Frontier Days Train - 2010 Edition (9 IMG)

Trains Magazine General Discussion
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It’s that time of the year…the Cheyenne Frontier Days train was back running between Denver and Cheyenne.

I started the weekend by chasing the northbound run up to Cheyenne. Unfortunately, the cloud cover was causing problems. Eventually I found a hole in the clouds up by LaSalle that allowed me to get a shot. Of course, then I was stupid and used big glass for the photo. One of these years I’ll learn that I can’t do that in summertime, LOL:

I thought about heading up North and trying to catch the train by Terry Ranch Road or something. A severe loss of time thanks to construction in Greeley ended that possibility. I didn’t want to fight the crowds in Cheyenne proper, so I headed home and waited for the Southbound journey.

Cloud cover was causing problems for me for the southbound trip, too, so I didn’t put a lot of thought into chasing, but decided to see if I could just catch it coming into DUS. The cloud cover may have been problematic at times, but it did give me some nice sunset light. I’d really like this shot if it wasn’t for the fact that I should have bumped up the shutter speed because I was using an ultrawide lens:

After that effort, I got this shot of the train and the downtown skyline:

It wasn’t until a bit later that I realized that I had satellite dishes growing out of the top of 844. Ooops! When I did figure it out, I worked a different angle to avoid that. As a bonus, 844 has her headlight on now, too:

After the run, the crew spent some time with

2

Those are very nice shots, Chris. I really like the first shot, and Moonrise Over Domes is appealing too. It’s something creative and out of the ordinary, which is a nice change of pace from many photos that I’ve seen.

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You asked, “What’s wrong with this photo?” My guess is that the coach is lettered “City of Los Angeles”, when in fact it is in the “City of Denver”. Other than that, I can find no fault in any of the photos other than the ones you allready mentioned. As usual, very nice images.

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Willy - Thanks for the kind words. I’m always trying to get new shots…sometimes they work sometimes they don’t, but it’s more fun for me that way.

Jim - That’s what I was looking for! IIRC, there is a car named City of Denver in the consist someplace, but I couldn’t find it while in the limits of public access. Thanks for the kind words!

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Gotta Tell Ya’, Chris:

Shot #1[tup][tup], and then shot#2[tup][tup] are my favorites! I’ve mentioned around here before, I really like just about any shot, and any angle of ‘Steam’. 844 and its train are some of my favorite subjects ( the colors in the sky of the second shot help to really make IT shine!) .

The rest of the pictures are very interesting[8D] and well done[bow], but you really gotta quit trying to do the fancy stuff[wow] with those Wal-Mart disposable [oops] cameras![:-^]

Thanks for sharing,again!

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Nah, he uses the good cameras, like the ones from Walgreens; plus he gets his prints done there as well. [swg]

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And he just keeps raising the bar higher and higher. [tup]

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The second dish shot is outstanding. What a story of temporal contrasts in that simple frame.

Your moon shot reminds me of Ansel Adams talking about his famous New Mexico moonrise shot with the grazing horse, etc. He had one, count-em, one unexposed piece of 8x10 film and a very short time to capture the shot, which he noticed returning from some other work that day. He exposed for whatever the zone number was for mid-day sun, as he figured that would be correct for the moon. Then later, in the darkroom, developed to bring up shadow detail. Now we do similar things, but our “darkroom” is a computer and PhotoShop, and it takes considerably less time to get the result. I really liked what you could get out of the moon shot, as that definitely is a big challenge.

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I am curious - why is there a diesel behind 844? I thought UP had full confidence in their steam and I’ve always seen it without diesels…

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Thank you all for the very kind words! [:D]

Sawtooth - I think part of it has to do with the simple need for power. This is a LONG train, and I’m imagining that it’s probably pretty heavy. Uncle Pete likes to move the train right along, too, and speed requires horsepower. I always grumble a little about the fact that they use 6936 instead of the Es. Eventually I get over it, though. If they ever do put a combo of 844 and the Es together, I assure you that I will be out trackside with a Speed Graphic and some Tri-X!

Meanwhile, I was playing in the digital darkroom last night, and this is what I came up with on the Moonrise Over Domes shot:

It still needs a LOT of work, and I have some playing around to do to get the image to work correctly. The base of the shot was taken at ISO 125, so I had some more wiggle room to brighten up the overall image some without too many noise artifacts. The previous shot was an underexposed ISO 500. As good as the K-x is at higher ISOs, it demands good exposures to get that high ISO quality, especially in the blue channel. With the amount of blue present in this shot, I needed the better exposed ISO 125 shot to be able to play well, even though I don’t like the composition as much (I was a bit tilted and I had to do some straightening in PP).

