Big Boy steam engine rolling through Melrose, Ohio 2 days ago.
(Has any engine - indeed, any single steel object- had its picture taken as much as this thing? Maybe the Eiffel Tower...
Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people see this every day, and almost NO one can just stand there and LOOK at it - out comes the cell phone. Probably 100,000 to 1 million images per day. Hardly anyone just watches this thing roll by - they all see it on their screens as they run the video. The way we see the world in the 21st century!)
That's a real nice shot!!! I'm going to be trying to get a few good shots tomorrow. Came hear for some inspiration. No people stepping in front of your shot must have been a challenge unless you found a real remote location. My main location tomorrow will be the engine crossing a river, shot from the river bank. It's private property and I'm the only one who has contacted the owner. Any tips on shutter speed and aperture, focal length for your shot?
A few B&W shots from two years ago to fit the theme of the board.
For some stuff in a village I debating a shot near the track with a fence to protect against people stepping in front of me. Or some of the muffler men statues with the train in the background. The muffler men is classic Route 66. I think the fence would be a better photo of the train, but the giants would be more unique.
ILCE-7RM5Sony FE 35mm F1.4 GM (SEL35F14GM) lens35mmf/1.41/80s5000 ISO-1.7 EV
ILCE-7RM5Sony FE 35mm F1.4 GM (SEL35F14GM) lens35mmf/1.41/40s2500 ISO-1.7 EV
ILCE-7RM5Sony FE 35mm F1.4 GM (SEL35F14GM) lens35mmf/1.41/80s100 ISO-5.0 EV
Big Boy - received a text from a college roommate, he said Big Boy just passed through town, Mechanicsburg, PA, and the whole town shook, including the items hanging on his walls.
tschopp wrote:
That's a real nice shot!!! I'm going to be trying to get a few good shots tomorrow. Came hear for some inspiration. No people stepping in front of your shot must have been a challenge unless you found a real remote location. My main location tomorrow will be the engine crossing a river, shot from the river bank. It's private property and I'm the only one who has contacted the owner. Any tips on shutter speed and aperture, focal length for your shot?
A few B&W shots from two years ago to fit the theme of the board.
For some stuff in a village I debating a shot near the track with a fence to protect against people stepping in front of me. Or some of the muffler men statues with the train in the background. The muffler men is classic Route 66. I think the fence would be a better photo of the train, but the giants would be more unique....Show more →
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RustyBug wrote:
+1
Debating a scouting location for tomorrow ... haven't really found what I'm looking for, so who knows what (if any) I come up with.
My strategy was to pick a remote crossing about 5-10 miles outside a town (Continental, OH) where the train did a 30-minute whistle stop. That was like a magnet that pulled thousands of people into town, so I was ahead of the crush of people. There were about a dozen or so people at the Melrose crossing, and we stayed in a line so no one would get in the picture.
I actually drove the route the day before to scope out locations, and followed a freight train for about 40 miles to see if I could do it. I was successful following the freight, but the next day following Big Boy my whole scheme failed - the mass of cars on the back roads jammed up and the train got ahead. I followed all the way to Fort Wayne, but only got 2 crossings; the rest of the time it was mostly a distant blur over soybean fields miles in the distance.
I really wanted to get a shot in one of the small towns, or maybe by a grain elevator, to give more interest, but that turned out to be impossible. Every single town, no matter how small, had a crush of people in it. Bad for photography, but it's great that so many people actually love it.
Bob Jarman wrote:
Big Boy - received a text from a college roommate, he said Big Boy just passed through town, Mechanicsburg, PA, and the whole town shook, including the items hanging on his walls.
I forgot - you asked for some technicals.
f8, 1/800 at ISO 400
Sony 24-105 shot at 105; slight crop so it's probably more equivalent to a 120 (I like the compression that you get with a medium tele for steam engines)
Nothing iconic, I couldn't get a scouted location to incorporate the river and the Arch and BB all together. That was my goal, but it didn't come together for me on this one.
BB will be on display in St. Louis tomorrow (9-4 iirc), then pulling out again on Monday morning.
It's a heck of a machine for sure. I've chased it three times here in Texas, the last time I scouted 5 locations, beat the train to 4 of them, I perposly just set a video camera on a stationary tripod for 2 of the passes so that I could just stand there and feel the thing blast past us.
Amazing!
Zane Adams wrote:
It's a heck of a machine for sure. I've chased it three times here in Texas, the last time I scouted 5 locations, beat the train to 4 of them, I perposly just set a video camera on a stationary tripod for 2 of the passes so that I could just stand there and feel the thing blast past us.
Amazing!
I ended up trying 3 locations. I went to Atlanta IL because they had some Giant Route 66 statues that I figured the grandkids would like. I tried video before the town, huge smoke when they entered town, did a poor job catching it. The second was crossing the Sangamon River before Springfield IL. That was amazing, I spent $10 on a whitepage listing to get contact info for the guy that owned the fishing cabin I shot from. Had I not done that I don't think he would have headed there for the event.
The last I was thinking about the bridge in front of the capitol in Springfield. Relied on GPS to navigate, it didn't know the train was stopped at the station and a bunch of roads were closed for the event. It looked like a zoo where I wanted to shoot from and I didn't think I could shoot from the middle of the road. In hindsight, it looked like the train actually paused on the bridge and I think I could have gotten it. Too hot and too far to walk in what seemed like it would be too short a time.
Overall I was super happy with the river crossing.
Poor video of the heavy smoke:
ILCE-7RM5FE 85mm F1.4 GM II lens85mmf/5.61/500s100 ISO-0.7 EV
ILCE-7RM5FE 85mm F1.4 GM II lens85mmf/5.61/500s100 ISO-0.7 EV
tschopp wrote:
I ended up trying 3 locations. I went to Atlanta IL because they had some Giant Route 66 statues that I figured the grandkids would like. I tried video before the town, huge smoke when they entered town, did a poor job catching it. The second was crossing the Sangamon River before Springfield IL. That was amazing, I spent $10 on a whitepage listing to get contact info for the guy that owned the fishing cabin I shot from. Had I not done that I don't think he would have headed there for the event.
The last I was thinking about the bridge in front of the capitol in Springfield. Relied on GPS to navigate, it didn't know the train was stopped at the station and a bunch of roads were closed for the event. It looked like a zoo where I wanted to shoot from and I didn't think I could shoot from the middle of the road. In hindsight, it looked like the train actually paused on the bridge and I think I could have gotten it. Too hot and too far to walk in what seemed like it would be too short a time.
Overall I was super happy with the river crossing.
tschopp wrote:
I ended up trying 3 locations. I went to Atlanta IL because they had some Giant Route 66 statues that I figured the grandkids would like. I tried video before the town, huge smoke when they entered town, did a poor job catching it. The second was crossing the Sangamon River before Springfield IL. That was amazing, I spent $10 on a whitepage listing to get contact info for the guy that owned the fishing cabin I shot from. Had I not done that I don't think he would have headed there for the event.
The last I was thinking about the bridge in front of the capitol in Springfield. Relied on GPS to navigate, it didn't know the train was stopped at the station and a bunch of roads were closed for the event. It looked like a zoo where I wanted to shoot from and I didn't think I could shoot from the middle of the road. In hindsight, it looked like the train actually paused on the bridge and I think I could have gotten it. Too hot and too far to walk in what seemed like it would be too short a time.
Overall I was super happy with the river crossing.
