Category: railroads
Minneapolis was built by the railroads. The great J. J. Hill transformed the landscape and the economy of the area with the Great Northern Railroad. The twin Cities' roads seem to wander but of you look at a map, you'll see it's because all the railroads and railyards were here first and have the best routes through the area. In the corners, long-forgotten rolling stock sits quietly rusting and accumulating graffiti.2
How to: Abstract Photography
Behold, the majesty of the Grand Lighting Tower of the Linden Yard. Ok... so the yard is now a city dump and the lights haven't been on since we stopped building nuclear reactors, but still, from the right angle, it's pretty cool. There is a lot going on in this shot, and I had fun at every step:The Composition
This is a classic pyramid composition, offset to the left to follow the Rule of Thirds. Pyramids are very common compositions in design and painting. they draw the eye in and focus it to a central point, giving depth to the image. One of the great things about photography is that you don't have to convince the viewer that it is real. This would make a lousy painting because it is abstract to the point of being incoherent — it would be dismissed as abstract. As a photo, you know it has to be something, so you figure it out. Abstract images loose their sense of space because the geometric shapes and strong lines destroy the organic real-world cues. By finding objects with simple lines and shapes, you can compose and image in which they dominate the space.The Technique
This was shot with my Nikon D200 and the Nikkor 70-300mm VR f/4.5-5.6. Settings: Focal length 70mm, ISO 100, Aperture F/16, Shutter 1/80 sec, no flash. I placed the camera against the tower and worked out the composition. I took several photos at different settings with different compositions. One of the big mistakes many amateur photographers make is that they don't look at the entire image. They center the subject and shoot. I really enjoyed how I was able to get the top left light to fill the corner. Digital photos are free: take as many as you can. Keep moving the camera around and see what you can make.The Processing
I love Adobe Lightroom. I can change an image in so many directions quickly without damaging the file or having oodles of layers to manage. I increased: exposure, recovery, blacks, vibrance, contrast, clarity and... Cranked the tonal curve and increased the luminosity and saturation of some colors. Add in a little Lens Vignetting and it's done!6
Railyard Graffiti
In like a lion, out like a lamb, March is skittering off the stage and April is rounding the bend. The CDPB Theme Day (first of the month) for March was Graffiti and in the spirit of March, I decided to offer you one more graffiti post for the month. I will postpone the April theme of "Water" until the second, so that I can make an announcement tomorrow; be sure to check back, it's pretty cool! The train is actually moving in this photo, I found the graffiti and was all set when I heard these Canadian Pacific GP40's chugging on from stage-left. It was a grimy pre-spring day when I was out and the colors were rather bland, so I ran for my trusty over-saturated look to process this photo. I process all my photos for mitchster.com in Adobe Lightroom only — there is no Photoshopping of any of my photos. I'm a bit of a National Geographic Photographer wanna-be. If you haven't tried Lightroom, I strongly suggest it, the power and speed is incredible. I can organize and process hundreds of photos very quickly. One of my favorite options is to copy-and-paste settings — adjust a photo, then copy the settings to another photo from the same shoot and you're done. In this case I had several photos of the graffiti and after I created the effects you see, I pasted them to several photos and found the one it worked best on.2
Vanishing Point
24 paths diverged in the woods and I — I took the one less traveled by (it's the one on the right that leads to the ammunition factory). The tracks are pretty close together in a railyard, you wouldn't want to get caught between a parked train and a moving one. Trust me on this. If you haven't read about my adventure to that end, Intermodal Shipping Containers and A Near Death Experience is one of my favorite stories.3
Number 4771
Trains, glorious trains. This beastie is sitting quietly in one of the many railyards in the Twin Cites; specifically one next to a round house just off I-94 in St. Paul. It always amazes me how many freaking railyards there are and how many there used to be. Like looking for ancient meteor craters, you can find them on google satellite maps and see the familiar shape (long wedge shapes near tracks) with new buildings, sometimes town-homes or a shopping center. I love how the face of ol' number 4711 iridesces in the morning light, must be something in the paint as it fades. Have a great week, it's warming up in Minneapolis and Mitchs are much more active when it's warm. Watch for your daily photo here and please, look both ways before crossing the tracks.5
Graffiti on Rails
Leave something outside long enough, something is going to happen. Today's my eleventy-first post! How often does a LOTR fan get to use that term? My friend Paul has some pretty good posts this week.2
Bunge and the Carnival
Just another stop on the way, the Bunge Grain Elevator sits quietly abandoned on the west end of the Union yards by the University. You can actually see it from 35W, but not many people are seeing it now. It's visible from the stretch of 35W just north of the missing bridge. This is also the place where I had my near run-in with a train. The Winter Carnival starts tomorrow, but the hunt for the medallion has already begun. On top of building ice sculptures, skating and general winter fun; the powers that be hide a medallion somewhere in St. Paul and then give clues in lyrical form in the local paper. The one who finds it enters local legend and wins a big prize. I'm still fuzzy on the details, maybe Kate can help me with the details. One element I love is that the clues come out at half-past midnight, so the locals are out digging up the parks in the middle of the night. Gotta be hard-core to play. If you have any details or links to share, please comment! This photo has a lot of angles. The composition is relatively static, but the tracks, trees and the silos are at angles. Another element I enjoy is how everything is mostly white. It seems like a black and white picture, but it's not. I've done this before here and here. I warned you about it here. It also obeys the rule of thirds. I'm headed over to St. Paul to find some images of the Carnival, so keep in touch to find out what we do around here to avoid cabin fever. Please feel free to comment some links to green things for me; I'm starting to crack. If I can just make it through February...3
Rolling Graffiti Composition
Back to the Rails. Rail yards are such a great land of contrasts. There is so much activity, yet nobody is around. I am drawn to them by all the big equipment rolling around, but I'm nervous about either scary people or getting in trouble with the railroad bulls or simply getting killed. My only recent solution is to bring someone along to keep an eye on me. This composition sets up a little tension in that the graffiti and the dark detailed rails are at the bottom left, yet the only place for your eye to escape is at the top where one can see just a little beyond the boxcar. I modified the image to sharpen the corrugation and introduce a stronger vertical effect to pull your eye out of the bottom of the image. The numerous diagonals also add dynamism to the image. Often people (like my dad, sorry pop) center the subject, which leaves the eye sitting in the middle and getting bored. If you see something interesting, like the graffiti, look around it and find a near-by compliment. In this case it is simply the open space above the boxcar. The two spaces support each other as positive and negative. So next time you see something, look around it and find it's frame — something bright needs a dark, something sharp needs a smooth. The word frame also hints to "frame of reference" so something to give scale or location helps, but put the two opposite each other in some way, not one surrounding the other. If I had pulled back and centered the graffiti, it would have been boring, just enough space above the boxcar is enough. So what is the effect I'm applying to the image? It's called Direct Positive. It's mimicking the old photography developing technique. The effect is saturated colors, blown-out blues and wicked contrast. Now it can all be done in post with photoshop or lightroom. Lightroom actually has a preset for it and I use it to start from and then tweak it to match the image. I've done this before. Let's watch the comments and see if my dad catches the slight. Even better, maybe he'll finally put a picture on flickr to prove me wrong. 2