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Return to Iron Horse

By Editor | July 17, 2009

Since my last Iron Horse post I have made two more trips, shooting mostly black and white film with a little digital thrown in. These trips were much more successful than the first, as I’m sure my results will show. It was a little disappointing however to find that they had removed all the buses from the repair yard. Despite this, some great new pictures were had in exploring parts of this complex that I had skipped the first time around.

I only used 2 lenses for these trips, my Canon 24mm 2.8 and Sigma 50mm 1.4 primes, which I would interchange between my Eos-1 and my 5D. First I will display a few of my digital shots from my first return trip, all of which were shot with the 50.

The first two were shot in what seemed to be the employee break room, which according to the calendar in the second image hasn’t been used since 1986. The next two were shot in a wrecked passenger train found in the woods. It looked to me like there had been a pretty rough train accident, and they just decided to gut the train and haul the shell off to sit here and rot in the woods. Like I mentioned earlier I shot mostly film this time around, so here are the rest of the images from the first trip. All of these are taken on either HP5+ pushed to 1600, or Neopan 1600.

We had found an entire section of the building used to store decades of meticulous documentation, some of which dated back over half a century. There were stacks upon stacks of filing cabinets and boxes literally overflowing with everything from payroll info, work orders, written estimates, blueprints, even disciplinary slips written up against the workers. Most of it has suffered from heavy water damage however, from decades of being exposed to the elements through leaky ceilings and smashed-out windows. For some reason there was also a corner of the building which contained a bunch of ordinary home furniture, including a bureau, some couches and a few cast-iron bed frames. We even happened upon a rusted-out cab to what appeared to be a 50’s-era pickup truck.

My next trip was even more productive than the last, with roughly the same ratio of digital to film shots taken. I had entertained the idea of leaving the digital at home, but sometimes there are just shots that I feel need some color, and I’d rather take the chance of coming over-prepared than regret leaving equipment at home once I got there. Case-in-point: I have brought my Canon 70-200 f/4 L IS with me every time I have been to Iron Horse, however I have never once taken it out of the bag. You can bet I’ll be bringing it with me next time I go too. So without further ado, here is a small selection of the digital shots I took during my latest Iron Horse outing.

Lastly, I have my film shots from this trip. I took only 2 rolls this time out, but it seems I am getting pickier with the shots I am taking, as a much larger percentage of them were keepers than my previous film shoots. Recently I have been finding this a lot actually, and I attribute it to the realization of how much time, money and effort it actually takes to buy, shoot, develop, scan and then process all the film I shoot. While this may turn some people off, and is probably the reason why most people shoot digital over film, it is actually the reason why I love film so much. No matter how much I tell myself that I can spend the same amount of concentration and patience when composing my digital shots, I always seem to get better compositions when shooting film. Also you really can’t beat the properties of film when shooting things like this, the dynamic range, contrast, grain and detail simply cannot be reproduced in Photoshop.

Posted in Amateur Photographers, Iron Horse, Urbex | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sakura Zensen

By Editor | May 8, 2009

Well, the cherry blossoms are currently blooming, and I figured, what better time to photograph them? They are only in full bloom for a couple weeks, and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, they are quite beautiful. I tried a couple different techniques here, the first of which was using my Sigma 50mm with a very shallow depth of field, so most of these shots were taken between f/1.4 and 2.8. My 5D was also used for all of these. I had contemplated using film, but I didn’t, so here are the first of the digital shots with the Sigma.

The next gallery contains a few images using first my 24mm f/2.8 prime, and then my 70-200 f/4 L. I purchased the 24mm about a few weeks ago to replace my Sigma 12-24mm. The Sigma was an awesome lens, it just didn’t really fit my needs. I don’t typically use a lot of wide-angle stuff in my photography, and like to travel light, so the large and very heavy Sigma got left home most of the time, collecting dust on my shelf. It was also extremely wide at 12mm, to the point where composition really takes a back seat to subject matter. Luckily I was able to find a good home for it with artist Saturnin, whose website can be found at www.saturnin.com. The 24mm f/2.8 prime lens is much smaller, extremely light, 2 stops faster, and even a little sharper, so I now take it with me everywhere I go.

After taking these vibrant, full-color images, I decided to switch it up and go for some black and whites. The first two images were taken in full color with the images from above, but were edited in Photoshop to mimic a deep red, or even infrared filter on black and white film. To do this, I used the Channel Mixer adjustment tool, clicked the Monochrome box on the bottom to desaturate the image, and then tweaked the individual RGB channels. To darken the sky so much, I lowered the Blue channel by 100%, and compensated by bumping up the Green and Red channels by 50% each. The red channel was at 100% originally, so that brought it up to 150%. This effectively blacked out the once-blue sky, and turned the light pink cherry blossoms completely white.

The rest of the images were taken with a Red 25 filter on my Sigma 50mm, still using the 5D. This resulted in the digital images being completely red, but after desaturating them and giving them a quick levels and contrast adjustment, I was left with what you see here. To be honest I could have probably gotten the same look by just doing the Channel Mixer setting above, with the values left at defaults with Red at 100%, but I like doing as much of my photography as possible in-camera. 95% of the pictures I post on my site only receive a quick levels, white balance and/or contrast adjustment.

