Sounds of
June 3-5, 2016 Davis & Elkins College
Elkins, West Virginia
Join In! Noted folk musicians, specialists in railroading songs Concert headliners Emily Miller and Jesse Milnes, plus Costa, Roy Harper and Johnny Bellar, William Sherman Gary Wayne Jordan, Gerry Milnes • Meet, share stories & jam!
Recognized authorities on traditional music and railr Author Norm Cohen, Folklorist Gerry Milnes, Folklorist and Filmmaker Maggie Holtzberg, Folklorist Jimmy Costa
Explore Music! Railroad music traditions include: Appalachian railroad music; John Henry and the labor movement; Hobo music; Lining bar crew chants, and more
Enjoy Railroad History! Events: Friday evening dinner train, Saturday evening dinner in historic Graceland mansion featuring an authentic dining car menu; Saturday evening concert; and Sunday morning jam
Center for Railway Tourism JIM PORTERFIELD, DIRECTOR
For more information and registration visit:
www.dewv.edu/SOR
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Steam trains and steamboats in a scenic setting: trackage, facilities and operations of lumber and tourist operations from the 1880s, illustrated with extensive photo coverage. 256 pages, 294 photos, 55 maps and graphics, rosters, bibliography, index.
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Railroading Conference and Concert
is not the final product; close is good enough. Taking the capture from the field and work- ing on it in Lightroom will yield a nice final result. That doesn’t mean being lazy in the field — the goal is to get a good enough cap- ture that all you need is a quick exposure adjustment and some work with the shadows and highlights sliders in Lightroom. A Light- room graduated density filter can tone down any “light spill” on the ground.
Focusing in the Dark
The hardest part about synchronized night photography is focusing your camera. Your primary subject isn’t there while you are set- ting up, and most cameras will not be able to figure out where to auto focus in the dark when the bright ditch lights of a train show up in an otherwise nearly black scene. Even though you can handhold your cam- era when shooting synchronized flash (re- member, you’re shooting at 1
/250 ), I use a tri-
pod to pre-frame the scene. First, it keeps your camera from having “focus creep” while it’s hanging from around your neck. Second, the aforementioned bright lights from the locomotive make composition almost impossi- ble. The surest way I have found to focus my camera in the dark is to mount it on a tripod and aim it at the point where I want the loco- motive to be. I then point a bright light at that spot (I carry a million-candle-power spotlight with me), turn on live view on the camera, zoom in to the illuminated spot using the +/- magnification buttons on the camera (don’t zoom in with your zoom lens — the focus point changes at different focal lengths), manually focus the camera using the back screen (auto focus should be turned off), then recompose the scene and wait for the train. Once the train is in sight, it’s good to give
the crew a “heads-up” flash to let them know you’re there. The flashes can be a bit of a sur- prise, sort of like nearby lightning on a clear night. The strobes recycle in about a second or two, so a heads-up flash won’t cost you the shot. I’ve had crews acknowledge the flash with a toot on the horn or a blink of the loco- motive lights.
The Final Result
I’ve had people view my shots and say, “Wow, that’s a lot of light.” Well, no, it actu- ally isn’t. We’re used to thinking in terms of O. Winston Link and his 60 flashbulbs to light a scene. Each one of the scenes presented here used the equivalent of about one and a half of Link’s bulbs — 20 times less light than Link used. In fact, each scene here uses about ten times less light than the old group night pho- to sessions using bulbs or Lumedyne strobes. The secret is in the camera and high ISOs. We don’t need more light; we just need something than can detect a few photons. There is quite a difference between film with an ISO of 25 and today’s cameras with an ISO of 800 or 1600. My first-ever attempt at a night shot was at Nova, Ohio, where I had two trains meet in the frame as they passed the wood tower (page 55). I had my scanner on and heard one crew radio the other and say, “I have to back up and do it again. My eyes were closed.” In another instance, I got an email from an Am- trak engineer who found a shot of mine taken at Doswell, Va., about a year earlier. He said, “I was the engineer that night and remember the flashes going off. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s like Link.’ Pretty cool. I’m glad I found the shot because I always wondered how it turned out.” Go out there and try it yourself!
Credit: J. Craig Thorpe p
Registration Discounts Available!
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