Nostalgia & History > Off Exposures

There are times you just don't know what to do.....

A pair of Burlington Northern GE C30-7's, led by "white face" 5081 rolls empty coal hoppers west aloing the "Triple Track Speedway.

The sun is pretty much overhead and your exposure settings don't really matter. Anyway you try to adjust, somethings going to come out wrong.
So, you shoot and keep your fingers crossed.

LaGrange, Illinois.
August, 1995.
 

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Everyone goes to Arizona and usually get days of unbroken sunshine.
I step off the Southwest Chief and the clouds automatically start to gather.

But don't let it get you down, you're loaded up with Kodachrome 64, what could possibly happen? UGH!

Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe EMD SDF45 5969 (with those smoke deflectors) plus an SD45 and a pair of GE U36C's are "elephant style" as they bring a manifest thru town.

Hopefully, they're toting some sunshine along.

Flagstaff, Arizona.
July, 1984.

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They look fine to me ! That was my favorite BN scheme

The first shot is an example of high, midday summer sun on an east-west-oriented railroad, sun everywhere but nowhere. I try to avoid chasing east-west railroads in the summertime for this reason. And generally in the summer, you can put away your camera and do your traveling, errands, lunch, whatever from 11:30 to 1:30, or you get the dark sides look. If you had to chase something important past 11:30, post-processing manipulation can assist somewhat, but ends up looking less than natural. Summer sun can be an advantage, as you can shoot north-facing stuff and north sides in early morning and late afternoon, but overall it seems sun in the 3 other seasons is best. === === = === JLH

In New Jersey, we bought our Kodachrome from a store called "Service Merchandise".

It was a big showroom type place and you wrote your order down, brought it to the counter and paid.
Minutes later, your order came up a belt from the basement where they kept everything and you were on your way.

We got film, mailers and I even bought my first slide projector (a Sawyers) from them. 
We'd usually split a brick of K64-36.

They've long since went out of business.

But, every once in a while, they were out of Kodachrome. That's when panic started to set in.

We'd look at each other and gulp, 'Ektachrome!!!" It was like a scene from a Stephen King movie.

An "Ektachromed" Penn Central ALCo RS3 brings a short local East at Little Ferry, New.Jersey.
August, 1974.


 

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