Great thread, Russ. It's a very interesting topic and I suspect that no two of us have views that are exactly alike.
Like Michael and Matthew, shooting preserved steam is one of my expensive hobbies. Over the past few years, it has become more expensive than my other expensive hobby....which is flying airplanes, and trust me, that is saying something. I have also found that shooting train pictures can be much more dangerous than flying.
In my view, there is art and there is documentary....and while the two can overlap, there are limits on the latter. I am more of a documentary type, although I do try to make my photos as artful as possible, with varying degrees of success.
In post-processing, I am perfectly fine with removing trash, segments of wire that don't connect to anything, errant foamer body parts, and yes, I have been known to take jet contrails out, especially if there is a jet still attached. I draw the line at altering the scene by changing things that are permanent or semi-permanent, or putting things there that were not actually present. If elements in the scene are objectionable, I will try mightily to find a camera angle that minimizes them, but I won't remove significant, fixed elements. In my mind, doing that crosses the line between documentary and art. That is no criticism of the artists. I wish I had their eyes and their imagination.....but it is just not me.
The way I look at it, the stuff I shoot today...whatever it includes....will be historic in 50 or 100 years, if it survives. Some day, there may be someone who is just as glad that I took pictures of the trains in my era as I am that guys like Fred Jukes took shots of trains in their time.
For the record, I probably wouldn't have taken the pole out of the shot of 476. I might have taken the background clutter out of the Cumbres shot, but I would have left the pick-up. It's proof positive that the D&RGW was running steam freights into the late 1960s, which is pretty astounding.
Neat pictures, Russ. Thank you for sharing!
/Kevin
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2015 07:26PM by KevinM.
