Photographing Polyland 2
Shot the second roll of film today. I’m curious to see how they turn out. While out on errands I stopped at the RR station to ask when the Coast Starlight would be on the grade. Southbound now said the stationman, Northbound will leave here around 4:00, it’s just arriving. It was 3:45. I dashed home, changed into my boots and drove up Stenner road. As I neared the trestle, I saw the back end of a passenger train round the curve in front of me and thought I’d missed my chance. But how could the northbound be here at 4:05? No it was probably the Southbound heading west before the hairpin curve by CMC. I drove to Serrano Ranch and ran up the trail and heard a train whistle behind Kestrel Crest, and I knew it must be the Northbound exiting town and leaving me just enough time to get above the tracks, load the camera and set up the shot. Breathless, I climbed the embankment by the cut near the hanging telephone pole and waited, rehearsing the shots. The locomotive came round the corner faster than I expected and then round the Stenner canyon hairpin curve. I got three or four shots, but don’t know if the camera had time to focus.
Then in the afternoon light, took a number of vegetation shots, and headed back to campus for field 25 and to try to replicate Dale’s schematic landscape shots in higher resolution.