A few more about Colorado's railroad heritage...
Colorado Railroad Museum, part 1
The tip came already some time ago from my German photography friend Maren Arndt. Don’t miss the Railroad Museum in Golden, if you are in this part of Colorado! Well, we finally used the last day of our journey through the southern and central part of Colorado for a visit. The kids were already back in school and so there were not very many visitors beside us. Good for photography in such a place! ;-)
I grew up in Germany traveling by trains that were pulled by steam locomotives. The smell of smoke and coal and the noise of the steam engine are deep in my memories. As a kid I often stood together with my grandpa Willy Stock on a bridge, west of the train station in my home town Bautzen, and we watched the busy traffic in the train yard. I don’t know if this had somehow influenced my decision to become a mechanic, and later a design engineer, but the technical and logistic side of railroads have always fascinated me. Going to the Colorado Railroad Museum stirred up all these good memories and I felt a little like a kid in a candy store…
I could bubble here about the technical aspects to make photos in a museum, but who cares? The bottom line for my style of photography is to keep the elements out of the frame that cry “museum”. I just want my images to tell the story about railroad heritage.
A last word about the people that work or volunteer in the railroad museum. We hear these days a lot about passion, passion in life, passion about photography, you name it. Everybody we had a conversation with in the museum, from the people at the reception desk and in the museum store to the engineers that kept some of the locomotives running, they all had a spark in their eyes, the spark of passion for railroad heritage… Love it!
Great subject for overcast day
We drove by several times at the Arched Bridge in Somesville on Desert Island, Maine. It is a busy place because most tourists like to visit and snap a picture. We chose to stop there on the only "bad weather day". This was actually a good decision. First the light on this wonderful bridge and the little museum was very soft because of the heavy overcast, and second, there were a lot less people than we have seen on other days. With other words, it wasn't so difficult to make an image without someone in the frame. The small village of Somesville is a National Historic District and the bridge is not the only interesting structure there. Overall we saw very few houses in Maine that were not in good shape. If you go there, don't miss to have a look in the little museum. It is a nice display of the local history.
The top image needs actually a little more head room above the roof. I have a few more photos of the bridge without that little flaw, but really liked the reflections on the water in this one the best. Walking around and working the subject a little more led finally to photos two and three. They leave no doubt about what time of the season we visited this nice piece of architecture, and I can tell you, I didn't miss the sun a bit this day...
More from Arizona, part 4
I'm still working on my images from last week's trip to Arizona and I like to show you a few more.
The little miner town Jerome has a very interesting attraction. The Gold King Mine and Ghost Town is just a mile north of Jerome. A fascinating place, hard to describe with words (at least for me).The location of the Gold King Mine was originally the community of Haynes, a suburb of Jerome in 1890. If you like to read more about it click HERE. This will lead you to the Sedona Verde Valley Tourism Council website, which has a pretty good story about this place and its owner.
As a photographer you may get lost. It is not hard to make up your mind where to point the lens first. Lots of good old stuff. As an engineer, I just got carried away by looking at all the old mechanical wonders of the past. From old mining equipment, to probably more than a hundred old trucks and cars, machines and tools, and of course the old buildings of the ghost town.
The museum closes at 5PM and light is harsh during the day. But hey, we have HDR these days and subjects, like you can find them in a historical place like this, can bare quite a bit of "HDR-retro-tweaking", as I like to call it. Nothing to loose for me... ;-)