New Website - New Blog

I have transferred all of my railroad related images and blog over to a new website. http://www.therailroadcollection.com Hopefully you all click on over to it. Feel free to subscribe to new blog updates while your there. All you need to do is enter your email address on the right side and verify it. Thank you. Travis Dewitz

As the World flies by.

What are your railroad photography goals for 2011? When I don't set goals, it feels like the year just flies by without very much to show for it. The more goals I set and accomplish the better I feel after the year zipped by. Setting goals is defiantly  a balancing act. If I set too many goals, I feel like I am always behind the gun. Every other thought of every minute is about what I need to get done. Giving up is just too easy of an option that I don't want to take. Goals that are to big are just not taken seriously and takes away from my focus of goals that I could actually accomplish. The right balance of goals keeps me driven and keeps me moving forward at a productive pace. At the end of the year I feel like I accomplished much more than I even realized and get the needed self satisfaction to keep me going. 


My goals are not all yearly based. Many goals I have will take many years to complete, a couple even nearly a lifetime. It is good to have a healthy mix of goals ranging from short term to long term. Your completed short term goals will keep you satisfied and make you feel like your on the right path forward where you long term goals will keep your drive focused on keeping forward progress. 


I keep most of my goals in my head but I really should have a list wrote down for myself. Something I can physically look at and add to. My recent travels to the Powder River Basin in Wyoming this January was one of my mid term goals. The goal to capture the coal operation in winter was about three years old. One of my newest long term goals of capturing the different and sometimes abundant abandonments around the railroads was also touched on when I was in Wyoming.


Here is a list of a few of my goals - 


Get a taste of railroading in West Virginia
Photograph the remaining steel mills.
Soldier Summit
Visit the railroads of western New Mexico
See the Detroit area
Add to my portfolios
Sell more images
Publish a large print run book
Add much more portraitures to my railroad photography
Subways of New York
Storms
Soo Line


This is just a taste of my goals and the amount of time and money to complete these goals will probably be the biggest obstacle for me. A few of my goals will be very challenging and even dangerous while luck and right place right time will factor into the remaining ones. What are your goals?

Coalmotion Video

Sometimes it needs a little help.

Processing a digital photo is a must for any photography amateur or professional. There are only a few times when you would not touch a digital negative before you convert it to a standard file format like .tiff or .jpeg. Every photo usually gets sharpened, leveled, minor color adjustments, contrast and brightness corrected. A lot of cameras do some of this for you as it saves the jpeg if you want it too. I like to start from the original raw file that has not been adjusted  or corrected in anyway. How I process completely depends on what the client or myself wants to get from the final image and what it will be used for, from news to artistic expression.  


I love the American west. I love the feeling of what once was and now the desolation that it is. When I took the image above, I was looking to capture the large empty, almost abandoned looking, stock yard with a freight train flying by. I could just imagine a time when this cattle yard received trains full of cattle but now freight just fly by with no intention of making a return here. 


I have passed by this photo many times with not a second look. It was flat and boring. The feel I wanted to convey just wasn't captured in the raw file. It just didn't fit my original vision. Two years later I came across this photo again with a clear vision and feel, I knew I could get out of it. The vintage processing technique made this flat image come to life. It aged the scene in a way that flowed well with the empty stock yard and feeling of abandonment. The processing helped separate the train, fencing, and  grain elevators into points for your eyes to flow and follow. In the end it really helped make the abandonment of the west feel come to life as I visioned it the day I took it in 2008. Sometimes your vision just needs a little help.

It's here again.

With October almost over, winter is almost upon us. Temps today are at 32F already. Winter is one of my favorite times of the year to shoot. A fresh snow fall is just an amazing sight and morning frost is killer. A good snow storm is what I sit and wait for and it is just yard to beat. 

Rocky Blizzard Stalker Boots

My hatred of the cold makes this a difficult time of year though. There is nothing worse then the constant internal struggle. I look outside and see the conditions that just burn inside me and drives me into the cold to go photograph in, just waiting outside the door. Soon they could be gone and I need to get out there. All I am thinking is why would I want to leave this warm house, struggle to bundle up and get all my gear ready, sit in the cold doing all I can to keep my camera from fogging up and the lens clear of snow. Well nothing makes that struggle any better, but my Blizzard Stalker boots from Rocky sure do keep my feet warm. I have never experienced warmer and more comfortable boots in my life. They are actually one of the most comfortable pieces of footwear I have ever worn. 1200 grams of Thinsulate does it's job. My feet have yet to get cold in these boots, even after hours in the elements. I'm not the only one that loves these. I have a few friends I talked into buying a pair and they will give you the same review and reaction I gave you. They are good boots, period. So for any of you winter railfans and photographers out there, these boots may help you as they have greatly made my winter shooting more enjoyable. 

You are a Conductor

A really cool video by Alex Jonathon O'nan. More videos by him can be found here. http://www.youtube.com/user/alexonan

 A quick slideshow for the upcoming Halloween. One of my first attempts with my new slideshow program.