If I Had It To Do Over Again...

I was just glancing at this shot on my FAA page --



and some seven years after I shot it, it dawned on me that I missed a chance to mess with your head a little. I could have crouched down closer to the ground to get the railroad tracks out of frame. I believe if I were closer to ground level, the pavement would cover the tracks right up and create the impression that the train was literally driving down the center of the road.

This is in Augusta, Georgia, one of a handful of spots left in America where freight trains and car traffic coexist on roads. I understand the locals loathe the set-up and there have been pleas to move the tracks, but so far, nothing has come of it. Railfans love this stretch of 6th Street for the very reason that locals hate it -- the trains. I've shot here a few times --



And it's always a question of how to shoot the scene. The very nature of street running tends to make straight on shots the easiest to take. They can tell a lot, too. It creates a nice story with cars parked on the side of the streets and, well, that "No Left Turn" sign in the one with the Union Pacific power is classic. But today, for some reason, as I glanced at the first shot in the blog, I realized I missed a chance to do something just a little out of the norm. I remember my thinking in that shot. Shoot the intersection. I sometimes call 6th and Broad my favorite intersection around because of the railroad tracks through it.

So I remember wanting the traffic lights in the shot and then to get the building in the background in the shot as well. In post, I have to rotate the shot a fair degree. I have a tendency to do that when I shoot handheld; I'm not sure why. But leveling the shot as much as I did caused some of the road sign to have to be cropped off. So even while it is one of my favorite shots, when I look at it, I still see the flaws in it. And now, eight years later, I see what I could have done different in it too.

Such is the mind of a photographer, I suppose.