Autumn on the lake - Greene County, Virginia 

I took a walk yesterday afternoon to a small patch of woods down by the lake, and took this picture of the trees across the water. There is still a lot of green in the woods and it makes a nice backdrop for the autumn colors.

Earlier this week I visited Urban Decay. To my surprise, Andy Morang was in Virginia recently and posted pictures of a Chesapeake and Ohio railroad depot in Lee Hall which is near Williamsburg. Check it out here.

It was a bit of a coincidence because I have been selecting pictures of railroad related buildings to post next week. I wll start off on Monday with a picture of a building located in the Illinois Central rail-yard in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Andy's home town.

Hope you will stop by for a visit next week as we look at five buildings, all located along the tracks, and all in black and white.

Makeshift fence and path - Ocracoke Island, North Carolina 

Serenade

Photographers often feel compelled to apologize for "pretty" pictures. Beauty in art is out of fashion today, but the simple fact is that the world can be a very beautiful place. If some subjects seem banal through over-familiarity, it is all the more reason to look with fresh eyes.

Some forty years ago, I bought a recording of Johannes Brahms' youthful Serenade #2 in A, Opus 16 entirely on the strength of a beautiful landscape painting on the album cover. (This was in the days of vinyl LPs, when album covers were big enough to make an impression.)  For many years, the Serenade was about the only Brahms composition that I knew, and I loved it.

As I was driving to work yesterday morning in a steady rain, Brahms' Serenade #2 came on the radio. It was a cool morning and the heater was on. In the rain, the muted colors of the Autumn trees glowed. The familiar sound of Brahms on the radio mixed with the sound of the rain, and I felt like I was wrapped in a cocoon made of music and rain-washed color.

The morning was absolutely common-place, and completely beautiful. I wish I could have shared it with you.

Ocean side, sound side - Ocracoke Island, North Carolina 

Requiem for Steam

David Plowden's latest book, Requiem for Steam was released this week.

If you don't know Plowden's work, you should. He has spend decades photographing the vanishing remnants of America's great mechanical age with a poet's eye. Things that were a familiar part of the landscape in the first half of the twentieth Century are now gone, or changed beyond recognition. Requiem for Steam is part celebration of, part elegy for the steam locomotive, and a time in railroad history that came to an end in 1960.

The book opens with a long essay by Plowden, telling the story of long distances, run-down hotels in isolated railroad towns, days and nights haunting the engine houses and depots and rail yards photographing the end of an era. What we sense in the photographs is confirmed by his words: Plowden loved his subject, and was committed to it. As he describes his last ride in the cab of a steam locomotive, the sense of loss is palpable.

My favorite picture in the book is not of a locomotive or a long ago demolished station. It is a portrait of Ray H. Birkhead, an agent for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. He has taken his glasses off and is looking directly into the camera. The wall behind him is stained, and a bare light bulb hangs from the ceiling. The picture was taken on his last day on the job before retiring. I love this picture because ultimately, this story is not about iron, but about the flesh and blood that built and maintained, operated and loved the "iron horses" that would soon be cut up and sent to the scrap yard.

Mr Birkhead retired from the railroad after 60 years of service, in the final days of steam.

David Plowden, Requiem for Steam. W.W. Norton and Company, New York. 2010

Approaching rain - Ocracoke Island, North Carolina 

It was the end of our day at Ocracoke, and we were hurrying to the north end of the island to catch the ferry back to Hatteras. There was no time to stop and take pictures, but the scene out over the ocean was compelling. A dark line of clouds almost touched the horizon, and the waves were breaking white on the beach. Luckily, I was not driving, so I stuck the camera out the window and did the best I could to photograph what was going on off-shore. Sometimes, you just take what nature offers.

Dunes # 2 - Ocracoke Island, North Carolina 

"We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always"

Henry David Thoreau - Cape Cod, 1865

Standing on the damp strip of sand shared by the land and the ocean, looking toward land, we see constant change. Wind and weather, growth and decay, people and progress all shape and reshape the land from generation to generation. Turn 180 degrees, and we face the constant ocean. What we see is what a native American standing on this same spot 300 years ago would have seen. The sound of the waves, the line on the horizon where the water joins the sky, the heave and tumble of the water are all unchanged.

As we turn and walk away, the waves scurry across the sand to erase our footprints.

Dunes # 1 - Ocracoke Island, North Carolina 


The barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina are known as the Outer Banks. Ocracoke is the southernmost island and is accessible only by ferry. Last October I visited the Outer Banks and made a day trip to Ocracoke.

As a storm approached at the end of our day on Ocracoke, the dunes were illuminated by a lovely soft light, and the island was cleansed by sun and clouds and a fresh breeze off the ocean. For a few moments, it seemed as if the world was new, and God said, "Let there be light."

The first drops of rain fell as we rode the ferry back toward Hatteras, and then it was dark.

At the ferry landing - Ocracoke Island, North Carolina 

Next week we will be visiting the North Carolina's Outer Banks. The pictures are from a trip to Ocracoke Island in October of last year. The Autumn light is wonderful on the Atlantic coast, and I hope you will stop by and visit.