In a message dated 98-02-16 16:01:21 EST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Back in the late 1980s (sorry, I do not know that date off-hand) Mainline
> Modeler magazine ran an article entitled "The Universal Filter" that I
> wrote about this very topic of polarizing filters and their proper use.
> I had to laugh, though, as a few months later Railfan Magazine ran its
> own knock-off article on pola filters in its Camera Bag section, even
> though Jim had told me that he never used pola filters.
That's funny (amusing). Jim doesn't read model magazines, and the one copy of
Mainline that showed up in the offices always got squirelled away by the ad
folks. We never get to see them for months, when I would cut out the articles
I wanted. That Camera Bag was a direct result of a 1988 visit that Jim and I
made to the Cumbres & Toltec -- I keep the polarizer in my shirt pocket when
linesiding, and Jim was almost alergic to a polarizer. (I have a polarizer
for each camera body, and at least one for every lens size). He wouldn't
touch a filter back then -- "I have no use for color filters!" he would quip.
Well, there was one scene with the engines taking coal at Chama with the
Aspens overhanging and framing the scene that was helped 100% by the polarizer
-- the yellow leaves got violently more yellow, while the sky was only
slightly effected. "Jim, ya gotta see this," and I handed the filter to him,
and suddenly his steel trap of a mind opened just slightly -- he did take
frames with and without. This was September; in October we popped out to
Horseshoe Curve where there was just some color on a few trees. Similar
scenario, and this time he was hooked, and that's when he wrote the camera
bag. But he took the "deep blue sky" approach to it without much emphasis on
what it's really for and the many other benefits. He bought a polarizer, and
I think he lost it, as he hasn't used it much since then. That Camera Bag
column used one or two of the Horses Hoe shots, and he used one of the Chama
shots on a future cover (Juke's Tree) -- that's about it for JB and the
polarizer. A few times later if we were together and I was using it, he
wasn't so violently opposed, and when I came back from the Electroliner debut
at IRM with polarized shot of a meet on IRM's North Shore looking main line,
he flipped "That shot has all the vibrance of the painting!". He put it on
the cover, even though it didn't fit the cover. He now accepts the polarizer.
I can assure you, however, he didn't lift or copy your article idea. The only
other magazine he would look at and base R&R's content on was TRAINS, and if
he saw something in TRAINS or learned of an upcoming story they were doing,
he'd stay far away from it. Once in a while if CTC Board would run something
we wanted to run, he would sit on it for a few months. But those are the
closest examples of how other magazines affected R&R's content.
....Mike
-> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects
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