Recently Community Impact News asked me to shoot a train coming through down town Buda to accompany a story about railroad quiet zones.
Shooting a moving train is tricky. The shutter has to be fast and it has to click at exactly the right time to get the desired composition.
They requested something somewhat creative, with something iconic of Buda in the shot. I wanted to shoot around sunset to add some nice lighting to the image.
Trains come through down town Buda every half hour or so, so I figured I’d head down town around 8 p.m. and I’d have 2 chances to shoot before it got too dark.
My first attempt didn’t work. My flash was too bright and I didn’t factor in the speed of the train and the speed of my auto focus, so the shot came out blurry. I had one more chance, but it was getting dark fast. This is what I came up with for my second try:
My shot is okay, but my ISO was higher than I wanted and the image had more grain than I wanted. But it was dark, so I had to wait until another day to try again.
A day or two later I had the chance to head out at 8 p.m. again. This time the train came almost as soon as I parked the car. I stood in a different location to make sure to get the Buda water tower in the shot. This is what I got:
Sometimes the simplest, easiest shot turns out best and that’s what happened in this situation. The lighting is nice, the composition turned out great and you can even see some of the heat coming off the top of the train. But I had one more chance before dark, so I moved to a third location.
The shot at the top of the post was my last shot, which is what they ended up using. It wasn’t my favorite because the train was a bit fuzzy and again, the grain wasn’t what I wanted. It’s harder than it looks to catch a train!
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