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A Year of Discovery

A personal photo project is a journey where the main goal is to shoot intentionally during a given period of time for a certain purpose. A way to motivate shooting more pictures, stretching creativity, and supporting an important cause. It is best committing to subject matter which draws passion, in my case vintage railroads.

One Year

These days I absolutely enjoy photography more than ever. A labor of love. It is my obsession and passion.

Inspired by National Geographic photographer Todd Gipstein’s “X100: 1 Mile, 1 Year, 1 Lens” video, I challenged myself with this similar twelve-month personal photo project. Over a period of one year, I used the Fujifilm X100T camera with integral 35mm equivalent fixed lens exclusively at a one mile portion of a former freight railroad on the streets of Brooklyn, New York City. All the compositions include the abandoned but still intact right-of-way; the objective being a documentary of how the surrounding environment matured around the once-bustling rail line.

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Editor’s Notebook

Merry Christmas!

I hope that everyone has a joyful holiday and a safe and prosperous New Year. And, as always, thanks for reading The Trackside Photographer. Your interest and support keeps us going, along with the generosity of the photographers and writers who share their work with us each week. Thanks to everyone for a great 2019!

Projects

While we all love to get that one “killer” photograph, extended projects can be a great way to grow as a photographer. Projects can take many forms based on a subject, a theme, a person or place. Projects can be built around technical constraints, or photographing a single subject at different times of the day, or in different seasons. Some projects may be completed in a very short time, some may take months or years, and some projects are ongoing.

Join us this Thursday, December 26th, as we present the culmination of a year-long project by photographer Matthew Malkiewicz. Working within self-imposed constraints, Matthew found the freedom to grow creatively. The results is an inspiring story of discovery, and a gallery of outstanding photographs. Don’t miss it!

Edd Fuller, Editor

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Editor’s Notebook

Out with the old, in with the new

We don’t talk much about cameras and gear here on The Trackside Photographer. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that the internet is awash with reviews and opinions on any type of photographic equipment one can imagine. And the needs of railroad photographers are not highly specialized: we have published work made with everything from large format view cameras to smart phones.

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Exploring the Railroad Environment

Mid 1990s – Composing from the right-of-way.

I grew up looking at well lit, telephoto images of trains plying the scenery in magazines discarded from the library. I wanted get to there, for my photos to end up well-circulated and glossy. Instead, I ended up walking along the tracks, making images that looked nothing like what I saw in print. Most of the time, I wouldn’t see any trains and would shoot a few details along the way. When a train would appear, the only way to get a shot was to sprint off the right-of-way, head up a bank, and hope for a clear shot with a 50mm which had the ability of capturing too wide and not nearly enough all at the same time.

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Oh, the places you’ll go

I first met George Hiotis in October of 1994 on the station platform at Val-Royal, a suburban neighborhood northwest of the center of Montreal. He and I had separately and independently decided to travel there to see for ourselves the electrification on the former Canadian National Deux-Montagnes commuter line. Four of the boxcab locomotives that we photographed dated back to 1917, built by General Electric; another handful had a foreign pedigree, constructed by English Electric in 1924; and the “modern” three steeplecabs, also GEs, came out of the Erie plant in 1950. On top of the ancient equipment, Val-Royal remained one of the last places in North America where a station agent hooped up orders to every inbound train. It felt like a trip in a time machine.

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A Sense of Place

Holcomb Creek Trestle – Hillsboro, Oregon

The largest wooden railroad bridge in the United States still in use, 1168 feet long and about 90 feet tall, the Holcomb Creek Trestle was built by United Railways in 1905. United Railways was an electric interurban railway that ran from Portland to Wilkesboro, with a connection to Banks. Although it did have passenger service, its main commodity was lumber. Eventually the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway purchased the line and added a connection to its electric railway, the Oregon Electric. At some point in the 1930’s the overhead wires probably came down and the line was served by steam and later diesel freight trains. The line was almost abandoned by Burlington Northern who eventually obtained it. Currently the State of Oregon officially owns the right-of-way and shortline operator Portland & Western Railroad runs freight trains on the line.

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