Attention All GREAT Photographers!
Years ago many gained notoriety in black and white photography. Even among railroad photographers a few gained that greatness status. Then came publishers converting to color photos, and the black and white notorious photographers seemed to produce little. Very, very little! The variety of color films was not suited to darkroom creativity. Suddenly, digit photography burst forth, and with a computer skilled and adept people were able to produce timely, eye catching photos of news events!
Perris Valley Line first inbound regularly scheduled familiarity run for crews (without passengers), May 9, 2016, Perris, CA (Perris South stop): Anonymous photographer.
But, that brought on a new dimension, fraudulent photos. Everybody and his uncle could suddenly produce photos of new GE ES44AC locomotive with DD trucks (with four axils each) on them. The camera industry responded with RAW photos to protect the integrity of the photo industry, with photos that were not changeable, only copies attached to the original could be altered. Publishers, such as TRAINS Magazine, quickly gravitated towards that.
So, what it amounts to is NO truly great photographer in his right mind would ever submit digital RAW photos to TRAINS Magazine because few photos are ever perfect, and a little cropping or enhancement like great black and white photographers often did years ago can’t be done with RAW, or at least the industry is gravitating away from allowing the average people to be able to do so, except for the rich of course. Kalmbach has that rich man’s capability, but most of us don’t. So, destiny simply says that there will NOT ever be great railroad photograph