SDfourD
Visualizing
Photographing trains for those of us that do is something in and of itself. Some use their spin to create art, some use it to portray drama, and others just want to be able to read the numberboards. But only when the final shutter click ends and the camera is lowered are you actually experiencing it for your own eyes. And at that point you get to watch your subject matter do what you came to document in the first place, etching your memory forever.
Today while I was pacing these two brutes I had a rush of memories come back to me as if I was living them again. The sight of two SD45's and their flared radiators back to back was something I hadn't experienced in quite some time. Seemingly forever ago I would watch the WC's own 45's go about their transfer work at New Brighton and beyond via bicycle. To document the times I usually had my Pentax K1000.
Fast forward a decade and the bicycle is gone, the Pentax is long retired, and most of my childhood memories can only be revisited by amateur photography and old emails, as only five former WC SD45's remain. Nowadays the railroad landscape resembles little of it's former self, I drive a Dodge Ram, and I don't have much time for photography due to my schedule (or lack of one) at BNSF. So whilst running and gunning with these guys on their trek East, I reminded myself to breath it in just a bit more than usual. To just watch these relics as they drift from side to side, bouncing ever so slightly as they roll across former Great Northern terrain, because in another ten years I'll wish I could watch them just one more time.
"These are the good old days, man."
Visualizing
Photographing trains for those of us that do is something in and of itself. Some use their spin to create art, some use it to portray drama, and others just want to be able to read the numberboards. But only when the final shutter click ends and the camera is lowered are you actually experiencing it for your own eyes. And at that point you get to watch your subject matter do what you came to document in the first place, etching your memory forever.
Today while I was pacing these two brutes I had a rush of memories come back to me as if I was living them again. The sight of two SD45's and their flared radiators back to back was something I hadn't experienced in quite some time. Seemingly forever ago I would watch the WC's own 45's go about their transfer work at New Brighton and beyond via bicycle. To document the times I usually had my Pentax K1000.
Fast forward a decade and the bicycle is gone, the Pentax is long retired, and most of my childhood memories can only be revisited by amateur photography and old emails, as only five former WC SD45's remain. Nowadays the railroad landscape resembles little of it's former self, I drive a Dodge Ram, and I don't have much time for photography due to my schedule (or lack of one) at BNSF. So whilst running and gunning with these guys on their trek East, I reminded myself to breath it in just a bit more than usual. To just watch these relics as they drift from side to side, bouncing ever so slightly as they roll across former Great Northern terrain, because in another ten years I'll wish I could watch them just one more time.
"These are the good old days, man."