DS25 wrote: Actually, I'm dissapointed with just about all of Erik and Mike's photos.Simply put, for these to be published photos through Trains Magazine, I'd expect a little more quality. Maybe a better camera or film or both.Most of the pics have bad lighting and poor contrast.
Actually, I'm dissapointed with just about all of Erik and Mike's photos.
Simply put, for these to be published photos through Trains Magazine,
I'd expect a little more quality. Maybe a better camera or film or both.
Most of the pics have bad lighting and poor contrast.
Nine days later, and still only 1 post. We veterans of Trains Forums have short memories. And we've all goofed, some of us FAR worse than you have, DS25.
You've learned your lesson. Come back, delete your post, and get active in the forums.
DS25 wrote: In defense of the guys.....It is my understanding that neither of them is a "professional photogrepher". This feature wasn't meant to be TRAINS MAGAZINE photos put out here for people to critique. Rather it is a feature of 2 ordinary guys who happen to work at TRAINS MAGAZINE & on their own time, like to photograph train related scenes. Their employer has graciously consented to foot the bill for this forum & sponsor it. I liked both pics this week, & have not yet voted. This is totally out of sync for me....normally I vote before I read any comments. Also I usually read all comments before I respond to any one, but this just caught my eye & I acted on impulse. So if other responses have already been made, I apologise in advance for clogging up the forum. Nuf said!Larry in WauwatosaActually, I'm dissapointed with just about all of Erik and Mike's photos.Simply put, for these to be published photos through Trains Magazine, I'd expect a little more quality. Maybe a better camera or film or both.Most of the pics have bad lighting and poor contrast.
In defense of the guys.....It is my understanding that neither of them is a "professional photogrepher". This feature wasn't meant to be TRAINS MAGAZINE photos put out here for people to critique. Rather it is a feature of 2 ordinary guys who happen to work at TRAINS MAGAZINE & on their own time, like to photograph train related scenes. Their employer has graciously consented to foot the bill for this forum & sponsor it.
I liked both pics this week, & have not yet voted. This is totally out of sync for me....normally I vote before I read any comments. Also I usually read all comments before I respond to any one, but this just caught my eye & I acted on impulse. So if other responses have already been made, I apologise in advance for clogging up the forum. Nuf said!
Larry in Wauwatosa
I liked Mikes shot. While it lacks in technical qualities it more than makes up for those deficiencies by capturing the mood of todays railroading in the Powder River Basisn. It looks like it could be a shot for RR publicity maybe on an annual report. Good shot.
Doug
Holy cow!!! I think this week's vote is the toughest I've had to face yet! Both pictures are absolutely stunning, gentlemen!
Mike's BNSF Powder River Basin shot encompasses so many eyecatching things that I could stare at it for hours! I especially like how it was shot over the loaded coal hopper and the silver BNSF engine in the foreground; that gives me a kind of "right in the middle of the action" feel. The background of the coal industry with its wide range of colors evokes an image very much like my scrub desert home here in the BNSF NM Division, west of the Sandias (kinda reminds me of the Gallup Sub and everything west). Capturing a good deal of the approaching DP unit coal is not the only thing good about this shot, that's for sure!
On the other hand, Erik's BNSF "stealth mission" shot is holding its own. Not only is it a magnificent shot of a Heritage 1 BNSF Dash 9 (those always appeal to me, as they are rather uncommon in my area), but it is set against a breathtaking twilight sky that actually looks like the break of dawn to me. I also like the bits of debris lying trackside in the foreground; they seem to add to the shot, in my opinion, giving it a "long night haul over a barren stretch of track" kinda feel for me.
Because of the background sky and the Heritage 1, Erik's shot has the slightest edge for me, and after a long moment of deliberation, I finally chose it.
- Bryan
Bergie wrote: ... Especially this time of the year; we're just coming out of winter and into a wet spring. It's not always easy to come up with new material every other week
That's spring in Wisconsin: various shades of brown.
I haven't even bothered to go out for train photos since the snow melted.
Didn't think either photo was particularly noteworthy, but Erik's is worth discussing further. As a night shot afficionado (my cover of Railfan, September, 1977), I found the train too dark and not very crisp in detail. This may expose one of the basic limitations of digital night photography. I still do night photography, but on film only (Kodachrome), as it gives me ample time to do the necessary fill-in flash when required (as would have been helpful in Erik's shot). I'll deal with the troublesome color shifts either by using filters or having the lab correct it. I have a Canon EOS Rebel, but I haven't taken the time yet to try to figure out night in the digital mode. Maybe it's time for a good technical article on doing night photography with digital cameras in Trains???
As to Mike's shot...an interesting concept that just didn't make it for me.
Don Dorflinger
From the purely "I like/don't like what I see" gallery: Mike's photo is especially good. You can get very "lost" in it just studying it for a few minutes. Lots of details both up close and far away.
But for a dramatic effect, I liked Erik's photo. I am partial to night photos and the almost eerie, quiet look of the engine.
Voted Erik this time.
Mookie
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
I like the terrain in the background in Mike's photo.
Good Job Erik!!!
Nice
al-in-chgo wrote: Even though it has composition bordering on shocking, Mike's submission has the virtue of the high-impact that goes along. Mike broke the guidelines or rules and got away with it IMHO. I fully agree with the prior reviewer who used a brutalist metaphor to describe its tone. (BTW "brutalist" or 'brutalism" have only fairly recently emerged as art or architectural descriptions of style.)
Even though it has composition bordering on shocking, Mike's submission has the virtue of the high-impact that goes along. Mike broke the guidelines or rules and got away with it IMHO. I fully agree with the prior reviewer who used a brutalist metaphor to describe its tone. (BTW "brutalist" or 'brutalism" have only fairly recently emerged as art or architectural descriptions of style.)
