooting at a station he finds interesting elements to include, not just the shelter but the yellow warning stripe and the wooden paths for boarding on the inner track. He places the train further back, increasing the depth and thus adding to the sense of motion, not just a generic blur but an approaching speedster. Excellent!

For the final shot, let's go back to Mike Bjork. He recently shot what I will call a "wedgie pan" at Cascade Tunnel (captioned version here). The wedgie angle results in the pan only freezing part of the engine, but look at what one gets from that angle, a view going back down the train to the portal, adding context and interest. Given that the angled view means less panning is required, one gets less blurring of the background, which here means the trees retail reasonable definition. Add to that lots of snow and the semi-selective color that comes with shooting BNSF orange during darkening conditions and you end up with a super shot!

I am glad to see that people have found ways to liven up what to me is the rather staid if not dull basic pan shot.

Nick Suydam: Master of the Night

I won't claim to have made a full study of all night-time rail photography work. I don't want to get into recent debates, or more serious ones, about what constitutes excellence in the night. All I want to do, really, is to point out that Nick Suydam's recent slide show, "A Late Night in the City: The Railroad Capital After Dark" is tremendous!

Consider the shot above. One of the hardest thinks I find to deal with is the "foreground obstruction." Put something in front of the viewer's face, and the viewer's eyes go there, generally to ill effect. Here it works, however, as the post serves to act as an internal frame, turning the scene into something of an asymmetric diptych, with the main scene on the left, a man and the train, and the secondary scene on the right. The man and the platform tie the pieces together as he is on the left side but about to walk onto the right, where the vanishing point for the various lines lies. The color is a surprisingly attractive yellow, with splashes of blue and red. One engine is seen from the side, the other nose-on. A really interesting combination of elements!

Here is an entirely different sort of shot. Moody, and telling a simple story, or perhaps not, perhaps it has more questions than answers. An engine, a backlit girl, and a round thing of some sort. Some fog, some beams of light, just a bit of track, the form of the engine invisible, with even the numberboards displayed only subtly. Very mysterious, where is the location, is it a pedestrian crossing, where is the girl going and what is she putting in her mouth, what is the mound in the foreground? A simple study, nice. (I'd like it a bit better if I knew what the round thing is.)

The next shot is a dusk shot. I won't claim that this is a great shot, maybe not even a good shot, but I find it interesting, mostly because of the compexity. It is a maze of geometric patterns and blocks of light. I like the way some of the cars have only single containers, exposing the ends of some of the containers to light, creating dark/light variation, with other bright blocks formed by the ribbed container side and the signal box. I like the way the signal bridge in the background is lit up but the foreground cantilever is dark. I like the way the verticals in the train (container sides, wells, container edges) go along with the verticals in the power line support structures. I like the way the yellows and pastels are accented with the red in the signals and the green reflecting off the sides of the train.

But does it fall on the busy, disorganized side of complexity? Maybe, but I am interested in how to capture complexity so I find it interesting to contemplate. Is there a lack of a recognizable composition? Maybe, although the solid rectangles among the complex mix of lines and the contrasting signals do provide some structure. Would I put it on my wall? Well, no.

Ok, then, let's now get to a shot I love. This shot is what pulled me in to this body of work, what led me to search it out to see what else was there. This shot has it all, forms, lines, mood, color, depth, motion. What a dramatic scene!

As always, I like to think about the nuts and bolts of the scene, but here that seems inadequate to the task. There is an internal frame of the train portrait, but it is itself composed a fascinating set of geometric elements and interesting color/texture patterns on the metal surfaces of what is customarily a forbidding place, the underside of a bridge/viaduct at night. And the bolts, both near and far, the shadows! Into that area the train is seemingly moving, but what an interesting angle! The distortions of the extreme wide lens and the fog cause the train to emerge as a monster, red eyed, and what is the nature of its lair with its glowing light underneath? A wondrous image, best thought of lyrically rather than analytically.

Consider the variation in compositions, in style, in abstraction versus documentation across the shots here, and in the all the shots in the slide show. Nick's work is not only fabulous but it shows his versatility and his artistry. An outstanding body of night photography. If you want to see more of Nick's stuff, go to his web page or to his Flickr site.

Running Gear

I'm a fan of equipment detail shots, and one subject that always draws the attention of photographers is the running gear of a steam engine. But how to capture that scene? How to convey some combination of the grandeur (especially with very large drivers or cylinders), the power, the motion, the intricacies of the movement, in a still image?

In a sense this exercise reminds me of 12-bar blues. The limits of the form are narrow, yet the results span a wide realm. It is as if the constraints themselves inspire one to work harder to capture and present one's vision. With running gear shots the limits are not quite so narrow, but the possibilities are still endless despite the specificity of the subject. Here are some variations.

