Western Railroad Discussion > Anti-Vaping CSX?

Ten months ago today I was ‘down in the neighborhood’ chasing some interesting foreign power, which was pointing a Union Pacific stacker across the old Rock Island GSR. Its clean, all-CSX consist was certainly worthy of an extended chase. But I suffered a photographic calamity I’ve experienced maybe 2-3 times in the past. When exiting a thoroughly air-conditioned rig and venturing out into very high humidity on a day approaching 100 degrees camera/lens glass can on occasion fog up. And of course Murphy’s Railfan Law demands that something like this will only happen in a very scenic spot. Of course. There’s really nothing to be done about it. Except to wait a few minutes for the affected glass to catch up with the ambient temperature. Of course my chase subject isn’t about to stop and wait for my glass to start behaving. So, with auto-focus still working I exposed a few shots anyway.

Later that night when I downloaded the results of the day I almost deleted the shots, but stubbornly kept a few. It shoulda-woulda-coulda been my best shooting of the day. But now I thought I might get a chance to create some humor out of the deal. That opportunity came today. As I was filing my CSXT “Coal vs Pigs” image away I noticed this shot from last July. Just so happened that current “anti-vaping” commercial was on the idiot tube at the same time. You know... that commercial with everybody’s heads filmed inside some fake vapor cloud aura. (Sorta like my shot here at Alta Vista) As if those parents were oblivious to their kids’ sneaky new vaping activities...

1. CSXT 3212 leads sibling 3185 on a westbound UP stacker at Alta Vista, KS on July 17, 2021. Taken from the Sea St overpass at an extremely warm 5:16 PM. Humidity “vaping” fog courtesy of Mama Nature...

Thanks for not inhaling...
Lance Garrels
santafe199

Added: This is one way to push back on a commercial which is a rapidly-rising star on my list of TV commercials with very high obnoxicity levels. What? You’ve never heard of “obnoxicity”?? It’s a contraction of the term obnoxious toxicity. Which is itself a derivative of the phrase toxic obnoxiousness. These are two values highly prized by modern advertising industry standards. Those wacko advertising industry execs obviously figure the more toxically obnoxious they make a commercial, the more successful it will be. (Your mileage may vary... ;^)

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santafe199 Wrote:
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> Ten months ago today I was ‘down in the
> neighborhood’ chasing some interesting foreign
> power, which was pointing a Union Pacific stacker
> across the old Rock Island GSR. Its clean, all-CSX
> consist was certainly worthy of an extended chase.
> But I suffered a photographic calamity I’ve
> experienced maybe 2-3 times in the past. When
> exiting a thoroughly air-conditioned rig and
> venturing out into very high humidity on a day
> approaching 100 degrees camera/lens glass can on
> occasion fog up. And of course Murphy’s Railfan
> Law demands that something like this will only
> happen in a very scenic spot. Of course. There’s
> really nothing to be done about it. Except to wait
> a few minutes for the affected glass to catch up
> with the ambient temperature. Of course my chase
> subject isn’t about to stop and wait for my
> glass to start behaving. So, with auto-focus still
> working I exposed a few shots anyway.
>
> Later that night when I downloaded the results of
> the day I almost deleted the shots, but stubbornly
> kept a few. It shoulda-woulda-coulda been my best
> shooting of the day. But now I thought I might get
> a chance to create some humor out of the deal.
> That opportunity came today. As I was filing my
> CSXT “Coal vs Pigs” image away I noticed this
> shot from last July. Just so happened that current
> “anti-vaping” commercial was on the idiot tube
> at the same time. You know... that commercial with
> everybody’s heads filmed inside some fake vapor
> cloud aura. (Sorta like my shot here at Alta
> Vista) As if those parents were oblivious to their
> kids’ sneaky new vaping activities...
>
> 1. CSXT 3212 leads sibling 3185 on a westbound UP
> stacker at Alta Vista, KS on July 17, 2021. Taken
> from the Sea St overpass at an extremely warm 5:16
> PM. Humidity “vaping” fog courtesy of Mama
> Nature...
>
> Thanks for not inhaling...
> Lance Garrels
> santafe199
>
> Added: This is one way to push back on a
> commercial which is a rapidly-rising star on my
> list of TV commercials with very high obnoxicity
> levels. What? You’ve never heard of
> “obnoxicity”?? It’s a contraction of the
> term obnoxious toxicity. Which is itself a
> derivative of the phrase toxic obnoxiousness.
> These are two values highly prized by modern
> advertising industry standards. Those wacko
> advertising industry execs obviously figure the
> more toxically obnoxious they make a commercial,
> the more successful it will be. (Your mileage may
> vary... ;^)

