May 9, 201114 yr This is the coolest VW I have ever seen in my life. It's my friend's 1974 Beetle. It puts all other Beetles to shame:
May 9, 201114 yr St. Mark Catholic Church, one of my top ten endangered locations for Abandoned's 2011 Endangered Buildings list. More coming soon...
May 23, 201114 yr Quite nice, and those beautiful summertime rural Pennsylvania skies! Thanks Rob. What you couldn't see was a massive storm cell that had to have been about 5 miles east of us. Actually you can see part of it on the right hand side of the photo between the trees. We could hear the thunder and yet we had gorgeous skies above us. Oddly, the storms were moving southwest that day, and I wanted to wait and watch the storm go over the valley but we left too soon. That power line cut gives you a panoramic view of about 25 to 30 miles from about 1400 feet. I love that road.
May 23, 201114 yr Pennsylvania thunderstorms can be awe-inspiring. The mention of them resurrects a memory from nearly fifty years ago, when I was stationed at Dover AFB in Delaware. My parents had attended a convention in NY City and we arranged to meet up at Strasburg as they drove home. We had dinner at one of the Amish barn restaurants (Plain and Fancy Farm, I think), and while we were there a spectacular storm arose, with towering dark clouds, a lot of brilliant lighting, window-rattling thunder, and big raindrops splattering down by the bucketsful. It was only then that I realized that I had never witnessed a thunderstorm at Dover. We got torrential rains that quickly disappeared into the surrounding marshland and sandy soil, but I don't recall any of them being accompanied by thunder and lighting. I think Horseshoe Curve, on the old PRR route near Altoona, would be a great place to witness a thunderstorm. The panoramic view from there is impressive.
May 23, 201114 yr Here is one for you Rob! An old Shay No. 5, carrying three log cars and a caboose, lumber up the 11.5% grade to Old Spruce Junction at Cass State Park in West Virginia. The log cars will not be running for 2012 because they have been getting exceptions for years which have now run their course. I have more in queue - taken during Railfan Weekend 2011, which was a blast.
May 23, 201114 yr Nice! They have to fire those Shays hard because of the unrelenting tough grades on that railroad, and the volume of smoke on the ascent is spectacular. All except Big 6, the big Western Maryland engine, are hand-fired coal burners, and the fireman has to stuff coal into the firebox at more than two tons per hour for two hours. Those guys have to be tough as nails. I've wanted to go to railfan weekend, but never made it. The engines pull cars up the mountain for photo purposes, but for regular tourist excursions they push, and I've seen videos converted from film in the logging days where they're shown pushing the log cars. It's to prevent a runaway in case a coupler breaks.
May 23, 201114 yr No kidding. I was in the No. 11 photographing the crew next to the hot coals while stopped at Bald Knob, and it was a toasty 120F. I got pretty much cooked on that trip. The ride up and down on Saturday, we opted for the open-air seats - behind the coals and the stack, so we got 'cindered' quite a bit! I was a mixture of red and black by the time we made it to the base. Well worth the $200!
May 26, 201114 yr He wasn't when he started running towards me. I kind of went into panic mode and ran away screaming like a little girl. Wish my friends got it on film...
June 1, 201114 yr Here you go Rob! A short video of Shay Cass #5 with the log cars running behind on the Bald Knob mainline. This is the last year the log cars ran, unfortunately. This is my first video shot with my iPhone, something I would have never considered doing in the past.
June 1, 201114 yr Nice job! The black-and-white rendering with vignetting and a little flicker makes it look like vintage film. The steadiness is a big plus; that's something that's often lost on folks shooting video with a phone or small camcorder.
June 1, 201114 yr I was surprised that I could hold it that steady. I have several others I'll be posting soon using the "1970s" mode of the 8mm app. And I figured out how to focus!
June 2, 201114 yr The second video from the 2011 Cass Railfan Weekend in West Virginia! You are looking at a Shay Cass #5 pulling log cars on the Bald Knob mainline at the wye. And this time, I learned how to focus the camera! :P
June 3, 201114 yr Again, quite nice. You stepped up the techincal quality quite a bit. I think they've cleared some brush since I was there in 1999; then, I don't thing there was any single vantage point where I could see the entire wye.
