The 2024 Freedom Train

 

The Freedom Train: Since the Pandemic, participation in the annual Martin Luther King Freedom Train appears to have dwindled. In years past, the event included presentations to civic leaders and teachers who furthered the promotion of Dr. King's ideals. While other residents chose to use the holiday as a Day Of Service, many continue to ride the CalTrans Freedom Train to a commemorative parade in San Francisco. While not a dedicated  train, it provides free transportation for those who were ready to pick up their tickets at the San Mateo Train Station and board when it arrived at 10:10 am.

When I arrived at the station, I was surprised to find that there had been no presentation ceremony, and that staples of events past were gone, specifically the customary singing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” I found a relatively small crowd milling about, bereft of the sweatshirts, caps, posters, and other items commemorating Dr. King. 

Out of the corner of my eye I saw several children mugging for their mothers, each carrying a graphic of Dr. King at the Washington Monument. As I approached, I attempted to make several "if nothing better comes along" shots in case nothing better could be had. When they saw that I had taken an interest in them, they became very eager to cooperate with me. 

For the record, the camera was a  Fuji X-T2, the lens was a 10-24 F 4.0 lens and a Godox V1 Round Head speedlight with a grid installed. I had set my exposure (1/250 of a second, F 11, ISO 400) as a starting point. The sky and clouds in the sky were not particularly attractive, so I changed to F 16 in the hopes of improving the background. When the background exposure was satisfactory, I adjusted the flash output to achieve a reasonable exposure on my subjects' faces. Since the flash was mounted on the camera and there wasn't time to experiment, I ran with what I had and  hoped for the best.

Since I wanted the flash to produce a relatively narrow light spread, so I had already mounted a grid. This combination produces a relatively even disk of light with a soft by distinct edge. In this pair of photos you can see the grid produced a round, centered illumination pattern on the left sample. On the right you can see that when the head is tipped up slightly, the light falls off at the lower half of the frame. 

If we re-examine the published image, you can see that the subjects received almost no light from the waist down. This offers two advantages, The legs, being closer to the flash because of the low camera angle, are not subject to the usual overexposure. Secondly, nearly all of the light is concentrated above my subjects' waists. This emphasizes the faces and the papers they are holding. I may continue to fret about the many "what ifs" I have concerning light quality, flash placement, the quality of the clouds ad nauseum, but in the end, it was a reasonable shot considering that from the time I first saw my subjects to when the last exposure was made was a mere three minutes.

I used a similar technique when I photographed the official dedication of a monument to the displaced Japanese citizens during World War II. Instead of a grid, I adjusted the beam angle using the speedlight's internal adjustments along with the tipping of the flash head itself. It kept me from burning the foreground subjects beyond recognition while concentrating the light on the center of the dark bronze statue. I don't know if anybody was disappointed to find the statue was more "gold" in color, but that bit of bottled sunlight helped me capture the rapt expressions of the many admirers. 

The edge softness of the Godox V1 makes it a personal favorite so long as I resign myself to shooting manually. The TTL controls is just to fussy, and by applying the proper adjustments, brings a lot more control than most conventional speedlights.