Patience and Luck
Beyond the Rutland
Rails
Now operated under the Vermont Rail System banner, you’ll see the early operations of the Vermont Railway, Clarendon & Pittford, and the Green Mountain Railroad! From the marble quarry pits to piggyback trailers, from steam excursions to heavy freight!
The last picture I want to talk about is
“R-142 Carroll Gardens Manhattan.” This picture combines the now-familiar conditions for what I do. There is excellent light from the crepuscular time of day, a great background with big, dramatic clouds, the train is in the foreground, and I have manufactured my own luck. I first discovered this angle in the spring of 2014. Dissatisfied with the results, I kept going back, hoping the lighting and the clouds would favor me. Since we are outdoors shoot- ing trains, we are, in effect, landscape pho- tographers and therefore we need to be just as cognizant of the weather as Ansel Adams was. Keeping an eye out for the weather, my made luck came about 12 months later, for a storm front was blowing through and I was there. Success came in deep shades of blue and purple as the train skirts the skyline.
Dark vs. Light In any photograph, there are things to do,
a recipe as it were. After the basics of location and camera are set, then you want the best light possible. As mentioned, the camera does not know what is good light or bad, that is up to you. When can you find good sunlight? The rule of thumb is after sunrise for 3 hours and 3 hours before sunset. That is when the light is low, golden, contrasty and beautiful. At these times it has a quality that is wonderful unlike the harshness of the mid-day high sun. And as you have seen, I like to go one step fur- ther and become crepuscular. For those of you who haven’t looked that word up yet, it means a creature that is active just before sunrise and just after sunset. While this knowledge about light quality
is what I know, hear what one of the great- est Hollywood cameramen of all time had to say about it. Conrad Hall, ASC, a three-time Oscar winner who shot such films as In Cold Blood, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid said this is what constitutes a beautiful image: “When you see a beautiful photograph, one that takes your breath away, you will see light against dark and dark against light.” Connie was talking about beautiful con-
trast, the kind that makes the eyes dance. Eons ago, I would not have known good con- trast if it had been delivered to me by UPS. Now I know I am seeing great light if my eyes are the ones that are dancing.
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56 JANUARY 2015 •
RAILFAN.COM Years ago craftsmen would develop their
craft and in order not to lose business to com- petitors, they would carry their trade secrets to the grave. What an appalling loss of hard earned knowledge! When I was starting in the movie biz, I was so grateful to the people who helped me I vowed I would share everything I could. That brings me to my final point. When I finally got a good 35mm SLR cam-
era, I immediately started off making good images of scenery and portraits. But the pe- culiar art of shooting trains, i.e. composing and exposing for something that was not there, completely eluded me for years. It was not until a magazine called RAILFAN came into my life. Jim Boyd’s CAMERA BAG was like the mentor I never had. He told me what to do to get going. I hope that by sharing my own experiences I have somehow paid back that debt of gratitude.
Dennis A. Livesey, a life long photographer and die-hard New Yorker authored, along with his son Matthew, “Transitscapes,” which appeared in our August 2015 issue.
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