CERM 7th Annual Night Photo Shoot

On September 25, 2010 the Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum hosted their 7th annual Night Photo Shoot.  Fourteen photographers from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey converged on Willimantic, CT for an evening of photography, while at the same time supporting the museum’s future operations.

As with the previous six iterations (Check out #4, #5, & #6 here on the blog), Bob LaMay and I planned out an evening of photography around the museum’s grounds.  The one thing that was different from the previous years was the date – we had traditionally done it in June.  But with the past three years having rain in June, we opted to try later in the summer.  Plus it got dark earlier in late September.  This year was rain free, and all went off without a hitch.

This year Steve Barry (editor of Railfan and Railroad magazine – their site is here) returned to run the lights.  But instead of the usual Lumedyne system, Steve brought his Alien Bees monolight setup.  With four radio-controlled flash units, Steve was able to get in quite a few more shots than previous years by pre-positioning the lights, and having the photographers move around.  That coupled with the high power and fast recycle time of the flashes, we could get in a dozen or so shots of each scene.  And like last year, we ended the evening with a spark show starring the museum’s Baldwin 0-4-0T steamer.  This time instead of using an angle grinder, rich broke out the oxy-acetylene torch to really throw some sparks!

At the end of the evening, the fourteen photograpers all left happy and satisfied – and not as beat since we were done by 10pm!  Usually we were out shooting well past midnight.

OK, enough of the blabbing, you came here to see the photos.  So here they are!

Thanks for looking!
Tom