That happened to  me  a few years back at New Haven Ind along the NS there. Getting close to my hours of driving, as I usually did while passing thru here, I went by the yard. Low and behold the NKP 765 was pulling thru the yard to haul a train early the next am. Got a few shots, went to get my rest and then went back to yard early. Very humid that morning and very cool in my cab. Didn't put the 2 together until and NS Road Railer with a BNSF/ATSF Warbonnet and SD70MAC were headed east. Got up on west of the yard there and. Could not see anything/ Glass fogged up. So no shots of Road Railer passing the NKP Steam there. Did manage after a awhile of messing around trying to get things to clear and finally managed to get shotsof the NKP 765 leaving the yard. But what could have been with the Road Railer still haunts me to this day.  It's happened here and there since, but not as bad as then.  So it goes.  Thanks for sharing Lance. Ben

Been there done that many times!

You have to suffer more for your art.  Turn off the air conditioning.

Yeah, Austin (A&W) and Baton Rouge (CN) got to me this way. BSB 

Nice story, I'm sure this has happened to most of us at one time. I generally try not to use the air if I'm on a chase, or at least turn it off a bit before my photo destination to let glass and humidity even out....but as you know, the best laid plans....   My most memorable "lens fog" moment was bringing the camera out of the case way too soon one humid morning on Smathers Beach in Key West after it had been in the cold hotel room all night. The camera, lens and all, got a coating of water on it. Did I mention that was the morning I was getting married on said beach and needed that camera for the photos ? Guess I was a bit "nervous" and wasn't thinking about humidity lol. Anyway, the ceremony continued after I spent 20 minutes drying the camera out. And Lance, I lifted your photo and played with it in my LRC a bit. I won't post the results without your ok. It was good practice in case this ever happens to me again !

Roger Durfee
Akron, OH

Hmmm, out shooting again with Cheech n Chong, eh?

JG

EL833 Wrote: > ... I lifted your photo and played with it ...
Yeah... I've already gone that route. In fact, this image was (only) edited up just enough to recognize the eng # without lots of eyeball effort. My full results weren't good enough for a regular thread. It was that, plus the timing of that TV commercial which gave me the idea for this 'parody' thread. You can post your version if you like, though...

jgilmore Wrote: > ... with Cheech n Chong, eh?
(snort!) I do believe those two dudes have been fogged-up a time er two in the past...

;^)

santafe199 Wrote:

> Yeah... I've already gone that route. In fact,
> this image was (only) edited up just enough to
> recognize the eng # without lots of eyeball
> effort. My full results weren't good enough for a
> regular thread.

Care to share your process?  I'm curious to know what tools you used to get what you got?

> You can post your version if you like, though...

Hoping that applies to the rest of us...here's how I approach de-obnoxifying a foggy shot.

If it's a fairly even fog across an image, one thing that definitely helps is setting the black point in the Levels histogram in Photoshop.  A foggy image won't have any true black, so setting the black point to the lowest point of the curve restores some of the contrast the fog took away.  Another big helper is the freehand "burn" tool.  Set it to burn in just the shadows, set the exposure to a fairly low percentage (I went with 3%) and go over the foggy bits with a broad brush.  A lot of that plus a little bit of midtone burning in brighter areas (grain elevator), a little sponge tool to desaturate some areas that turned funny colors when burned in, and a little highlight suppression to bring out a little contrast in the sky gave the result below.  Not the perfect crime, but hopefully presentable.

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Evan_Werkema Wrote: > ... Care to share your process?

Why shore!! And thanks for the effort.

Here's the original chase: ( https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,5290665,5290674#5290674 ). I did fool around with an earlier shot in the sequence, but didn't keep at it long enough to find a result like yours. All I did was poke around with the auto-contrast feature in the link, much the same as what I did for the image in this thread... 

Lance