June 3, 201114 yr shay number 5! very cool shot -- all of these recent ones are great fun to see :clap: *** here are a few from this week that my bro just sent me from one of lorains harbors. there is a 25-30yr old peninsula/island that was gradually made from black river dredgings that is supporting a lot of wildlife: blue heron
June 7, 201114 yr You guys are tremendous photographers. This is a tremendous gallery! "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
June 23, 201113 yr Evening eastbound South Shore train #15 approaches Portage/Ogden Dunes (JN) station on time at 18:21 CST, Monday, June 20, 2011. http://urbanindiana.com/in_south_shore/20110620-7754.jpg
June 25, 201113 yr To capture lightning, do you just set up a tripod, take long exposure pics repeatedly, and hope for the best? I don't see any other way to do it than to be lucky. Or have contact with the lightning god(s)! :lol:
June 26, 201113 yr To capture lightning, do you just set up a tripod, take long exposure pics repeatedly, and hope for the best? I don't see any other way to do it than to be lucky. Or have contact with the lightning god(s)! :lol: Exactly, just kept shooting until I got lucky. That was a 20 sec exposure.
June 27, 201113 yr I wish I wasn't so freakin afraid of storms. Then I'd be able to take awesome shots like that one. Great photo!
June 27, 201113 yr C-Dawg - Sweet colors! DJ Orion - Pennsylvania has some of the most awesome thunderstorms. You're really missing some photographic opportunities.
June 27, 201113 yr To capture lightning, do you just set up a tripod, take long exposure pics repeatedly, and hope for the best? I don't see any other way to do it than to be lucky. Or have contact with the lightning god(s)! :lol: Exactly, just kept shooting until I got lucky. That was a 20 sec exposure. I was trying to capture some lightning in Cleveland last week and I was using roughly 5 second exposures with the exposure bumped down about 1 stop so the lightning wouldn't over expose my shot. I got one decent one... I'll try to remember to post it. Any other tips for lightning photography?
June 27, 201113 yr DJ Orion - Pennsylvania has some of the most awesome thunderstorms. You're really missing some photographic opportunities. We do have awesome storms. We have had two or three confirmed tornadoes in the area since April. Our storms are spectacular, but I'm so afraid of them. It's frustrating haha.
June 27, 201113 yr To capture lightning, do you just set up a tripod, take long exposure pics repeatedly, and hope for the best? I don't see any other way to do it than to be lucky. Or have contact with the lightning god(s)! :lol: Exactly, just kept shooting until I got lucky. That was a 20 sec exposure. I was trying to capture some lightning in Cleveland last week and I was using roughly 5 second exposures with the exposure bumped down about 1 stop so the lightning wouldn't over expose my shot. I got one decent one... I'll try to remember to post it. Any other tips for lightning photography? Not really - this was the first time I tried it. One problem in Cleveland is I am not often in an area where you can see such an open sky. In the pic I took, I was at OBX, NC (a TON less city light than Cleveland, thus 20 sec exposure) and since the storm was out over the ocean, it might have been barely drizzling, if that, where I was. If it was raining where I was, I would have needed to find shelter to keep my camera dry. The biggest challenges, if you ask me, in Cleveland are being somewhere to see open sky and finding shelter somewhere to keep equipment dry. After that, the beauty of digital is you can make adjustments on the spot and just hope to get lucky!
June 28, 201113 yr Nice Hoot. How long was the exposure? Taken on 6/21/2011 (last Tuesday). 5 sec, F/3.5, 18mm, ISO-100
June 29, 201113 yr A barge pushes out from the Licking River between Covington and Newport, Kentucky last night near sunset.
July 5, 201113 yr Here's my first experiment with HDR. I’ve had a few projects on the back burner that I thought would work better with HDR processing, but didn’t get around to trying it until last night. Built in 1929, Beverly Shores (west of Michigan City) is the last working survivor of the Spanish-styled stations built in the 1920s along the Samuel Insull-owned electric interurban lines. When built, it incorporated a ticket office, waiting room, and residence for the station manager. It was in severe disrepair and pending demolition when restoration was undertaken in 1998. Beverly Shores is now a flag stop for both eastbound and westbound South Shore electric commuter trains. I’ve tried in the past to get a good photo of the neon sign atop the station and always had problems because of the contrast between bright lighting and surrounding shadows. On May 12 of this year I went there at dusk and shot five bracketed exposures and saved them in Camera RAW. I hoped to capture the details of tall grass and shrubbery surrounding the station without overexposing the neon and blowing out the colors and detail. I wanted to catch a little of the sky, too, because a storm was brewing. A couple of minutes after I shot the photos, a brief splatter of large raindrops arrived accompanied by a blast of cold wind. That was followed after a short pause by a lake squall with leaf-ripping winds and torrential rain. My camera and I safely made it to shelter reasonably dry.
July 11, 201113 yr The Control Circulation Dry House (Building 220-3) at sunrise, with some fantastic fog lift.
July 12, 201113 yr Hoot, I didn't know you were the Fire Island type! :wink2: Nice pic. Maybe he wanted to go to [glow=red,2,300]GREECE[/glow], but couldn't and this was the next best thing! ROFLMAO!
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