I went out and shot the Moon again last night. While not quite as full as the previous night, it was close enough for my purposes. Blending it in so that it looks natural was proving to be a challenge, and this is one of the areas that I still have a lot of work to do as I’m not quite happy with the final result yet.

I also cut and pasted in the lettering lit up by the flash in the original version I posted. I didn’t use the flash on the new shot, and the lettering was a bit dull, and I think it’s an im

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[quote user=“CopCarSS”]

Thank you all for the very kind words! Big Smile

Sawtooth - I think part of it has to do with the simple need for power. This is a LONG train, and I’m imagining that it’s probably pretty heavy. Uncle Pete likes to move the train right along, too, and speed requires horsepower. I always grumble a little about the fact that they use 6936 instead of the Es. Eventually I get over it, though. If they ever do put a combo of 844 and the Es together, I assure you that I will be out trackside with a Speed Graphic and some Tri-X!

Meanwhile, I was playing in the digital darkroom last night, and this is what I came up with on the Moonrise Over Domes shot:

It still needs a LOT of work, and I have some playing around to do to get the image to work correctly. The base of the shot was taken at ISO 125, so I had some more wiggle room to brighten up the overall image some without too many noise artifacts. The previous shot was an underexposed ISO 500. As good as the K-x is at higher ISOs, it demands good exposures to get that high ISO quality, especially in the blue channel. With the amount of blue present in this shot, I needed the better exposed ISO 125 shot to be able to play well, even though I don’t like the composition as much (I was a bit tilted and I had to do some straightening in PP).

I went out and shot the Moon again last night. While not quite as full as the previous night, it was close enough for my purposes. Blending it in so that it looks natural was proving to be a challenge, and this is one of the areas that I still have a lot of work to do as I’m not quite happy with the final result yet.

I also cut and paste

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[quote user=“CopCarSS”]

Thank you all for the very kind words! Big Smile

Sawtooth - I think part of it has to do with the simple need for power. This is a LONG train, and I’m imagining that it’s probably pretty heavy. Uncle Pete likes to move the train right along, too, and speed requires horsepower. I always grumble a little about the fact that they use 6936 instead of the Es. Eventually I get over it, though. If they ever do put a combo of 844 and the Es together, I assure you that I will be out trackside with a Speed Graphic and some Tri-X!

Meanwhile, I was playing in the digital darkroom last night, and this is what I came up with on the Moonrise Over Domes shot:

It still needs a LOT of work, and I have some playing around to do to get the image to work correctly. The base of the shot was taken at ISO 125, so I had some more wiggle room to brighten up the overall image some without too many noise artifacts. The previous shot was an underexposed ISO 500. As good as the K-x is at higher ISOs, it demands good exposures to get that high ISO quality, especially in the blue channel. With the amount of blue present in this shot, I needed the better exposed ISO 125 shot to be able to play well, even though I don’t like the composition as much (I was a bit tilted and I had to do some straightening in PP).

I went out and shot the Moon again last night. While not quite as full as the previous night, it was close enough for my purposes. Blending it in so that it looks natural was proving to be a challenge, and this is one of the areas that I still have a lot of work to do as I’m not quite happy with the final result yet.

I also cut and pasted in the lettering lit up by the flash in the original version I posted. I didn’t use the flash on the new shot, and the lettering was a bit

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Sam,

Thank you for the very kind words!

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No offense, Chris, but are you ever satisfied with any of your shots? You show us a wonderful shot, then procede to tell us what is wrong with it. You must have incredibly exacting criteria. I would be thrilled to have taken a shot as well done as the dome shot.

Your redo of the moon shot is fantastic! There is nothing about it that I don’t like. The detail in the shadow areas is fantastic, as well all of the brick detail and the rivets on the coach.

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I think I can answer that one and it is probably the following: not completely.

From what I have seen here many times, Chris has something I call simply “the eye” which plainly stated is the ability to visualize a real world scene as a finished image. That finished image is mostly there in his mind by the time he presses the shutter release button, but regardless of whether the capture is in silver or silicon, what is recorded is only a starting point.

Where levels of skill and artistic vision take you after that point is not necessarily a done deal, especially when things are unique and/or extreme, as in the case of the dome shot.

In the world of dip and dunk, you could spend a week or more in the darkroom trying to get your inner vision of the image to come together on paper. In the world of click and save, it might be a little faster (and probably a lot less odorous) but the same things are getting done.

