something that I could run with. I became fascinated with the art of crepuscular, or twilight, photography.
Working Hard for Luck On a day that happened to be Friday the
13th, I had this idea about going to 40th Street station in Queens and shooting the eastbound No. 7 with the train in the lower right with a cityscape in the background. I figured the situation would need a flash so I had brought one along. The previous day’s storm had broken up, with long clouds lacing the sky and the storm light was blazing. When I got to the 40th Street eastbound platform it was about 7:30 p.m. and I could see why the place was so popular with smart phone photographers I had seen previously: the cityscape was fantastic! The sun had set; creating a wonderful yellow light that silhouetted the stringy clouds. These then outlined Manhattan’s iconic
skyscrapers
like no other image I had ever seen. I set up handheld (tripods are forbidden in the NYCT system) and I tried the flash a couple of times on trains. It looked awful. What to do about the exposure now? I did a couple of test shots at 1600 ISO but I was afraid the image would look noisy on my 27-inch computer screen. So I went to 800 ISO.
I was using my fastest zoom, a Canon 24-
70mm f2.8 L which is a premium professional glass lens that exploits every one of the 40D’s 10.1 megapixels. But even with a f2.8 and 800 ISO and (I think) two stops down from what the meter said, (remember that?) I still only had a 1
/100 /1000 th of a second while 3 /4 wedgies require 1 /500
th of a second shutter speed. This
is not normally a speed used to stop a moving train. My experience is that that broadsides need 1
th of second to stop 60 m.p.h. movement. However, this was a head-on shot and thus the image displacement of a moving object is severely diminished. You
might be familiar with Dustin
Hoffman’s sidewalk dash at the end of the movie The Graduate. In that scene director Mike Nichols and director of photography Robert Surtees used a long telephoto lens that compressed distance so much that even though Hoffman is seen running for several seconds, he looks like he is getting nowhere. With that and other empirical knowledge, I knew there was a good chance the 1
/100 th
OPPOSITE: “No. 7 Citi Sunset.” Canon 40D 61mm ISO 800 100th ƒ/2.8. In a view that embodies all the magic I have ever felt about my favorite city, you see New York’s most scenic subway route escaping the gravitational pull of Manhattan. The electric train, the street flush with cars, and above all, the fantastic skyline fills me with the pride of what we humans have done and what we can do. TOP: “Three Lima Ladies.” Canon 40D 70mm ISO 1600 10th ƒ/5 Image stabilization. As the number three steam locomotive builder, Lima made up in engineering, craftsmanship and class with what it lacked in size. To be in the presence of no less than three of Lima’s late model machines, under steam, is a privilege I will never forget. ABOVE: “R-143 Carroll Gardens Manhattan.” Canon 6D 127mm ISO 3200 100th ƒ/4. No. 1 World Trade and its skyscraper friends shake off yet another New York storm and stand behind the much more modest homes of Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn. Threading the two neighborhoods is the energetic F train, dutifully rumbling by on a long viaduct.
been down for about 20 minutes, the sky light level had come down close to Pete’s lighting. This made for a balanced foreground and background exposure. With the addition of wisps
of steam, the resulting photo of the “Lima Ladies”
became my first popular image published on
Railpictures.net. In analyzing it, I came to realize that not only was the shot a success because it was a close-up of three fantastic locomotives but the nighttime light and color was absolutely magic. In this way, I found
would be enough for stopping the movement of a slow-moving subway train rolling up- grade. This definitely was my “wide open an’ hopin’” moment! So when the next train came, I pre-focused at a point I wanted (hoping the depth of field would hold), and once the train hit that spot, I fired. When I got home, outside of leveling, cropping, and lightening the car front a half stop, I did nothing in the way of processing. That is because the sun had been down long enough and the available artificial light was balanced with the remaining skylight just like the “Lima Ladies” shot in Owosso. This shot was the embodiment of working
hard to get lucky. So many elements came together: the clouds, the cars on the street whose reflections danced on the train, the second No. 7 on the far right, the crazy blooming of the subway headlights and finally the exposure inside the car capturing the riders clearly. This kind of serendipity makes me doubt I could do this shot again. I posted “No. 7 Citi Sunset” on
Railpictures.net and it was an instant hit. It probably will be the shot that most people will remember me by.
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