My rail photo website

[Rob Richardson]

Greetings!

Just joined! I offer my site for your enjoyment and criticism:
http://www.trainweb.org/clevelandrails

Rob

[chessie]

Hi Rob and welcome aboard! I did drop in on your website and enjoyed my visit. I recognize some of those W&LE engines as old Southern locos. Since you started off in the photography forum, why don't you tell us a little more about yourself, your camera(s), etc?

Harold

[Rob Richardson]

Harold,

Thanks for the interest!

I am 44 years old, and I live in Bedford, OH, a suburb southeast of Cleveland. The NS Cleveland Line, which runs from Alliance, OH to the drawbridge over the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, runs through Bedford. So does the Wheeling & Lake Erie Cleveland Subdivision, a cute little line with grubby little trains I love to photograph.

I started in photography almost thirty years ago, when I suddenly started noticing little things and thinking, "That would make a great picture!" I knew that I couldn't draw for beans, but I soon realized that in photography, that wouldn't be a problem. I call my style from those days "Crumbs of Reality". I was in college in Cincinnati when the Freedom Train came through. The only shot I have of 4449 is of pieces of two of its driving wheels!

When my family started expanding, I no longer had spare time or money to devote to photography.

I date my railroading interest to picnics my family would often eat at a local park with the NS Cleveland Line running alongside. Whenever a train came, we'd run over and wave and count the cars.

A couple years ago, I decided to poke around on the Web for railroad photographs. I was floored by all the great photographs featuring trains, and I realized I wanted to be making them too! So, since then, I've been trackside at every opportunity.

My main pieces of equipment are a Canon AE-1 camera half as old as I am, and a Canon 70-210-mm zoom that I bought new less than a year ago. I also have a 50-mm 1.8 Canon lens and a Sigma 28-mm lens. I have a Canon FTb body as backup, and occasionally use it for black and white work.

Rob

[Alan]

Hello Rob, welcome aboard smile.gif

I had a look at your site, and immediately bookmarked it! You have a very good eye for different photo angles. They are very artistic, and I must try to vary mine a bit. I do tend to get in close on the locomotives :rolleyes: but you show the train in the scenery very well.

Excellent, more please smile.gif

[watash]

Welcome to our family here at the TrainBoard Rob! The visit to your photo gallery was most enlightening. You have a great skill in capturing the surroundings that tell the story of where your subject is working. The detail shots are also helpful to modelers who need the data. Do you have any of the steam era? I visited Wheeling and Martinsville West Virginia in 1949, so all is changed now I guess. Tell us more of your interests, how many kids, two one of each? I have three kids, one of each. :D

[chessie]

Whoa Rob! Your story is not terribly unlike mine (or probably a few other folks here). I started with a Canon AE-1 program and moved thru the Canon line (A-1, T-90; currently A2E and a G1 digital). I shot trains a lot from ~1984 to 1993; coincidentally, my photography of trains diminished at the same time as the birth of my first born :rolleyes: I have just gotten back into photographing trains within the past year or so and found out how much I really missed it.

I really enjoyed your site. Your pictures are very good and you have quite a variety of shots. I like the assortment, unlike mine, which are basically "roster" and "builders photos". :(

Harold

[Rob Richardson]

Thanks to all of you for your kind words!

Someone asked about the size of my family. I've got a wife and four kids, daughters aged 19, 17 and 11, and a son who is about to become a teenager, God help me.

The area a train is running through is often as interesting as the train itself, so I try to include it in my pictures, especially the ones of the little Wheeling & Lake Erie Cleveland Subdivision.

A relative just asked my wife for details on my hobby, and I got a kick out of her reply. Here it is:


Rob has a fascination for trains. He also loves photography. He
works with computers professionally and ( to my non-technological mind)
is mildly obsessed with cyber-gadgetry. He has found a way to combine
all three of these by taking pictures of trains and scanning them into
our computer to go onto his (and other people's) train photography
websites. There, the pix are the subject of long, intricate
discussions on the finer points of composition, angle, rust
enhancement, and railroading in general.
To aid him in these endeavers, he has a railroad dispatch scanner. He
leaves for work early and listens to find out if any trains are in the
vicinity. If any are approaching, he drives to whatever crossing,
culvert, trestle, or other god-forsaken contrivance he can get to, and
finds a spot where he can lie in wait for the oncoming train. The
rugggeder, the better. A good shot might include sunrise over an
ice-bound landscape ( notice how those intricate frost patterns bring
out the splintering of the tie rods!) , the train emerging from the
tunnel - (at an angle you just can't get unless you are submerged in
the northwestern channel of the creek) and the mournful water-briars
drooping across the foreground (that's how you can tell there are
gale-force winds blowing as the photo is snapped).
Sorry. Got carried away.

Rob