Thanks, Al.
Yes, there were a few things that needed to go right to "make" this photo... not the least of which was the gentle breeze blowing from the left to keep the heat waves from the idling DPU from disturbing the image of the locomotive of the above oncoming train. Trust me, that happened on several of the shots in this series!
(long-winded, as usual )
At first, it looked as though the two men's photos are literally as different as night and day. But in a factual way, the visual contents do share at least one locomotive and one coal car; and either picture means "coal train" as a result.
With a toughie like this, I usually try to find a balance between pragmatism/usefuless on one hand and quality-of-composition/esthetics (in the sense of quality-of-art) on the other. Bergie's is the more beautiful in terms of classic norms of composition. Mike's photo breaks all the rules--overloaded foreground, the visual contents of the two nearest trains "bleed" awkwardly (or go beyond the frame, if you will); and the fourth engine of the far-background Beaner is visible to me only as a red hyphen--even under LCD magnification. Speaking only for myself, I'm not sure I would want to make issue of the fourth train--unless the photo were blown-up and physically printed to almost a museum-display size or perhaps digitally enhanced just a bit.
Both pictures are refreshingly different from the much more common daylight long-train-seen-from-bridge or train-rounding-curve type of shots. Happily, "posed" or posed-appearing night cab shots are becoming more common in the era of high-numbered ISO equivalent from the better digital cameras. (Don't you wish Winston Link were still around to participate in the digital revolution?) Both photos required patience and both have a successful "semi-improv" effort and quality to them--perhaps Mike's more than Bergie's. Bergie's shot is beautiful as a portrait; Mike's is definitely unseemly -- if photos could talk, this one seems to be dithering over whether it is a portrait or a landscape (bearing in mind that the intentions and uses of "portrait" and "landscape" as terms of art far, far predate the modern metaphor of word processing as to whether the 8.5" x 11" or A4 paper gets worked on "sideways" or not).
Looking at utility or usefulness, Mike's shot has a lot more to say; it is more dynamic. Would that BNSF or AAR would get similarly arresting photos like Mike's out in front of the public. I share the view of fanners who say that the connection of coal + unit train + power plant = new homes, better air-conditioning, the total electrified American life, is something that must be established and maintained. Both shots are very good in their own way. Every picture tells a story, and I am breaking with my usual conservatism to vote for Powder River and Mike. - a.s.
First of all, I like both of these photos. While Erik's shot is certainly more artistic, I voted for Mike's coal train. For me it tells more of a story looking over one engine at the approaching coal train on the triple track.
Enjoy
Paul
Hello DS25,
Thanks for joining the converstation.
I encourage you to go back through the Trackside with Erik and Mike archive: http://www.trains.com/trn/default.aspx?c=ss&id=14
Don't base your judgement on our column off our recent installments since the time you joined a few days ago. Since we do this column on our free time (in other words, this isn't part of our jobs at Kalmbach and we don't go out to shoot as a part of our job roles) and we do a new installment every other week, we definitely experience highs and lows. Especially this time of the year; we're just coming out of winter and into a wet spring. It's not always easy to come up with new material every other week that you're willing to let the world vote and comment on.
Also, these photos aren't intended for Trains magazine. This online column is more about sharing our experiences trackside and keeping our readers excited about getting out and shooting photos themselves. If we were concerned about sharing only the level of photos that you'd expect within the pages of Trains magazine within Trackside with Erik and Mike, we'd probably only do the column once per month because we'd be more stringent with what we'd share. But that's not the case.
Again, that's for joining the site and participating in the conversation.
Take care, Erik
I really liked the 'brutality' of Mike's coal train shot. Everything about it suggests raw power, tonnage, bleak landscape, and rugged conditions (in other words: RAILROADING). My only criticism is I would have prefered that the image had less sky (boring gray filled with wires) and instead tilted down to capture more of the locomotive in the foreground.
Erik's image was rich in color, but suffered from the illuminated junky foreground. It was more 'artsy' than Mike's image.
Voted for Mike's.
Mike's shot gets my vote-that panorama is awesome!
StephenDx: Computers and trains are my greatest interests GMT +12hrs (+13 in summer)
Mike's photo is off the hook! Not just another "choo-choo train picture", it's exemplary photo-journalism. And I find it surprising that 39% (so far) give the night shot the edge.
I like night shots; and also find photos depicting the Lands' Destruction rather depressing.
Composition of both well done, but when you consider ALL the prior photo submissions you might see a developing pattern of Night Shots vs. Long Trains. Quien Sabe???
What Mike missed is, the not only did that storm shut down that highway, it shut down amlost EVERY highway in the state! Had to go for Mike's photo though, it was really interesting, and it shows the volume of coal hauled out of a Wyoming mine at any given point in time. However, Next time any of you (forum member included) are going to be in this neck of the woods, you have an open invitation to meet up!
RJ
"Something hidden, Go and find it. Go and look behind the ranges, Something lost behind the ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go." The Explorers - Rudyard Kipling
http://sweetwater-photography.com/
Once I read Mike's comments about his photo - that it caputured 4 trains - I was more impressed. However, I still felt that the two trains in the foreground were too close and distracting of the train in the mid-ground. Meanwhile, that unusually sky in Erik's photo grabbed my attention right away. So I voted for Erik's shot this time.
WOW!!! both shots were OUTSTANDING this week! as much as I liked the colors in eriks shot, those blues purples & blacks combined make it a shot one would proudly display on any wall etc and take 1st place in the voting, I had to go with the coal train shot, so much to see.. foreground, mid-ground sides.. distance.. everywhere you look TRAINS!!! and lets face it, this IS about TRAINS! I see very little coal trains here except for the once in a while coal train heading down along the pacific coast to the coal fired power plants. SUPERB Shots both of you!
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