Oregon Rail Pictures
Winter’s Gift
The weather is supposed to be bad in January. Historical cloud maps and weather data would tell you to expect gray skies nearly 70% of the time during January east of the Cascades. If the current forecast to the end of January holds, 15 of the remaining 24 days since January 8 will be sunny. The poor weather during the winter is supposed to be the cost of a perfect summer. A winter sunset, usually a rare occurrence, is supposed to be winter’s gift to those who are lucky enough to witness the few that do occur. Some years provide more opportunity than others.
No matter how hard I tried to capture the scene before me, and despite my best editing efforts, I came nowhere close to the blood red colors of sunset that were possible with film. Digital is too real. It doesn’t leave the colors up to the imagination. When you snap a photo, you don’t have to wait to get it back in the mail to see if it’s exactly how you imagined it—you can look at it immediately. Yet no matter how fast you pull it up on your computer to recreate the scene still fresh in your memory from just a few hours ago, you come up short. I spent the day looking at sunset photos to see what I was missing. I came to the realization that the beauty of what has been captured in the past is that it cannot be repeated. It’s a single frame from a single moment from the millions of frames our eyes take every day. It’s not always about the colors that make or break a photo. It’s a glimpse of a second in time that will never occur in exactly the same fashion again. That’s why it’s special.
Despite being absent of a train, this might be my favorite photo I have taken to date. It leaves everything to the imagination. There is no train to complain about, or poor leader to worry about, or a burnt out headlight, or some other trivial detail that always seems to have more influence than it should. It’s just the three things I love the most—the rails, the sun, and the Gorge.
January 17, 2025 - 4:33PM
Winter’s Gift
The weather is supposed to be bad in January. Historical cloud maps and weather data would tell you to expect gray skies nearly 70% of the time during January east of the Cascades. If the current forecast to the end of January holds, 15 of the remaining 24 days since January 8 will be sunny. The poor weather during the winter is supposed to be the cost of a perfect summer. A winter sunset, usually a rare occurrence, is supposed to be winter’s gift to those who are lucky enough to witness the few that do occur. Some years provide more opportunity than others.
No matter how hard I tried to capture the scene before me, and despite my best editing efforts, I came nowhere close to the blood red colors of sunset that were possible with film. Digital is too real. It doesn’t leave the colors up to the imagination. When you snap a photo, you don’t have to wait to get it back in the mail to see if it’s exactly how you imagined it—you can look at it immediately. Yet no matter how fast you pull it up on your computer to recreate the scene still fresh in your memory from just a few hours ago, you come up short. I spent the day looking at sunset photos to see what I was missing. I came to the realization that the beauty of what has been captured in the past is that it cannot be repeated. It’s a single frame from a single moment from the millions of frames our eyes take every day. It’s not always about the colors that make or break a photo. It’s a glimpse of a second in time that will never occur in exactly the same fashion again. That’s why it’s special.
Despite being absent of a train, this might be my favorite photo I have taken to date. It leaves everything to the imagination. There is no train to complain about, or poor leader to worry about, or a burnt out headlight, or some other trivial detail that always seems to have more influence than it should. It’s just the three things I love the most—the rails, the sun, and the Gorge.
January 17, 2025 - 4:33PM