Folks,
On Saturday, December 17th, I attended the 2016 Victorian Christmas Event at the museum. This was my 9th straight year and it was a memorable one. For the first time in several years, we not only had snow on the ground, but in the air as well. The area received about 6" of new snow, which seemed to be timed perfectly (depending on your viewpoint
), basically starting just before operations did and finishing up just about the time the equipment was put away. And unlike most snowstorms here in New England, it was accompanied by very cold temperatures, which started off in the low single numbers, but did rise somewhat during the day.
It is relatively rare to be able to photograph steam operations in falling snow. Very few steam operations are still running during the winter months, and unless you happen to live very near one, the odds of getting snow at one of those few railroads during an occasional visit are pretty darn small. The snow does bring with it some challenges. Keeping one's camera lens free of snow and ice becomes problematic. Just getting around to catch the action also becomes difficult. During VC, I normally hike the ROW from Sheepscot to AC, shooting the trains as I go. On Saturday, the cold and the rapid snow accumulation, combined with pre-existing snow underneath convinced me that the 1.8 mile hike was probably not a great idea. Falling snow presents other issues that aren't immediately apparent until you get the images on a computer. You have to shoot in burst mode, firing multiple shots to try and get one good one. That's because some big flakes get too close to your lens, and can wind up covering critical elements....such as a subject's face. The cold presents problems as well. I dared not wander into a warm building for more than a minute or two for fear that my cold camera lens might not only fog up....but I might also get condensation on the INSIDE, where all of the sensitive and expensive electronics are. At the end of the day, I actually had thumbwheel controls on the outside of the camera that were iced up and frozen.
And then, there was the 125 mile drive home......
Still, all of the challenges were worth it. Almost any frame you could shoot looked like a scene from a Currier and Ives print. I've put together a short Flickr album of some of the things I saw. I'm not much of an artist, but I hope I was able to capture a little taste of what the event looked like.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/112261457@N06/albums/72157674098719934 Thanks to everyone at the museum for another great time in the woods of Maine!
/Kevin Madore
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