Train art

Nothing like poking around the railroad tracks and extracting little bits and pieces from what I find painted on the boxcars. It's grungy, dirty work, but SOMEbody has to do it! ©Carol Leigh

Train art . . .

(Click photo to enlarge.) When traveling through North Bend on the Oregon coast, I always look to see if there are any trains stopped along the tracks. Yesterday, yes! And the first thing I noticed was this artwork. It caught my eye because it's not the typical graffiti we usually see. This person used black and white paint to create a twilight scene of Black Butte, a lava dome in California between the towns of Mt. Shasta and Weed.

This artist made the lava dome look like a mastodon of sorts, and depicts the railroad, the trees, stars, and a sliver of a moon. On the lower left you see "To Portland" and on the right "To Roseville" (near Sacramento).

So the next time you're driving I-5, take a look to the east and envision Black Butte as a mastodon looking (somewhat forlornly) out over the railroad tracks, and give him a nod. ©Carol Leigh

Orbification

It's fun to create these things, but (for me) it's always more interesting to see the original image as well. Orbs are cool, but sometimes they're even cooler when we know what they're made of. So here's a photo of an orb and then the photo it was made from, a flag on the side of a train engine.

©Carol Leigh

Now on Flickr . . .

I'm finding Flickr to be a convenient way of creating little galleries of my work and so far I've got 9 "sets" of photos up: Buoys, Car Art, Train Art, High Key, Urban Abstracts, Polaroid, Route 66, and Numbers. Here's the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/80859324@N00/

It took a little time to understand the format, but basically the photos show up in a stream as you post them, most recent first, but off to the right you can see the different sets, which makes it easier. When I visit someone else's Flickr site, I now just automatically glance at the most recent images and then look over to see what sets or galleries the photographer has created.

Looking for a source of inspiration? Flickr's a good place to peruse and to charge your visual batteries.

©Carol Leigh, being pulled, kicking and screaming, into Flckr, Facebook, Google+, and who now needs even MORE time in the day...

Stars on trains

 I am addicted to photographing graffiti on train cars. With so many files to look at, I begin seeing patterns. And this is one: stars on trains. (Letters, numbers, faces, writings, arrows are some other patterns that are emerging. Fair warning.) Here are five examples of "stars."

Do you do the same thing? Do you find yourself returning to the same subject matter, finding new things in the familiar? Mailboxes is something we all seem to gravitate to. The color red. Reflections in windows. Reflections in water. Riffle through your own photographs and look for "collections" of subject matter. Ten good images built around one theme could become an interesting photo essay.

©Carol Leigh, currently awash in photographs, flotsam on a sea of pixels