I'm a fan but not a huge fan of Nick d'Amato's shot (captioned version here). In looking at running gear I like the interplay between the curves of the drivers and the lines of the rods and so forth. In Nick's shot the curves are barely visible and the lines are primarily horizontal, with just the one short diagonal. The shot does not have a nice blend of geometric elements. Also, being a flat shot, a shot taken perpendicular to the subjext, it does not have a great deal of depth. What I do like are the textures on the metals, not to mention the wisps of steam here and there and the light coming through from the back at top center, not to mention the many bolts.

Keith Burgess goes for the angle and steam approach (captioned version here, website here), with the main rod and the steam telling the story. The presence of the steam is sort of a tradeoff; one loses the details of what is a magnificent beast but instead one gets a stronger sense of its life. The steam on the right also hides what would have been distracting complexity, putting the focus on two main rods and one wheel, although my curves-favoring eye is also drawn to the upper curve in the next driver forward. (I will admit to a bit of confusion as to why it is so high; I feel like I am misreading something in the mechanical arrangement.)

I'm afraid that this shot is also not fully successful to my eye, however. The upper left and upper center in particular is somewhat of a formless mash of elements, and the image does not have strong contrasts. The angled view offers depth in the presentation of the main rods, but the impression of depth is tempered by the steam to some extent. It is cool to see the detail in the layering of rod ends on a common pivot (journal?), but ultimately there are a lot of trees here but it is a bit weak on the forest. (I love lots of Keith's shots and will feature some down the road.)

Mitch Goldman goes for what I will call a "detail pan" (captioned version here) with interesting results. This one, unlike the others and unlike most running gear shots, shows the gear running! He's got the up/down on the rod and the circular motion of the drivers, excellent! There is a large expanse of open background flying by. For some reason, that does disturb me, I must say. I think I would prefer a bit more of the boiler to be visible to provide some more weight at the top of the picture. It is nice that the driver area is so open - and so well lit! - but there is a bit missing of what I can only call gravitas. Still a cool shot. I bet Mitch could take a running gear crop of any of a number of his pans and I would love it, but I only like this one.

Kelly Lynch's shot (captioned version here, website here) has some really interesting details. First, it has a particular, eccentric (a pun!) mix of focus and out of focus areas; Kelly used a lens baby to create the effect. The focus is on the pivot, an oddly-shaped piece of metal, but with the connections going to it and the contrasting angle formed by the line of the secondary rod and the U-shape in the right foreground, and the drivers in the backgrounds, with their spokes, there are lots of fascinating lines, curves, and shapes to feast on. All seen at a dynamic angle.

Second, the surfaces of the rods scream METAL! in their dull sheen, in their bronze/green/ gray colors, in the variations such as the varying thicknesses in the rods. The variations in the light, with stronger reflections on some surfaces than others, adds to the feel. This shot says machine in this added textural/visual dimension that to some extent Nick's shot also does but Keith's and Mitch's do not. (It occurs to me that the other shots do not have as much tonal variation as I would like to see in BW/monochrome images, with Nick's shot being perhaps an exception, whereas this shot has both color and tonality.)

Finally, the spray of water adds an interesting contrast in detail and in texture, and implies some motion and a story element as well. A fine, fine mix of characteristics resulting in a strong composition.

Boy, this has been an unusually grumpy thread for me! Some might say picky. I like these shots, and I especially like Kelly's shot, but I think I will just continue to seek what I will find to be the perfect running gear shot. Something with a stronger sense of drivers, of big wheels, yet preserving the other dimensions. Perhaps these photographers have already found their perfect shots. Nice work.

Simple Geometric

I haven't posted in a while, but in advance of doing a major post I want to do an appreciation of an image, this one by Nick Suydam (link to captioned flickr version here, website here).

Everyone has their own preferences in what a nice image should look like, and this one pushes several of my buttons. First, the simple but strong geometry, with the arc of the gently curved rails as the dominant element and the straight of the road as the contrasting one, with of course the block of the train. Second is the color, the strong primary blue and red of the train for sure, and of course contrasted against the white snow they look great! But I like the detail colors too, the yellow of the bollard posts in front of the building, the green dot of the ground signal, the crimson of the car. Beyond that the setting is nice, snow is always great, especially fresh enough to cover some cars. The tight dimensions are interesting too, the tracks close to the building up to and also to the corner intruding lower right.

It's not a perfect shot; it seems top-heavy - yet I wouldn't want to cut anything off the bottom, and not really anything off the top either. But I like it, it provides great pleasure, it is up my alley, it is worthy of revisiting. It also teaches me another nugget about seeing images and seeing through my camera. Well done!