If I get a chance to shoot some more of the cherry blossoms before the flowers all fall off next week I will update this post, so stay tuned.

Posted in Amateur Photographers, Landscape | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

My First Time At Iron Horse

By Editor | April 20, 2009

There is an old abandoned train repair facility in my hometown of Billerica, Massachusetts originally used by B&M railroads. It closed down some years ago, and now functions primarily as an MBTA graveyard for old buses and train parts. Last fall a friend of mine recommended I go check it out, as it was fairly easy to get into, and was very photogenic. The day before I went I had just received a rather large order from www.keh.com, comprised of several old FD mount lenses, an old Canon A-1, and my current favorite, the Eos-1 EF mount film body. This actually turned out to be an issue because along with my Rebel XT, I now had 3 cameras to shoot with this day. The Canon A-1 was loaded up with Reala 100 color film using my 28mm 2.8, which I later realized I wasn’t a huge fan of, the Eos-1 with Neopan 1600 and my Canon 50mm 1.8, and the Rebel XT was using my Sigma 17-70 zoom lens. Since this was my first time using film since my old Minolta XG-1 days, most of my film shots were also taken with the digital. Turns out this wasn’t really necessary, as I was very happy with how they came out.

Now I took these right before Thanksgiving of 2008, and at this time of year in New England it starts to get very cold. If I remember correctly it was in the 30s this day, and was quite windy. This wouldn’t have been so bad as we were inside most of the time, but in order to get there we had to park at an apartment complex about a mile away and walk along the train tracks that led into the place. It wasn’t so bad coming in, but we left as it was getting dark, at which point the temps had dropped to below freezing.

The first gallery is from the digital camera. All but the last of these were taken outside, where they keep all the decommissioned MBTA buses. According to my friend most of these were all pretty new to the facility, and this was apparent due to the relative lack of graffiti covering them. The last bus you see has been there for a while, and had some amazing artwork on its side.

Next up are my film shots. Most of these are from my Neopan roll, save for the last two which were taken with the Reala. I didn’t like most of my Reala shots from this day, and I’m attributing that to a combination of the 28mm focal length which I have never been a huge fan of, and I also felt that the colors from the film weren’t very complimentary to the location. If I could reshoot these, I would use a wider focal length, and some black and white film. I am very happy with my Neopan shots though, and love the grain and contrast that this film consistently provides. Even though it is 1600 speed film, I routinely use it in full sunlight because I love the look it gives me.

It was mostly empty inside the huge building, with a couple of small rooms along the side. One of these rooms contained the aptly-named “beer-fridge”, due to some graffiti on its door which has since been covered by another, less photogenic tag. This room was very nicely lit by a rather large skylight, and the paint was literally falling off the walls. This seems to have been an employee break room back in the day, but now that the floor is covered in moss and chunks of lead paint (and oddly enough a few used condoms), the last thing I would want to do in here is eat my lunch.

This was one of my first urbexing adventures, and while it was a great learning experience I feel like I only scratched the surface of the great photographic potential of this location. I plan on making a return trip to Iron Horse soon, now that the weather is finally getting nice again. I plan on shooting solely with my Eos-1 this time, although I may bring my 5D along just in case.

Posted in Amateur Photographers, Urbex | Tagged , , , , , , , | 21 Comments

Underground Adventures.. Part 2

By Editor | April 6, 2009

This post will conclude the two-part “Underground Adventures” series, and will be dealing with four different types of film, most of which I was rather unhappy with. If you missed my last post, please go back and read it before continuing any further. The films I will be discussing today are Ilford XP2, Natura 1600, Fuji Press 800 and Superia 1600.

Out of the three color films I shot this day, I was generally unimpressed by all of them. The only one that showed any promise in this particular setting was the Natura 1600, which I had ordered from Japan. If you are interested in trying this film out, and don’t mind paying upwards of $10 a roll after shipping, it can be found here, at JapanExposures.com. This film seemed to have less grain than the Superia 1600, and better colors (in my opinion) than both of the other color films. The only problem with this film that I encountered was that it automatically rewound itself after 12 exposures, on a 24 exposure roll. After development, sure enough there were 12 unexposed frames. I still don’t know if it got stuck and tricked my camera into thinking it was at the end of the reel or what, but this was a little disappointing. The first two pictures from the following gallery are from the Natura.

The other two color films, the Press 800 and Superia 1600 weren’t terrible of course, but didn’t really leave me with any flattering images. Granted this was one of the first times I had shot high speed color film, but in retrospect I would have rather gone with my 5D for the color stuff, or just stuck with all black and white films. The rest of the images in the gallery were taken with the Press 800; the first two with the 12-24, the third one with the Sigma 50, and the last one with the 70-200 f/4L. None of the shots from the roll of Superia were keepers.

