Nostalgia & History > Amtrak before Dawn on a cold January morning.

1.  I had been in Durand the previous month and I took some pictures of Amtrak and the Depot, which was brightly decorated for Christmas.  The exposures were OK light-wise, but because I was using the monopod, the shutter speed was too slow to capture a non-jittery image, so I came back for another shot of the train-Depot combination.  I brought my 300mm lens on the D200 which was like 450mm full frame, and I had my tripod to shake the jitters.  I snapped off a bunch of photos, some of which were shake free, and others not so much.  I snapped this on January 5th, 2011 at 7:40 AM.  Sunrise was still nearly 30 minutes away, but the sky was beginning to show, and there were a few streaks of pink showing.

2.  After Amtrak hurried off to Chicago, I got back in my car and drove around to the Depot.  The sky was showing more color, and when I got out of the car, I saw this at 7:59 AM.  I was gobsmacked by the color and intensity, and of course I snapped off just one.  I was never able to really process the shot until now:  bright enough to see the ground, sky blown out, dark enough to really see the sky, the ground goes very dark.  Enter a digi developer with great masking (Darktable), and voila I get the sky and the ground.

3.  Writing this made me curious:  what was the rest of the day like? There was one shot of the empty tracks at 10 AM that showed a decent sky blue sky with sharp shadows, but no photos of trains with bluish skies.  At 2:22 PM, this UP hauled autorack train came along, and I took the shot.  The light was too diffuse to give shadows, and that mottled sky shows why.

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Pic 2... Nature can be beautiful but can also be brutal!

Bob Phelps
Micanopy, FL

Nice work with the Christmas lights!

Lance

Nice work on all three.
—Mac

"Red sky in the morninng:  sailors take warning.  
Red sky at night: sailors delight."

Hakk

chakk Wrote:
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> "Red sky in the morninng:  sailors take
> warning.  
> Red sky at night: sailors delight."
>
> Hakk

Indeed.  Avoid the Great Lakes.

Super views - Number one is excellent.
Bob