Choo Choo!

 
Overthinking The Assignment: I spent a fair amount of time wondering how to present the event. It was the 160th Anniversary of this rail route which connected San Francisco to San Jose. It was also the debut of the new electric commuter train. It was also an informational event to promote modern mass transit.

The Basic Photo: Any time there is a train involved, I try to get at least one photo of some passengers boarding. In this case, I looked for a door that had the Caltrain logon clearly visible. I also prefer to make the photo from the left side of the boarding passengers because the majority will probably be right handed, and  will tend to rotate their bodies towards the camera when reaching for a hand rail.

This doesn't look like a flash-assisted shot, but it is. I narrowed the beam to concentrate the light at the center with the hopes of lighting up the inside of the train. I like that the photo doesn't shout "Flash!", but it helped me keep the exposure differences between the shadows and the highlight are minimal.

The High Tech Loo: The state-of-the-art bathroom was a source of pride among the docents. Caltrain created focus groups to gather rider input, and created a mock bathroom to test its usability by disabled passengers. It also included a folding changing table should the need would arise. Incidentally, the door is actually curved, giving the image a fisheye look. 

This shot was made with a camera mounted  Godox V1 flash and a Godox Dome Diffuser. The head was angled to 45 degrees from horizontal  to raise the light a bit farther from the lens axis. The easy attach/detach design of the diffuser combined with the 330 degree head rotation make it an easy flash to adjust on the fly. And adjust you will, because each situation will bring new challenges that will force you to tweak you flash to get the image you want.

After a while, I decided to shoot from inside the  restroom. This perspective makes it much easier for the viewer to figure out exactly what they were looking at. The young boy added a sense of curiosity to the image, which was exactly what I wanted. I thought for a moment that this would be the shot I would submit, but realized that shot has no context clues that would lead the reader to the concept of "train", and the idea was subsequently scrapped. 

For this shot, I pointed the flash head towards the ceiling behind me and kept the diffusion dome in place. This saturated the tiny room with light, and the resulting photo would have reproduced well when printed on newsprint.

Anniversary Aspect: I saw nothing to indicate that this was the 160th anniversary of the route run between San Francisco and San Jose. There was a table, manned by Caltrain employees, where you could get pamphlets describing the innovations baked into the new electric trains, along with miniature toy trains for the kids (right).

Here again, flash was used to provide some detail in the shaded areas under the enclosure. Some dodging and burning was required to "normalized" the overall exposure while maintaining the notion that the Caltrain employee was actually standing in the shadow of the little tent.

Photo Boom! This considerate young man apologized to me when he accidentally entered the frame, adding he didn't intend to photobomb me. I smiled and told him not to worry because I was just checking my exposure, and then added, "Why don't you photobomb me for real?" This was his immediate response. It still makes me chuckle.

Lucky Shot: I decided to make another attempt at a boarding photograph from the front-lit side. While waiting for something to happen in the foreground, I heard a mother tell her young son that a train was approaching the station from camera right. I turned to see that it was indeed approaching, and that a shot with both new and old trains might be possible. In the second photo, you can see that the train has entered the frame and is slowing to a stop, but continued to roll forward. I managed to get my last shot just as the "noses" of the two trains appeared to be side by side. In a few seconds, the second train was completely hidden by the first.

This Is A First: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I was surprised that the photo did not appear in the Monday edition of the paper. After all, news photos like this have a very short shelf life. It ran on Tuesday, and to my surprise, it  was published with a two-page article. So I have to wonder if the story was always in the wings, or written to accompany the photo. My ego can come to one conclusion. Guess what it is. 

Hats Off!

 

This photo was originally posted in color, but after some simple post processing, I was intrigued by this monochrome rendering. I was on the track at the Kezar Stadium, and with the sun reflecting off  a puddle left behind by a recent storm, I wanted a silhouette of a runner positioned in front of the reflection in the background. I had almost a dozen variations on the shot, but chose this one with the runner in the background, with a second runner "walking it off" in the near foreground.

Subject's View

There were some problems photographing into the sun. With the camera in the "Hail Mary" position (camera held high overhead), I could achieve the composition I desired, but now had the problem of the sun shining directly into my eyes.  I struggled to frame the image while squinting against the sunlight. I solved the problem by taking off my hat, lengthening its adjustment strap, and hanging it on the lens barrel. The hat kept the sun out of my eyes which allowed me to concentrate on the composition. In this historical recreation of that Eureka Moment, you can see that only one hand would be needed to hold the camera, leaving the other free to manipulate a speedlight, or in this case, snap a low-angle photo.

This certainly isn't a genius moment, but it did allow me to address the problem using only the hat off my head. It took me a few minutes to realize my hat would make an effective sun shade. In the future, when a similar situation arises, I'll already have a solution.

Kaufmann's Camera Store Closes

 

The Best Of Times: My friend Shawn and I would be getting together for a long lunch and some serious camera talk. We've been covering each other's backs since 1979 when he became the third teacher at the mixed level classroom at a elementary school near San Mateo. When not talking about student performance issues, we discussed photography, cameras. and darkroom techniques. Through the years, we had many adventures that almost always included a trip to a camera store or favorite lunch counter. Our accidental encounter at a Palo Alto alter to photography (a.k.a. Keeble and Shuchat) lead me to adopt Domke F-2 as the Official Tom Jung Camera Bag.

The Worst Of Times: News leaked out that Kaufmann's Cameras would be closing forever. I remember that the flagship store was in Stonestown, a shopping center near the San Francisco / Daly City border in the early 1970s. While Al was the senior driving force in San Francisco, his two sons, Warren and Ronald, would be my contacts when the store was on 25th Avenue in San Mateo, and again when they were forced to move to its final location in San Bruno. The store was a must visit because you never knew what might appear on the shelves. For example, my favored camera bag of the time, the  Vanguard Veo 37, eventually wore out and was no longer in production when I sought a replacement.  I made do with other bags until, low and behold, I found a new-old-stock Veo 37 on one of Kaufmann's shelves. My credit card almost melted from the speed with which I extracted my credit card, and my new bag will eventually house my  Sony A7 and some additional lenses when I finally decide to take the camera more seriously.  Into every life a little joy must fall, that the day I received more than just a sprinkle.

A Dirge To Customer Service: I remember one specific incident where I was in desperate need of both a Nikon D90 body and a Nikon SB900 speedlight. I knew that the staff was very particular about checking the merchandise before it left the store, so before I left San Francisco, I called the store with a simple request:

"Hi, this is Tom Jung. You might not know my name, but you'll recognize me as soon as I walk in the store. I'm in a hurry, and I need a Nikon SB900 and a Nikon D90 body. I am driving down from San Francisco, and wonder if you can do the checkup before I arrive. I'll hand you a credit card as soon as I walk in."

After receiving a response equivalent to "Roger That", I drove to the store to find my purchases checked and bagged, and as I requested, the purchase was immediately processed.  I was in and out in a few minutes, and arrived at the location well-prepared and fully equipped. 

I will miss the store and the welcoming feeling I always got. And there was always a bowl of Hershey's Miniatures by the cash register, and the 1960s era music from the boom box CD player.