PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS AND TECHNIQUES Timing is Everything: ƒ8 and Be There Revisited


EDITOR’S NOTE: A generation of railfan photographers learned the craft through the lessons of Jim Boyd’s CAMERA BAG columns in the 1970s and 1980s. It doesn’t matter if you shoot film or digital — a lot of Jim’s wisdom still applies today. From time to time, we’ll be running a classic camera bag from those early issues of RAILFAN. —S.B.


SOMEBODY ONCE SAID THAT THE SECRET TO photography is “f8 and be there.” From the standpoint of railfan photography, I’d change that slightly to “1


/500 and be there”


(I’m forever preaching that the high shutter speed is probably the singularly most important factor in developing good railfan photography habits.) But the “be there” part is indispensable. You can’t get a great photo if you left the scene too soon and went off to a McDonald’s just before the clouds parted and the two sets of six-axle Alcos met on Horseshoe Curve. It’s the “being there” that we call railfanning. To get a great photo you


62 JANUARY 2017 • RAILFAN.COM


The key to railroad photography is “being there.” TOP: Delaware & Hudson GP39-2 7613 curves under Starrucca Viaduct at Lanesboro, Pa., on March 18, 1978; Conrail’s Southern Tier Line (ex- Erie) crosses overhead. ABOVE: An Erie-Lackawanna freight passes the abandoned station at Greendell, N.J., on the Lackawanna Cut-Off behind SDP45 3656 in July 1975. Both sets of tracks in these two photos are no longer there. JIM BOYD PHOTOS


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