Along the Rail Line

Mulliken's North Street has two side-by-side Georgian homes that aren't like any other house in town. I've always wondered who built them. That fence prevented this from being my daily pic. ========== This photograph is an outtake from my 2012 photo-a-day project, 366 Snaps . 366 Snaps project discussion for March 13 here .

As she left for work I'd told Joan I was going to photograph the old bridge that parallels the I-96 bridge across the Grand River south of Portland. Never got there. Instead I stopped at this bridge to take a few shots and just kept shooting. Portland's rail bridge was built in 1881 for one of the Pere Marquette predecessors and was in railroad use for about a century. It's now a feature of the local trail network, which runs about 7 miles along the Grand and Looking Glass Rivers. ========== This photograph is an outtake from my 2012 photo-a-day project, 366 Snaps . 366 Snaps project discussion for March 21 .

I only shot eight photographs a year ago today. After picking up my mail, I walked around the post office and wandered along the tracks behind the downtown buildings. To the right in this photo is the somewhat-reduced collection of buildings which once was the Mulliken grain elevator. The distant light on the tracks is likely not a train, since it has vanished in a similarly-framed shot I took a few minutes later. I've mentioned Bibble Pro's Andrea plugin before, which has ability to mimic films and papers. In this case it's Ilford's FP4 Plus 125 film printed on their Multigrade IV FB paper. I picked up my affection for this look half my life ago, from my brother. ========== In this 1909 photograph of Mulliken's Main Street , on the left toward the far end of the street, is a boxy building that appears to be just beyond the last telephone pole. I believe that edifice to be the same building as the old wreck of a structure I photographed for 366 Snaps , though the building's front has significantly changed. I've no idea what other functions the place has served over the years, but for a time the village stored its truck in there. Nowadays it seems to be serving as a salt shed. That corrosive fill can't be doing the ancient brickwork any favors. This one's not an Ilford look. It mimics Fomapan 100 on Kentmore Art De Luxe (so Andrea claims; I don't actually know either), a combination I'd use again to bring out the details, and generally sharpen things up. ========== This photograph is an outtake from my 2012 photo-a-day project, 366 Snaps . Number of project photos taken: 8 Title of " roll :" Along the Tracks Other photos taken on 4/28/2012: none.

When I first discovered the tiny, delightful Lake O' depot, sometime in the 1980s, it lived downtown and was dwarfed by nearby grain silos. I can't find any pix of those silos, but here's what the depot looked like for its first century . Around 1990 CSX sold it to the local historical society, who moved it about a mile north of the tracks and turned it into a museum. It looks far better these days, but the nearby fairgrounds just ain't the Pere Marquette mainline. Can't have everything. Regardless, it's still cute and a photogenic treasure. ========== This day marked a change in my photo-processing workflow. I've mentioned once or twice that my software converts black & white NEF (Nikon's RAW format) files back to their color originals, which rather defeats the purpose of the camera setting. To this point in the 366 Snaps project, I'd been sorting through those "color" "negatives" to decide which photo to turn back to B&W; beginning with the July 2 batch the first step in my processing workflow was to convert every photo in the folder (back) to monochrome. The details would change--I'll likely mention this again--but this became my normal practice for the rest of the project. Once again: Monochrome is partly an attitude. ========== This photograph is an outtake from my 2012 photo-a-day project, 366 Snaps . Number of project photos taken: 18 Title of " roll :" Lake Odessa Depot [every one of 'em] Other photos taken on 7/2/2012: none.

I'd recently visited Kalamazoo and Olivet Colleges, so why not add another small school? Somehow I'd never visited Alma before, so the trip offered an opportunity to make photographs in a city I'd not previously seen. I drove north, scouted around town and campus a bit, parked my car at the end of the business district, and walked into the school's grounds. This track separates town from gown in Alma.... ========== While I didn't have any particular expectations about the Alma campus, it was still a bit of a surprise. Kalamazoo--a small college in a fairly substantial city--feels like a walled-off enclave. Olivet's open to its city, but since the campus is the reason the city exists it kinda feels like the city is an extension of the school. At least near the campus. Alma College isn't like either of those. It's open to the city--indeed, it shares the city's main street (Superior) with the Central Business District--but the campus seems less geographically centered than the other colleges I'd photographed for the 366 Snaps project. My first impression was more like a small university than a liberal arts school. ========== The 366 Snaps photo was of the Remick Heritage Center , where the college's performance arts departments are housed. I wouldn't have guessed it's twenty years old. ========== A tablet's a preposterous camera. The camera's one strength is really obvious--it's got a great viewfinder, and it was bright enough for my purposes throughout last September. The single strength is pretty well overwhelmed by the Galaxy Tab's shortcomings: The controls are really inconvenient, the 3 MP sensor's a sad joke, the lens isn't really capable of wide angles, the electronic zoom's unsatisfactory, and the tab's difficult to hold still. And it's such an obvious--and obviously unsatisfactory--image taking device that everyone notices that you're using it. Actually that last thing--the obvious nature of the tablet-as-camera--can be a bit of a blessing. While everyone can see you're taking pix, the clumsy device convinces folks you're not a Serious Photographer. I imagine the folks who found me wandering their campuses taking photos with a tablet computer imagined I was a returning alumnus who didn't really understand photography. Heck, they might even have been right about the photography thing. Who am I to say? ========== Some comments on the software I used with the Tab . ========== This photograph is an outtake from my 2012 photo-a-day project, 366 Snaps . Number of project photos taken: 19 (yeah, I drove an hour and a half each way for 19 pix) Title of " roll :" Never Visited Alma Before Other photos taken on 9/13/2012: none.

