Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Grab Shot

We've all done them. You see a train, you don't have any time to set up, so you grab the camera, point it at the engines and shoot, hoping for something half decent. Much of the time, the shot is "meh", maybe a quarter of the time it is awful, but occasionally you get a great one. You can be the judge of this one.

I was driving around with the kids on January 2, 2011 looking for trains. I drove by the CN Symington yard, not seeing much of interest. At the CN Transcona yard, there was a train parked with a pair of engines being backed onto the west end. CN 5747 was the lead engine, and the conductor was riding BCOL 4604 as it was shoved onto the consist.
BC Rail 4604 in Winnipeg
That wasn't the grab shot. I took a bunch of photos from Dugald Road and then moved on.

Next I went up to North Transcona to see what was up around CEMR and CP. There was nothing happening on the CP Keewatin subdivision. Multimark GP9 CP 8251 was parked in CP's North Transcona yard but it was not in a very photogenic location. The usual dog's breakfast of old units were parked behind CEMR.

I drove back down to the CN Reddit sub in Transcona, and for whatever reason decided to head east to Dugald to see if I could catch a train there. I can't remember if I heard something on the scanner or did it on a whim. Anyway, I went to Dugald and didn't see anything, so I took a photo of the elevator and then, just as I was walking back to the car, I saw a headlight to the east. TRAIN!

I didn't have much time, so I raced the car to the crossing and parked in front of the gates. As they came down and the lights were flashing, I ran over to try to get a head on shot of the train. This was my grab shot.
CN 8927 at Dugald, MB
What do you think?

8 comments:

roldac said...

Really nice photo, crisp, very nice composition, definitely an A list shot.

Blair Ivey said...

I like it. The flying snow on the left side adds a dramatic touch.

A photo of mine you may like is here: http://www.blairkivey.net/Photography/santa_fe.html

Canadian Train Geek said...

Hi Blair, great shot, but you were *quite* close to the rails, weren't you? Good thing there wasn't a loose strap hanging off a car. I don't like to stand too close to the rails and I used a telephoto in this shot to frame the shot.. I was a lot more than 3' away from the rails! :)

Blair Ivey said...

Hi Steve,

Yes, I was close enough to make the crew nervous, but I didn't stay there. After I took the picture I got the heck out of the way. I don't know what track speed is there, but they were doing every bit of it.

Unknown said...

Awesome picture!

Lisa

Karl A. said...

I wish my grab shots all turned out that nice! Well framed...

jddc.trains said...

That is a nice shot Steve! Was that taken with your 18-55?
Cheers,

Canadian Train Geek said...

Thanks for the great comments, everyone... appreciated!

Jason, no, I shot it with my telephone lens, the 75-300mm lens. f/5.6, 1/640s, ISO100, 125mm.