The problem is that most of the time, you can always find some little detail that you might want to do a little better, bringing up a tone here, subduing something there, maybe a little minor local color correction … things that only one out of maybe ten thousand people would even notice. But that troublesome “eye” is rarely completely satisfied.

As I look again at the original dome shot, Chris, I find I like the overall tonality, excepting the blown-out highlights in the moon’s disc. In the “darkroom play” image, I see more detail in the moon, but still I gravitate to the tonality in the original shot for everything else. Just how my jaundiced “eye” sees it.

Oh, and yes, for sure I intended my earlier post to be complimentary to Chris, because I enjoy the images he shares with us and I admire (and heartily encourage) his urge to tackle the more difficult images that have exceptional artistic quality. That and the fact that he also has a bug

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Jim,

Chuck has it pretty much dead on. When I hit the shutter button, there’s an end result in my mind that I try to work towards in the post processing. Getting to that point is what gives me the most trouble sometimes. My post-processing skills aren’t where I’d like them to be, whether it be in a wet or dry darkroom. Ansel Adams’ decades old adage still applies: “The negative is the score, the print is the performance.” I think my “scores” are getting better (though I still need little tweaks like watching my shutter speed when using an ultrawide lens), but the “prints” still could use some work.

So what do I see wrong in the Moonrise Over Domes shot that I’m still working on?

  1. I’m still working on getting the moon to work correctly. In reality, there’s no way that I should have been able to get this shot. The original shot was 2 seconds at f5.6 at an ISO of 125. The moon shot was 1/30th at f5.6 at ISO 125. That’s a six stop difference. There’s no film or sensor that will hold good detail in both scenes without some kind of cheating. So my problem is trying to make it look natural even though it’s not. Dialing in the tone of the moon so that it holds enough detail but still is bright enough to look natural has been a challenge. Additionally, white balancing has been difficult, too. The dome shot and the moon shot were taken on two different nights, under different conditions. The moon photo was shot through a much hazier sky, so it’s much warmer in tone. It’s also been a challenge for me to get it dialed in just right.

  2. The overall scene has some WB issues because it’s all a bunch of very different lighting. The lighting on the UP Dome is from distant sodium vapor lights. It’s very orange-ish. The light on the Styro Building is just ambient sky light. It’s really, really, really blue. I already mentioned that the moon was towards the warm end of things. Trying to

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Chris, I believe I know exactly how how feel. Perhaps I’m just too old and jaded, but I’ve kinda given up on my aspirations of great photography. I absolutely do not understand Photoshop (I have version 8), even with add-on instruction books. I do ok with Nikon Capture, as it seems more intuitive. But Photoshop - forget it!

When digital first came out, I was totally against it because it allowed someone to use a computer to somewhat make up for poor photography. I used to take pride in the images I actually had on my original slides. I felt that Photoshopping an image was tantamount to cheating. Now I find that since I switched to digital, the only way to make an image look as close to good as I remember Velvia 50 looking, is to use photo editing software. A case in point is your dome shot.

What I have come to realize is that it is the final image that is important, not how the image was arrived at. A computer and photo-editing software are just another set of tools, just like a camera and filters, that are used to try to make an image that comes as close to what we wanted to capture as possible.

Many of us are photographers; but you, Chris, are an artist.

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Easy to feel that way, for sure. You can see people taking the “blind squirrel” approach and fill the memory cards with several thousand shots on a weekend and say that they really aren’t exercising skills very much. If, like some of us seriously old geezers, one grew up where you made the exposure and then went into the darkroom to make the image, then with digital, you just see post processing on a computer as the digital analog (how’s that for an oxymoron) of printing and reprinting until you get what you want.

The trick, of course, is to translate some of the skills of dealing with light from what was done in silver to what is done in silicon. For me, it’s a “kid in the candy shop world” when I actually get the chance to do it, because in the back of my mind I am thinking about how much work this was in the darkroom, plus there are things available in PhotoShop that while possible were not reasonably possible in the old days.

Chris, like Jim, I am old, jaded and worn (yeah, he didn’t say “worn” so maybe only two out of three here), but I still have the delusion that I will get back out with my trusty Z and do some fun shooting again, at least after I get done with the ill-conceived home improvement projects going on at the present. In the meantime, I hope you don’t mind my vicariously enjoying your efforts as I certainly understand the wonder that you find in what you are doing with your art. And even if you do mind, I’ll still do it, because I really enjoy your images.

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Yes, “worn” also applies.

I wish I could figure out how to use Photoshop, as some of the results I see from those that understand the program are fantastic. I am pleased with the results I get from the Nikon program; it’s just that Photoshop seems to do so much more.

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Jim and Chuck,

Thank you so much! Those are some of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received!