I love shooting into a morning fog.... The brightly-lit tracks recede into the fog, as do the lines on the poles sharing the right-of-way. Just enough detail, here, to tell my story. With a better camera the photo's implicit story would change. ========== This photograph is an outtake from my 2012 photo-a-day project, 366 Snaps . 366 Snaps project discussion and stats for September 14 .

This steel trestle--locally known as the High Bridge--was built in 1887 by predecessors of the Pere Marquette Railway Company to get the road's main line across the Grand River at Grand Ledge. This route nominally connects Detroit and Chicago, by way of Lansing and Grand Rapids. The PM was absorbed by the Chessie system about the time I was born, and the track is now owned by C&O successor CSX. These days the Soo Line (Canadian Pacific) also runs long trains on this track--they deserted Sault Ste. Marie a decade and a half ago. Sometimes I can't look at a bridge without putting things into historical context.... This photo was taken from Second Island in Grand Ledge on April 12, 2003.

A new Ford Mustang convertible waits for a train to arrive at CN's Billwood Highway railroad crossing a short distance from where I work. I was returning to work after a lunchtime errand and couldn't resist shooting his pony from my pony. Cute car. The crossing's a short distance from work; I can see this rail line (though not the crossing) from my desk. Interstate 69 crosses both Billwood and the railroad at this point; thus the structure framing the top of the picture.

This picture was shot a mile or so from my workplace. The train's creeping along on the long siding by Lake Interstate (an artifact of the construction of I-69, friends) and will halt before it gets to the crossing. Presumably there was a train coming the other way. I kinda like the blackbird atop the sign....

A locomotive named Kro Flite, nearly hidden in the fog at the top of New Hampshire's Mount Washington Cog Railway, in July of 2002. I posted a similar photo several months ago; this one has more detail for the loco. Camera: Nikon N90s

We got to the top of the mountain and could mostly see fog....

A bunch of DMIR SD-9s and similar locomotives, all lined up at Proctor Yard (above Duluth) on an August day in 1990. Camera: Throwaway Kodak panoramic

Just west of SkyDome/Rogers Centre in Toronto; evidently dedicated in 2003. Really a terrific monument.

Another view. Just west of SkyDome in Toronto. Camera: FujiFilm FinePix F10 Photo by Joel Dinda

Old CN roundhouse, with coaling and water tower ruins, Toronto. The Canadian National Railway used to have an enormous rail yard near downtown Toronto, which is marked by the CN Tower and partly occupied now by the SkyDome (Rogers Centre). This roundhouse, and a much smaller yard, are all that remain. You can see Lake Ontario in the background. The picture's a little noisy largely because I shot it through a window. Camera: FujiFilm FinePix F10 Photo by Joel Dinda

Excelsior Light & Power, Port Huron. My thanks to Mark Davidson, whose grandfather Wilbur Davidson built this structure and brought electricity to Port Huron, for identifying the building. Sadly, it's been demolished.... ================= Darryl Wattenberg dropped me a note the other day; one of his questions (or comments, I suppose) was about Port Huron's Desmond Landing. I replied that I hadn't been anywhere on Port Huron's south-of-the-river waterfront in many years. I was there briefly today, almost by accident, after our long wait to cross the bridge back into the U.S. Captured this picture during our brief stop. This building's right by the track , on the Black River, and that office overlooks the C&O (originally Pere Marquette) Ferry Yard. An interesting railside structure. Ferry Yard, and the ferry slip which justified its existence, has been sold to a developer and will be pulled up. At this time the entire complex sits abandoned. Not so long ago it was a vibrant place, with cars and ferries in constant motion.

Another photo of the roundhouse alongside SkyDome (Rogers Centre). Not sure why the sky isn't blue in this photo, but that's the way my camera caught it.