A busy Summer in the yard and an unscheduled trip to see our grandson made for slow shooting this year. As the Summer was drawing to a close, a friend let me know about a photo opportunity in Albuquerque NM. New Mexico Heritage Rail owns and operates the Santa Fe 2926 Steam Locomotive, and was taking the 2926 to the Albuquerque Rail Yard for a night photo workshop. I couldn’t resist the opportunity so I registered for the workshop, loaded up cameras, and headed to New Mexico.

I met several friends who are railroad photographers and had a wonderful couple days. I ate a lot of great Mexican food and saw some beautiful country.

The morning of the workshop, we headed to the Rail Yard to watch the 2926 roll in! While we were waiting, we explored the Yard. Now owned by the City of Albuquerque, the Rail Yard was a major center of operations for the Santa Fe Railroad, evidenced by the huge facilities there. Albuquerque is restoring the Yard and hosts a farmer’s/artist’s market on Sundays.

I haven’t studied the Yard to ensure that I know the function of every space, so any description is conjecture. What I do know is that these facilities are a photographer’s dream.

I shot the pictures below handheld using a Canon EOS R5 camera body with a Canon RF 15-35 f/2.8 L IS USM lens. I made 5 exposures of each scene (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2). I loaded all 5 exposures into Adobe Camera Raw software and selected the set of exposures to blend into a high dynamic range (HDR) image file. The HDR file was then taken into Photoshop for further processing. I finished each image with a filter from either the NIK Collection or Topaz Studio.

I haven’t ‘developed’ the pictures of the exteriors because I got so busy with the interiors and pictures of the 2926. Stay tuned and enjoy – PHOTOROGR