Would you have made this photograph let alone posted it? Some railfan photographers would answer “no” on both counts. Some might even say they don’t like this image.
They wouldn say the the lead locomotive is too small. You can’t read the roster number or see any of the detail.
And that, of course, is the point of this image of Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian.
We’ve all stood next to a locomotive and noticed how big they are. Most of us have stood next to an Amtrak P42DC and had the same feeling.
Yes, the locomotive seems small because of it distance from my camera, but I also like how the mountains in the background dwarf the train and remind of us that no matter how large a locomotive it, there is always something bigger.
Aside from that, I made this image because of its sense of place. It screams eastern mountains and is, in fact, a location in the Allegheny Mountains at Summerhill, Pennsylvania.
I am far from being the first photograph to make such an image. I’ve seen photographs made in the west and the east in which the mountains are swallowing the train.
I wouldn’t want to make all of my images look like that, but this view is just one of many that can be used to tell a story with photographs.
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