A couple of years ago I was lucky to get access to shoot in the Alameda Corridor here in Los Angeles.  It is basically a trench with three sets of railroad tracks set about 40 foot below street level that runs 20 miles from the Ports of LA and Long Beach to the downtown rail switching yards.  This enables the trains to get downtown in about a half an hour instead of four hours, eliminating dozens of street level rail crossings before it was built.

There are few entrances into the trench and they are protected by all sorts of gates, locks and security including many types of motion sensors.  It is really for the safety of the public, for obvious reasons, as these trains barrel along at about 40 mph not expecting anything on the tracks.

Yes, I was escorted the three times to shoot at twilight and at night.  Following are two of my favorites from that series.

Southbound

This was a fairly complex image to shoot because I had to envision what the image would look like and set the camera up and wait.  I composition was for the shadows of the overhead concrete bracing (about 40 feet above us).  After about 15 minutes a train came along and I opened the shutter.  Determining how long it stayed open was where I wanted the locomotive headlamps to end (I estimate about one minute).  I did this by counting the number of overhead braces as the train approached at about 40 mph.  At that predetermined point, I closed the shutter and as the train roared by (with the ground shaking and my heart pounding, as we were just a few feet away).  I then reached over and re-cocked the shutter and opened it a second time to complete the seven minute exposure as the train continued on.  What you see is the ghosting of the street lamps above reflecting off the rail containers as the 50+ car train went by.  I like the reflection of the headlamps on the steel rails, giving it a warm tone to contrast with the cool cyan lamps from the street above.  The image is a little soft because of the shaking ground, but could easily make an 8×10 print.  The mass of the 35 pound 4×5 camera and tripod helped keep the image as sharp as it is.

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Trench Pumps

This is an example of balancing ambient and artificial light.  The late afternoon light gives that warm tone on the concrete wall on the left while the yellow sodium lamp illuminates the pumps (to pump out rainwater, as needed).  There is a subtle green on the rail bed from mercury vapor lamps at street level.  What makes this shot is the sodium vapor light illuminating the “box” down the tracks.  After I shot this, I went over to see what caused this and it is simply two yellow sodium vapor street lamps right on the edge of the overpass.  Shooting this at the ‘magic hour’ (actually less than a five minute window) while set up on the center rail tracks in between trains was nerve racking, to say the least.  The trains come when they come, sometimes three in 10 minutes and none for 30 minutes.  I was lucky this evening, as there was too much train traffic the previous time.  The subtlety of this image is lost on a monitor, and I’ve had the image scanned twice.  The tonality is so much richer in the shadows and in the subtlety of colors on the original 4×5 transparency.

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Over the next week, I will be on a freighter on the Great Lakes, out of internet and cell phone range, so communications and return email will resume the following week.