Photography Wednesday: Ghost Railroad

Most of the time, when going out to take pictures, you don't really know what you're going to get. (Yes, Forrest, it's like a box of chocolates.) Sometimes you go out with an idea of the photo you want, but that doesn't always work for reasons you can't control.  Other times, you go out and get a picture that you didn't expect. The great Bob Ross may have called that a happy accident, and I definitely will call it that. Occasionally, you also decide to experiment a bit with the results, to produce something that you can be proud of. Today, I present the result of just such a happy accident and an experiment.

This picture was taken of a northbound Canadian National freight train at Duplainville in Wisconsin, while I was there on vacation. The accident is the logo on that freight car. I really like the logo that the railroad used for many decades. The Chicago and North Western railroad went out of business in the 90s, but railroads, being frugal beasts who throw nothing away, often continue to use cars from their predecessor roads. It was just random chance that the train passing by me happened to have this car. A happy accident.

The experiment was in the way I processed the photo. Rather than going completely black and white, I slightly increased the saturation on the red of the logo, and dropped the saturation of all of the other colors in the image. This makes the logo really pop out from the background, and draws the eye in.

As is my custom, here's the original unmodified photo for comparison:

I think it is a neat effect, but I'll leave it to you to decide how successful it was.

As a weekly reminder I'd love to feature other artists here. If you have something you'd like to share on a future photography Wednesday, get in touch.