8 ENGINES!!! Holy moley Batman!! what in the world were they pulling? outstanding find!! very clear.
OK - Sorry, but this was hands-down easy. Photo one is a clear cut winner with its seven UP units pulling hard and in command of the grade. The photo draws your eyes straight into the heart of the matter, a hard working crew doing their job! Beautiful!
Photo two is nice - however it is too busy. The large advertisement billboard in the center of the photo and the graffiti on the bridge piers detract from the BNSF Hot-Shot hustling it’s cargo to its destination.
Great work gentlemen and congratulations to the photographer of number one, in my opinion at least, a clear-cut winner. I like this format of voting as well, keep it up!
Dave in Greenwood, IN
Yeah, with all the rain, seems the swamp is rising…
Hope it holds off till tomorrow afternoon, I want to watch the lunar eclipse tomorrow morning, and if it gets any higher, the gators will get out again…
I loved #1, all that power!! I think I would have liked the camera about 10 feet or more to the left to see the trailing power and cars better. I liked #2 very much. I’ll have to try to find that spot. However, I am somewhat colorblind and the front end power blended too much into the background and the pix seemed a little fuzzy. Still enjoyed it, tho. - Chuck
I like the BNSF picture for all the reasons most everyone else doesn’t. The busy, distracting elements are what tells the story. The UP photo has all the elements of a typical top rail photo: beautiful scenery, perfectly maintained track, well positioned, powerful locomotives, etc. It’s a nice shot but it tells little of what railroading is today. For most of us, we are not out in pristine mountain settings very often. The railroading most people experience day to day, if they notice it at all, is almost lost in the gritty urban cacophony of billboards, interstates, dirty rivers, weeds, graffiti, etc. The flattening effect of the 15mm lens increases this “lost” effect very well. Good photo journalism should show the warts as well as the polish if it is to tell the whole story.
Karl Ruser
Minnesota
…Both photos are nice and clear. I must vote for photo no. 1
No. 1 is all railroad at rugged work…Believe it’s 8 engines up front.
Photo no. 2 is a nice sharp photo too, but too much distraction of non railroad stuff.
Wow both photos were great but I got to say the UP was just to much. Did count that right, 7 UP Loco’s?
I like the BNSF shot as it shows more of the environment of where the train is working. I’m not a fan of graffiti but this shot shows that the paint was applied when the channel was dry. It also shows that there has been an attempt to remove/cover over previous efforts of graffiti artists.
The UP shot is a great country shot, but the head-on nature means that there is not a lot of train showing.
I’ll vote for Photo #1 hands down. #2 was too busy and frankly unappealing. As far as guessing where the photos were taken. I’ll take a wild guess and say photo #1 was Professor Bergstrom, east of Rollinsville on the Moffat Route, with a Canon. Thanks for doing the “blind” contest again!
Great pictures but UP has it this time. A much sharper shot but what sold it for me was that the UP photo doesn’t suffer from all the distractions of colour as in the BNSF. That’s one decent number of engines. I can’t wait to know what was behind them that required that many. Great stuff fellas.
Lots of horsepower on display in the UP shot, but I voted for the BNSF shot. Why? I am a sucker for that Warbonnet paint job. I hope someday their management realizes what an icon the Warbonnet has been for generations, both kids growing up with their Lionel Super Chief train sets and their parents who rode the “1:1” version. Besides, that shot shows modern rail at work in the real world, warts and all… didn’t a shot with broken fences, weeds and telephone lines win in the last few weeks, too? There was nothing wrong with the UP photo, but when I can look out my living room window and see UP rumble by 20 times a day, the novelty wears off!
Personally, I thought the billboard stood out in the BNSF shot, but the way it was worked into the picture actually appealed with me. For once, I didn’t vote for the photo of my home state. (Come on, who visited Oregon this week and didn’t tell me?)
-Alan-
I voted for Uncle Pete. Sure, I see UP trains all of the time, but this one stood out on the quality shot and the power, all of that power.
I gotta go with the Uncle Pete photo… While there is a lot in the BN picture that adds to the level of interest, I hate seeing a sign growing out of the top of a loco. I like the location but not all of the clutter that came with it. The UP shot is clearly my favorite.
Too bad that You guys can’t find a way to easily accept photos from us, so you could turn the tables and choose a few shots and make comments on them. It might help me out with the guilt that I feel week to week when I write something negative about one of your photos, when I know full and well that I have a lot of duds stored away on my computer…
Have a good Labor day Weekend!!! and thanks for pictures you share with us!!
It was that dumb sign in photo 2 that killed it for me. It just screwed up an otherwise great photo.
I found both photos to be pleasant but neither provided much in the way of “Wow” factor. Photo 2 has some interesting graffiti on the bridge supports but I found the large sign advertising the hotel to be a distraction. Photo 1 is a closer shot of a train with lots of front end power. Of the two pictures, I like photo 1 better so that one got my vote this time.
For a future volume of Trackside with Erik and Mike, how about competing photos that focus on a railroad structure rather than photos that focus mainly on locomotives? Perhaps a trackside industry, track bridge, signal bridge, round house, water tower, station, freight house, or switch stand?
Ooh, painful, had to vote against a war bonnet, BNSF photo was just to washed out for me. The UP picture grabbed my attention, the BNSF caused a, huh? what’s this? Oh well, at least EMD’s lead the UPs. Larry, at the edge of the world, Blaine WA
Graffiti? A monster billboard? Come on now…
Don
Definately the UP power, don’t see one with that many around here very often!
Photo 1 though boring is better than photo 2 because the engines look like junk in pic 2. Also not as sharp a picture as in photo 1. It would take some good CSX power to make a great picture though… LOL …