Welcome to my Flickr Page, which will (mostly) feature Railroad photograpy that I have made over the years. I have been a Railfan most of my life, for at least 40 years and I like all kinds of Trains, Railroad operations big and small, steam, diesel, passenger, freight, and all manner of the infrastructure around the Railroad that supports it. I'm also fascinated with Railroad history and images from bygone days.

But, my feed can tend to be a bit eclectic at times. I have/had kids in sports and the 7D lends itself to sports photography. I recently became a grandfather and so some of that is going to seep into my feed. I love booze and fine drinking establishments, and I have also gotten into doing more serious "home cook" type efforts and so some of my (or my family's) creations show up from time to time. I am going to naturally share the milestone events in my life and the lives of the people I care about, so things like birthdays, graduations, births, weddings, and other activities are going to appear. I also like experimenting with landscape, nature, and other what I call "creative" photography -- I have an entire album dedicated to it.

Please consider following me if you like what you see!

The Flickr ID comes from my first name along with one of my hometown (St. Louis, MO) favorites growing up - SLSF (Frisco) 4-8-2 Mountain #1522. My two favorite Railroads growing up were the Frisco and the Southern. I grew up shooting various 35mm film cameras and occasionally if I was lucky, I got to try my hand at Dad's Super 8 Movie camera. As I got older, I joined the VHS craze of the late 80's and early 90's and my attention turned more towards Video than photography. But that all changed in 2010 with the purchase of a shiny 7D. While I kinda had to re-learn how to do photography again, I was soon on my way to racking up crazy shutter counts and posting many photos here on Flickr. I've even had a few make it into the pages of some publications.

But, I still really like video, too. In fact, it's been referred to as "my stronger suit" in times past - probably when I was paying more attention to VHS than 35mm. Somewhere along the way, I found out that the Canon 7D not only produces really high quality digital images, it also shoot good video - 1080p in HD! I had been taking video from time to time with the 7D - mostly in low-light or non-sunny conditions when the photos wouldn't be that great anyways. But, then in 2015, I found a really good deal on a second 7D body, which I jumped on because it provided obvious flexibility for photography AND a back-up body. But, it also allowed me to put one on a tripod and shoot video while running around doing photography with the other.

I've tried to get videos uploaded to Flickr in the past - maybe you've seen a few - but, honestly Flickr is such a PITA with videos, it became increasingly frustrating to put them up here. And so, even though I have a hard time stomaching...pretty much everything YouTube represents (especially the censorship) I finally broke down and added a channel to put my videos there.

Feel free to check them out here: www.youtube.com/channel/UCzM09z_VKg2E-BDrxUGc7jQ

Equipment currently used:

2 Canon EOS 7D bodies

Canon EF 28-135mm

Canon EF-S 17-85mm (most often used lens for video)

Canon EF 17-40mm L

Canon EF 70-300mm

Canon EF 50mm

Canon EF-S 10-18mm

Last but not least, all of the images are Copyright ME the date of the photo, All Rights Reserved, etc. I do not give ANYONE permission to sell our otherwise share my work that is posted by me, outside of the obvious providing link back to the original work as posted here. Do not misrepresent my work as your own!

I want you to view my work and hopefully enjoy it! If I do everything right as a photographer and reach you, I want you to share it with others, but obviously giving credit where credit is due. I do NOT want you to download your own personal copy of my Photostream to pass around.

Yes, there's not much I can do to enforce this. Yes, I probably grossly overestimate the value of the work I do. No, I'm not trying to be a jerk. While what I do photographically is mostly a "Labor of Love/Passion" that I mostly do *for fun*, I do invest a significant amount time, money, effort, and other resources into it and feel like at the end of the day what's mine is mine and that people *should* respect that.