This next roll was one of my favorites from the night. I am constantly impressed with Ilford XP2 every time I use it. For the longest time I had always figured that if I was going to shoot black and white film, that I was going to shoot real black and white film, and leave the C-41 process stuff to all the lazy photographers. Well after being convinced by a friend that I should try it at least once, I was blown away. I love everything about this film, from the incredible sharpness, dynamic range, lack of grain, and yes, the convenience of dropping it off at a one-hour photo for development. It’s definitely not a replacement for “real” black and white films, but its uniqueness has certainly earned itself a permanent spot in my photo bag. All of the images from the XP2 were shot with the Sigma 50, except for the last one which was shot with the 12-24.

This concludes my “Underground Adventures” posts for now, and as usual if you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments section below and I will be more than happy to answer them.

Posted in Amateur Photographers, Boston, Street Photography | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Underground Adventures.. Part 1

By Editor | April 1, 2009

Today I would like to talk a little about a recent photo outing me and a friend of mine took into Boston. I shot only film this day, and went through about 7 rolls before the day was out. The specific films I will be discussing in this post are Ilford HP5+, Neopan 400, and Neopan 1600. I was using my Eos-1 film body for this, with my three favorite lenses at the time, my Canon 70-200 f/4 L IS, Sigma 50mm 1.4, and my recently purchased Sigma 12-24mm wide-angle lens. I brought along some red filters with me, for use with the Canon zoom and Sigma 50, but didn’t get around to using them at all because of the already scarce light found within the subway where we did most of our shooting.

First lets talk about the HP5+. I shot this at 1600, and developed it in Ilfotec HC at 1+15 dilution for 7 1/2 minutes. This was the recommended time for push-processing it at iso 1600, as found on the Massive Dev Chart which I go by almost religiously. I have found that HP5+ pushed to 1600 yields exceptionally fine grain for the speed, and have actually never even shot it at its rated speed because of this. If I am going to shoot 400 speed black and white film, I will usually end up going with Neopan 400, XP2 or 400TX.

I shot the HP5 on my trip on the orange line, where we got off at the Chinatown station. This was one of the last rolls I shot that night, and the 1600 speed came in real handy when we headed above ground. The first 4 shots in this gallery were taken with my Sigma 50mm 1.4, and the last 4 were taken with the Canon 70-200.

Next up is the Neopan 400, which I had shot earlier in the day. I loaded this up on the way to Copley station, and after a few pictures we decided to head up to the surface for some food. We took a rather lengthy stroll over to Faneuil Hall in the sub-freezing weather, and by the time we got there we certainly needed a few stiff drinks as well.

If I remember correctly, the first and last pictures were taken with the Sigma 50, the second was with the 12-24, and the third picture was the 70-200. That is possibly the only thing I find myself complaining about when using film, not having exif data to review when going over your shots. As an interesting side-note, the last picture in this set is one of my top-10 favorite pictures I have ever taken.

The final gallery in this article was shot on Neopan 1600, and was taken on my underground journey from Government Center to North Station. These were only 2 stops apart, but we spent a lot of time in each of the stations, as they were both very photogenic. The Government Center station actually had a roped-off area with a bunch of off-duty trains, so we took the opportunity to sneak back there and grab some cool shots. The first 3 and last 2 images were taken with the 50mm, and the other 3 were taken with the 12-24 and the 70-200 (I’ll leave it up to you to guess which ones).

Overall this was a very fun day, and I got a lot of keepers. We escaped unhassled for the most part, however I did get yelled at by one of the conductors for leaning too far over the yellow line while he was pulling into the station, which I still blame completely on my lens. Looking through the camera at 12mm definitely distorts your perspective, I thought he was at least 20-30 feet away when I had pulled back, only to realize he was about 5 feet away from clipping the camera out of my hands! After a brief exchange, and a few curt hand gestures we were both on our way though, so no harm done. Stay tuned for Part 2 of my ‘Underground Adventures’, where we will go over my XP2, and various high speed color film rolls, including a roll of Natura 1600 I had shipped in from Japan.

Posted in Amateur Photographers, Boston, Street Photography | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

My Best Friend’s Wedding

By Editor | March 30, 2009

Last August, I had the distinct pleasure of being a groomsman in a very old friend of mine’s wedding. Being an avid photographer, I couldn’t let a chance like this pass me up, so I brought my camera bag along with me. Since I was in the wedding, I wasn’t able to photograph much during the actual ceremony, and left most of the posed pictures of family members to the paid photographers. I posted 20 of my favorite pictures from the day, most of which were candid shots taken at the reception.

For equipment, I had my trusty old Canon Rebel XT, and used only my Canon 50mm 1.8 and 70-200 f/4 L IS lenses. I had an old Minolta flash, but while it was incredibly bright, it offered nothing in the way of metering, so most of the pictures taken using the flash were exposed manually using trial and error. These would not be my preferred pieces of equipment for wedding photography, but at the time I was just starting out with digital photography, and didn’t have much in my own personal collection to choose from. Nevertheless, the only major problems I came across were AF hunting in the low light due to not having an adequate AF assist beam, and the aforementioned metering.

Please feel free to leave any questions and comments in the comments section below, and I will be happy to address them.

Posted in Amateur Photographers, Weddings | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments