280: Railroading

Have you ever wondered if or what if a train had a flat?

Fix-A-Flat

Well they do have such issues and a sequence of the change out can be found at my Railroading pages at

http://elmo.rrpicturearchives.net/archivethumbs.aspx?id=68621

224: The Subversive Diaries ---- The Osama-Ben-Elmo Story

Depot at Night

If you are wondering about the title of this post, It refers to the dark history of the pursuit of this image. The story starts back in 2007 when I first tried this shot. It was a dismal failure. In 2008 I gave it another try, this time it was better. It biggest failure, that time, was the roof was totally black and I felt it needed some texture. The only way to get texture was to shoot it during full moon.

Several weeks later I was downtown and heard a train coming. I thought it might be neat to have a train going by. I sat everything up and started doing some exposure experiments. What I did not know is someone must have mistaken the tripod for a rifle and called 911 and reported a sniper on the bridge. To make a long story short a few minutes later I suddenly found myself surrounded by the entire local Special Response Unit; Snipers and all, not to mentioned blocking off all traffic within several blocks.

After that several of my "Friends" started calling me Osama-Ben-Elmo.

I decided tonight was a time to try it again as it continues the story line in progress. I did notify the police first and thing went without incident.

And now you know the rest of the story

107: Railroad -- Repetition

Well it seems the story with my last image was a repeat. Well what do you expect from a railroad.

Repetition to No Where

At least all the repeats head in the same direction.

Note: I hate ultra wide angle lenses. I got everything framed just right and when I got home I found I had included one of my feet so I had to crop the image and lost some of the UWA effect.

105: Railroad

Yep, I did it, I fell off the wagon, but I had to to add to my story.

CSX in Monroe

When my grandson Jake was little, he loved trains. I got started photographing trains using a digital camera I had bought strictly for genealogy documentation. I thought then that digital would never make it as a true art method for photography. Seems I was wrong.

Anyway the railroad photography became a addiction, an as of now about 20% of my images are railroad related. This addiction got be back into regular photography after what had been a lengthy absence.

100: Fine Art -- Ft. Solitude

This afternoon as I often do, I headed out to an out of the way place where I often watch trains. While one of the trains was passing I saw a piece of classic railroad art by Travis “CONRAIL TWITTY” Conner (1978? – 2008). He was part of a group of three railroad artist that noted their work with D.I.F. (Dixie Iron First(some say FIST)). It has always amazed me how great art always seems to fit the occasion.

Ft. Solitude

It is my understanding that the members of the D.I.F. group are homeless individuals that use the railroad to move from place to place. Each of the three has a unique art work and only the date and inscription changes. I have also been told that the inscriptions are used to send messages to the others in the group.

note: I was not prepared to capture an image when I saw this this afternoon. This is a old image from my railfan library.

27: Photographic Vision -- Status report

“All men and equipment are in the clear. You may proceed, through my work authority, at the maximum speed permitted for your train. This is what you would have heard on the railroad radio a short time before the train passed the signalman. This is sort of how I feel about this project. When I first started the project I struggled to find an image each day. After nearly a month I am starting to see images all around me. As today, I went out to shoot an image and the lighting was really bad. As I was leaving I noticed the signalman and approaching train.



My trouble is the implementation of the capture. In this case I have two very bad mistakes. First, is I should have used a much slower shutter speed to show the train speeding by. The second is I think I needed to shoot wider and included more of the signalman’s truck. After I get a better hold of implementation, I will venture back into photoshop. All images so far were shot RAW converted using Canon’s DPP then cropped, resized and sharpened.

18: Photojournalism - Where you find it

Thursdays are always a hectic day for me. A group of us get together around my dining table for Bible study every Thursday at 12 noon. This means all the house cleaning I have put off all week needs to be done before they arrive, and it never all gets done.

Today after Bible study was over I took a little nap, as I did not sleep well last night. I got up from my nap and was headed out the door to go for my walk at WalMart and to pick up an Item I needed for today’s photo, I got a call saying there had been a big train derailment west of town. As railroading is one of my favorite subjects it was westward-ho-the-wagon.



The authorities were keeping folks a ways away as if there was a lethal load on the train and all it was was corn, plain old whole kernel corn headed toward a feed mill. This was shot at 300mm then cropped half the image. Then to add confusion it was a hot hazy day. So you get this instead of what I had planned.